Page 22 of Hitting the Goal Line
“Because you keep looking over like you’re checking if I’ve disappeared already or not,” I admit, shifting again when he turns look at me, this time a lot longer than just a quick second like he has been.
“I’m not looking at you that way,” he answers, and I notice that his hand wrap around the steering wheel of his truck a little tighter.
“Whatever you say.” I decide to drop it, not wanting to go through all the back and forth.
We go back to being silent, something that I’m usually comfortable with but for some reason tonight it feels awkward.
The awkward silence lasts a few minutes until Blake breaks it.
“Is that skirt new?” he asks, after clearing his throat.
“My skirt?” I ask, confused. He never talks about clothes with me, unless it’s regarding an article of clothing I stole from his closet or I’m straight up asking for his opinion. “Yeah, I bought it a few weeks ago.”
Does he not like it?
And if he didn’t, why does it matter? I don’t dress for him. Maybe I did for a bit after my quince, because there might have been a time where I had a crush on my best friend, but since nothing came out of said crush, I stopped.
“Why?” he asks, taking me out of my thoughts and back to the present.
“Why, what? Why did I buy the skirt?” I ask, feeling so damn confused by all of this.
He gives me a nod, keeping his eyes on the road and his hand still tightly wrapped around the steering wheel. “Yeah, why did you buy it?”
I tilt my head to the side. “Because I like it?”
Where the hell is this conversation going?
“You don’t think it’s a little short?” he suggests, quickly looking at me again before looking away just as quickly.
“No, I don’t. It comes to my fingertips,” I argue.
Even if it was short? Why does he care? It’s not like half the girls that he has dated over the years, haven’t worn the same thing. I never heard him complain about them.
“Definitely doesn’t go to your fingertips when you’re sitting down,” he grumbles under his breath, thinking that I wouldn’t have been able to hear him with the roar of the truck, but I certainly did.
“Do you have a problem with what I’m wearing, Jacobi? Because if you do, just come out and say it.” I brought out the Jacobi card. I only call him by his last name when I’m trying to tell him that he is acting like a pompous hockey player. It feels like tonight is going to be one of those times.
He gives me a shrug, his knuckles almost white. “I just think that you could have worn something else.”
“Like what?” I ask, shifting in my seat so that my whole body is facing him.
“Something that covered your body a lot more,” he says, giving me a pointed look.
“You sound like my dad.” I roll my eyes at him. I can’t believe we are even having this conversation. He hasn’t had a problem with how I dressed before, why is tonight different?
“I’m actually surprised he let you leave the house like that. If you were my-”
“Your what? If was your what, what would you do?”
His jaw starts to tick and his knuckles go from being white to absolutely transparent. “If you were my sister,” he says the word through clenched teeth, “I would have told you to go back upstairs and change.”
Sister.
If I was his sister. Because that’s all I will ever be to him. A sister or his best friend. This is something that I’ve known for years, so I don’t know why I’m so bothered by it now.
Yeah, you do. Because that crush you had on him a few years ago is still deep in you and you don’t want to let it go.
There is a slight chance that my subconscious is right, but just because it’s right doesn’t mean that I’m actually going to do anything about it. Do I still have a crush on him? As much as I want to tell myself that I don’t, I know it would be a lie. It’s just now, it’s buried deep and there’s no way am I going to let it see the light of day. If it does, it might ruin what we’ve built these last thirteen years.
