Page 30 of Matched

“N-nothing,” I choked out, closing my lips over my own ice cream in an effort to distract myself. Creamy vanilla filled my mouth, sweet and delicious, but it wasn’t enough to distract mefrom the man walking next to me, his arm occasionally brushing mine and sending chills across my overheated skin.

Holy fuck. This was not just a weird non-heatstroke thing. I knew I’d been in denial, but there was only so much denying I could do before the inevitable conclusion forced its way to the front of my mind.

I think I might fancy Nate Glover.

11

Charlie was quiet next to me, focused on eating his ice cream. My gaze kept flicking to him, taking in the way he licked up the dripping cream from the cone, and I hoped he didn’t notice, because I had no explanation for why I was looking at him.

“Wanna go on the pedal boats?” I suggested when we’d finally finished our ice creams. We’d been here for hours already, but I was having fun hanging out with Charlie. I wasn’t ready for it to end yet.

“Are you gonna pedal me around?” He shot me a wide grin.

Nudging him with my elbow, I returned his smile. “Remember, I beat you in our bike race. You can pedal me around.”

We bickered all the way to the boat hire place, nudging and elbowing each other and generally acting like kids on a sugarhigh. When we were seated in our pedalo, next to each other, Charlie tipped his head back, letting the sun shine directly onto his face.

“This is nice.”

“Yeah.” Following his lead, I twisted my cap around so the brim was at the back and lifted my face to the sun, closing my eyes behind my shades. Nice was an understatement. The sun was warm, not too hot, there was a fresh breeze cooling my skin, and the sound of the birds mingled with chatter from the people dotted around the shore. Out here, it was easy to forget we were in the centre of the city—if I ignored the tall buildings visible when I looked in certain directions.

The boat was an e-pedalo, so thanks to the electronic assistance, it took hardly any effort to manoeuvre us into the centre of the lake. I glanced over at Charlie to find him already looking at me, his mouth curved upwards. The breeze was ruffling his hair, and his posture was relaxed, his legs stretched out in front of him as he let me do all the work of pedalling. My breath caught in my throat. He was so fucking good-looking. Cute and fucking sexy.

My jaw clenched. There was no way I’d just had that thought about my platonic friend.

Tearing my gaze away, I stared out across the lake. “Are you coming to our match next weekend? If we win the next two, we’ve got a chance of winning the southern division cup.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t miss it,” Charlie said instantly. “Training with the team has been— I dunno, I knew you were good, but you’ve got some really strong players.”

“Including me, I hope.”

“Fishing for compliments?” He tutted. “As if your head wasn’t big enough already.”

“It could always do with being bigger.”

A loud, exaggerated sigh came from next to me. “Fine. You’re a very talented…mugger.”

“Fuck off.”

He hummed. “Okay, okay. You’re great at pinball. Not as good as me, because we both know your win was a fluke, but you’re still great.”

“Not what I was asking, Charlie B. Compliment my ball-handling skills.”

“I wouldn’t know about those,” he shot back and then gasped. “Uh—I didn’t mean— That didn’t come out right— Fuck.”

“Charlie.” Turning to him, I reached out, squeezing his bicep. “I’d be happy to show you how well I can handle balls anytime.”

The second the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back, but it was too late. I’d been aiming to lighten the moment with a joke, but fucking hell, my voice had sounded way too sincere.

“Um.” He coughed, then swallowed. “Yeah. A one-on-one training session would be good. My footwork could do with, uh, some refining.”

“Yeah. Your footwork. Okay. Want me to book the training pitch one evening in the week?”

There was a pause, and I could see him clenching his fists, his knuckles whitening, but then he exhaled unsteadily and nodded. “That would be good. Um. Wednesday?”

“I’ll log in now and see if it’s free.” Fishing my phone from my pocket, I opened the booking app for the LSU sports facilities. We had a short training session on Wednesday, but the pitch was normally empty after we’d finished. “Uh…it looks like it’s fully booked this upcoming week, but it’s free after our Wednesday training session the week after. Want to do it then? We’ll be warmed up from training, so we can get straight into it.”

“Yeah. That—that sounds good. Yeah.” Charlie cleared his throat. “Yeah. Okay.”

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