Page 27 of Commander in Briefs

“Gage!” That girly squeal sounds again, as “Gage” swipes at her, managing to hook his arm around her waist, pulling her into him.

“Gotcha!” Gage is obviously excited to have his huge-ass hands touching my girl.

My vision blurs as pure jealousy consumes me more with every step she takes with his arm around her.

That is my fucking girl.

Mine.

I’m on the move, my legs eating up the distance.

“Ans,” I yell, my voice laced with hate and venom.

“Theo?”

It takes three seconds. Three seconds for her to register that I’m here. Three seconds to toss her bag to the ground and run into my waiting arms.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were in LA?”

I completely ignore her question, squeezing her tight against me, smelling the sweet coconut scent in her hair.

She hugs me back, rubbing up and down my back soothingly. “Are you, okay?”

I nod into her shoulder. “I’m fine. I missed you and had a couple days off. Thought I would come down for a visit.”

Anniston pulls away, studying my face for any deception.

“Do you not believe me?”

She smiles, placing a soft kiss to the corner of my mouth. “I missed you, too, Teddy. Come on, you’re just in time to buy me lunch.”

“Go get your shit, Greedy. And tell Gage—” I scrunch up my face in disgust, “—next time.” But I don’t mean it. There won’t be a next time because I am going to lock Anniston McCallister down one way or another. Fuck this friends shit.

We go back to her place after lunch and surprise, surprise, end up in the bed. Naked. Again. Not a wise move, but I was desperate to feel her, to plunge deep into her core and extract the very essence from her. I was ravenous to stake claim after seeing her with Gage. Never again. There will never be another Gage in her life.

Cradled in my arms, I stroke the soft skin of her arm. “Anniston.”

Her groggy voice is muffled in my side. “Hmm…”

Instinctively, I pull her closer as if I almost expect she is going to pull away at my next words. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Okay.”

Deep breath. She’ll go for it. She’s sated. She said she missed you. You can charm a girl, Theo.

“I was thinking that maybe we should try dating.” I let the words hang in the air to see if she will jump at the chance.

Anniston scoffs, pulling her face out of my side to laugh at me head-on, patting my arm like I just told the best joke ever. “We’re just friends, Theo. We always have been,just friends.”

Friends. That fucking word became my demise. My fucking end. I watched as she pranced around on every douche’s arm that year. I was enraged. I was jealous. I was in fucking love with her. She knew it. I knew it. And she made sure she gutted me every day by rubbing in my face what could have been.

I let her behavior go on for a whole year before I stepped in. I proposed another deal, of sorts. Made it out like I didn’t have time for clingy chicks with my ball schedule and the douche-canoes she was dating were no better. I’d like to think she wanted me as bad as I wanted her, and that she was tired of punishing me for that night. But, more than likely she was just being a realist, as usual. It makes sense to have a piece on the side that you can trust. That you can call whenever, with no expectations. And that’s how McCallister’s Monday and Theo’s Thursday were started. I was at her mercy on Monday (her only free day from class) and she was at mine on Thursday (my off day in the pitching rotation). We could not date or sleep with anyone else on those particular days. It was fucked up, but it kept her mine.

Eventually, she came to Washington with me, the friendship picking up where we left off. We never talked about that year again. Mondays and Thursdays inevitably turned into every day of the week that we could manage with our hectic schedules.

Now, we pretend it’s no different, but we both know otherwise. This year, she took a step back from my training to spend more time in Madison, claiming it was time to “spread her wings and find herself.” I don’t know exactly what that means, but it makes me a little queasy because I’m thinking it may translate to laying down some roots with someone. Someone other than me.

So here I am, biting my nails to the quick, walking on the goddamn treadmill like a worried mother hen. Our Mondays and Thursdays have turned into: whenever we see each other. But the more I am away from her, the more fear settles in that she will meet someone. So, her “something came up” bothers me immensely.

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