Page 113 of Courtside

“Why?” Sage frowned down at her almost empty margarita. She threw the rest of it back and slid the glass down the bar, watching the way the condensation smeared across the shiny wood.

Maggie looked at the glass, obviously unimpressed. “Because talkin’ is better. Thoughts get all twisted and fuzzy, and sometimes you don’t actually know what you feel until you say it out loud.” She filled a glass of water from the tap and slid it down the bar toward Sage. “And you’re my friend and I’m supposed to help when shit like this happens. It’s how the friend thing works.”

Sage took a long drink of water. She was drunk enough that she felt the tequila in her mouth, in the way that her lips and tongue lagged just a little behind her brain when she tried to speak.

“David did a shitty thing.”

“What’d he do?”

“I told him not to do something and he did it.”

Maggie blinked at her. “Sage. Come on. You’re givin’ me nothin’ to work with here.”

Sighing, Sage slumped back into her seat.

It had been six days since she’d told David to get out of her apartment.

The first three days she’d been pissed. So pissed that she’d snapped at the perfectly nice cashier at the grocery store when he didn’t give her the two-for-one discount on her wine. She’d needed the space to breathe and recalibrate, to move through the hurt and disappointment until what was left was herself.

The next two days she’d genuinely been so busy with school that she’d barely had time to feed herself or go to the bathroom.

But now? Now she really fucking missed him. She’d had a taste of life without David Hughes in it and she didn’t want that. Not when she could make the choice to be with him again.

“He offered to call a friend and hook me up with a coaching job here in Charleston, and I told him no. Then he went behind my back and did it without telling me. I didn’t realize it was David’s friend until I was at the interview. It was my dream job, Maggie. It was everything I’d ever wanted, and they even offered me the position at the end.” She winced, remembering the sharp sting of humiliation she’d felt in that moment, like everyone was in on the joke except for her. “I thought they picked me because they wanted Sage Fogerty, but they only picked me because of stupid David Hughes and his stupid beautiful face that everyone seems to love.”

Maggie tapped her nails against the polished wood of the bar. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Maggie seemed to be wrestling with what to say next. “So he made a mistake.”

“Yes!” Sage slapped a hand down on the bar, wincing when the surface of her skin smarted. “I told him not to and he did!”

Maggie nodded. “But you got an interview for your dream job.”

“Yes.”

Maggie gave her a look that Sage didn’t like. Not at all.

Sage narrowed her eyes at her. “What.”

“So we’re mad at David,” she started. “I get that. But don’t you maybe want to consider sayin’ yes?”

Hurt flared in Sage’s chest. “You don’t get it,” she said, leaning forward until her chest rested on the bar in front of her. “I can’t just forget that the only reason I got the job was because of him.”

“Hey,” Maggie said, bracing herself on her elbows and looking Sage intently in the eye. “I’m on your side here. All I’m sayin’ is to think about it.”

Sage let herself imagine, just for a moment, that she was the kind of person who would consider saying yes to the job. That she could rewrite the pieces of herself that reacted to help like an unwanted touch. Because it was a good job. Anincrediblechance to start a career in coaching.

But she was who she was, and in spite of all of the ways that she’d grown and changed, Sage Fogerty couldn’t forget where she came from. She’d never completely outrun the fact that she was Cheryl Fogerty’s daughter, or the girl that Evan White chose out of a random lineup of her peers.

Those pieces of her didn’t define her, but they were there to stay.

“Even the really good ones make mistakes sometimes,” Maggie mused, tucking a piece of her now-blue hair behind her ear. The color suited her. “So is it over?”

“Over?”

“Are you breaking up with him?”

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