Page 8 of Scoring the Player
“My bad.”
“How was it?” my sister, Anaïs, asks as I pull into a parking spot.
“Hold on.” I reach in the back for my hoodie and then throw it on, popping the hood.“You, whose beautiful soul is cast from love.”
“Wh-what? Is that one of your lyrics? It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a line from Sid’s proposal.”
“Wait, what? He proposed?”
“Yep. Ty had a ring too.”
“What do you mean he had a ring?”
“It turned into a surprise double proposal. There were tears, the snotty kind, and words likeeverlastingandunion.”
“Oof. You okay?”
I roll down the windows. “Yeah, he’s my best friend. I’m happy for him.”
“Bullshit. We hate sharing our best friends.”
Yeah…She cried for a week after her best friend Isabelle got married.
“You still there?”
“Nah, I’m on my way home.”
Home.The first morning I woke up there and squinted at its gleaming fixtures and blank, paper-white walls, I dry heaved, threatening to paint the marble. I canceled the unpackers and unboxed the essentials, which turned out to be less than a quarter of the boxes, and left the rest. Pulled up a hookup app and then got the fuck outta there.
When the guys came over for the first time, Sid took in the boxes and quirked an eyebrow. I arched one back. He said,“It suits you,”and I grinned and said,“Fuck you,”because I knew he knew why it suited me.I don’t know where home is, but it sure as hell ain’t LA.
“I’ve been thinking…maybe single life isn’t best for yo?—”
“Anaïs.”
“Ever since your college coach, you’ve be?—”
“Stop.”
“I’m just saying, we love hard and we’re loyal hoes. How freaking lucky are the bastards who’ll love us back one day? They won’t ever let go.”
Theywon’t be the ones letting go. “Mostly ’cause we’re hoes.”
“I checked your DMs. I’ll never unsee that guy’s sculpted face and horse dick for as long as I live. The hell was he going on about in the video?”
I shrug. “Like I speak Dutch.” I track a group approaching less than twenty feet away and roll the tinted windows back up.
“I don’t know how you’re still single with dudes like that blowing up your DMs.”
One of the guys pauses to video my whip.
The sun is starting to bleed across the sky, over-the-top watermelon and gold.
“Staying single is easy.” I roll my window back down after they pass.
“You sure you good? Took your meds?”
