Page 27 of Unrecognizable Player

“Yeah.”That’s what I said dumb-ass,his face says. “Has she got a boyfriend? Or a… whatever.”

“A girlfriend?”

He blushes and turns back to the blender.

“Um, yeah.”

“No, she doesn’t have a boyfriend,ora girlfriend. She’s straight.”

He rips into a bag of spinach. “So will you ask her if she’d be into going out with a hockey player? He’s a good guy. He won’t mess her around or anything. I wouldn’t have asked you if he was an asshole.”

I think about Alice describing hockey players as thugs who run around bashing each other into things and shoutingprotein!It’s hard to keep the smile off my face when I tell him, “sure, I’ll ask.”

“Thanks. His name’s Mischa, Mischa Pawlowski”

Alice is waitingfor me outside the music building. A fine sheen of frost covering the grass around her boots. The end of her nose is rosy from the cold and I’m struck again by how beautiful she is.

I ask her if she managed to get that trumpet part she was struggling with for the Brahms piece and I listen until she startsgetting technical about trumpet tones and mouthpieces, and then she’s lost me.

“So!?” She says when she’s finished.

“So what?”

“How is it? Living with Captain America?”

I roll my eyes. “He isnotCaptain America. He’s way too moody and…” I can’t think of any other way in which he’s not like Captain America.

“Maybe he’s just shy,” she teases, reminding me of my lame excuses for Dorian’s rudeness. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring that asshole up.”

“It’s fine.”

Alice’s boots crunch over the frost and I wish I’d worn sturdier shoes than my Converse. I can already feel the moisture seeping into the canvas and making my socks wet.

“Has he tried to contact you since you got your stuff?”

“I don’t know, I blocked his number remember?”

“But he hasn’t tried to get to you through any of your friends?”

My heart sinks. He hasn’t. And neither have any of our ‘friends’ contacted me to see if I’m okay either. Not even Eve.

“No, maybe they’re all just trying to stay out of it.”

Alice loops her arm through mine and gives me a squeeze.

“Fuck them, you don’t need those rich assholes. You’ve got me.”

“Alice, your parents are corporate lawyers.”

“So you can have one rich asshole friend, you don’t need any more.”

“Oh my God, I almost forgot.” I stop dead, bringing Alice up with me.

“What?”

“Alexei wanted me to ask you out for one of his friends.”

She blows a raspberry. “Yeah right, like who?”

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