Page 105 of The Drop

“The skating girls would be into it," she confirms, filling up our wine glasses.

"Sounds like I need to get thrifting then." I take a sip and sigh as it hits the spot after a stressful few days.

"You like doing this, right?" Savannah asks, flicking through The Drop's Instagram page.

"Oh, totally," I reply without hesitation. "I love it. I'm so proud of how it's doing, but it feels like a full-time job instead of a college project."

"I can see that." She gestures to me, editing. "You've been at this a week straight."

"You'll try to take a break between this one and the next, right?" Cami asks.

"Sure, I'll just thrift a little." I shrug, and they both roll their eyes. I don't blame them; I have no intention of slowing down.

After the first two Drops, I finally felt everything click into place; it's so fun starting with second-hand clothes and then giving them a new lease of life with some college students who would never have bought them had the hockey team not modelled them.

There's a knock at the door.

"PIZZA!" Cami shouts, jumping up and running to open the door; she's acting like we've been waiting hours when it's only been forty minutes.

"No. No way, asshole, go away," I hear Cami say as soon as she opens the door, and I look over my shoulder towards her.

"I just need to talk to her for a minute," I hear Josh's voice come through the open door. What the hell? I put my laptop down and stood up, walking to the door.

"What do you want, Josh?" I asked tiredly; he had left me alone since Thanksgiving, so I thought after our talk, this was officially done.

"I need to tell you something before you find out from someone else." His eyes are wide and pleading with dark circles under them; he looks like he hasn't slept in days.

"Oh my god," I say, exasperated that we are doing this again. "What now? What else did you do? Sleep with my best friend."

I was so relieved that he had finally stopped trying to talk to me, and I'm so happy enjoying this new thing with Grant that I actually couldn't care less if he cheated on me when we were together.

Actually, no, that's a lie. I would kick him in the balls.

I'm tipsier than I thought I was. "I didn't do anything, I…" he explains, but Cami cuts him off.

"Seriously, B, if you have another best friend, tell me now. Because I would never." She narrows her eyes at Josh, and I snort a tipsy laugh.

"Brooke!" he shouts, and we turn our attention back and glare at him. "I came here to tell you that…"

"Here he is!" I hear Adam shout behind him. "He told you what he did?"

The entire hockey team is walking up our steps, and Josh looks like he's going to throw up.

"What did you do?" I whisper to Josh, my eyes darting back and forth between him and the team. Savannah joins Cami and me in the doorway as the team stands off with Josh.

"I didn't do anything," he blurts out, and Bear opens his mouth to interrupt again before I shush him.

"The baseball team vandalised the rink." My eyes can't get wider, but it's possible as I realise he doesn't just mean the rink but The Drop. "I did not know they were planning to do it."

"Why? Why would they do that?" I ask him, tears pricking my eyes as I think about how stressed I've been trying to fix it. "And why should I believe you weren't involved?"

"They said you weren't asking the baseball team to do The Drop because of me, because we had a bad breakup, and they wanted to get back at the hockey team for being featured multiple times."

"Really, selling you not being involved," Gunnar practically growls out. I've never seen him so mad before, not even when he argued with Sasha, and I swear I hear Cami sigh next to me.

"I swear to you I wasn't, Brooke. I've seen how well it's going. I don't want to ruin something else for you," he pleads at me again, back turned to the team.

I know we spoke on Thanksgiving about it, but after everything he's lied about to me, it's hard to just believe him out of nowhere.

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