Page 214 of Call the Shots
My face burned. “Oh.”
Denali groaned, obviously trying to change the subject. “I’m so tired of watching you two swap spit.”
“Yeah, I’m tired of it too,” Elijah muttered, flipping us off. “That’s what I want!”
I took a bite of the whipped cream—arguably one of the best parts of a milkshake—and had to hold back the moan. It was sogood.And so thoughtful. Bear was definitely getting a blowjob later. He smiled above me, swiping at the corner of my mouth with his thumb, tasting the whipped cream too.
“Do that in yourdorm,” Denali said. “Not everybody wants to see?—”
“If we can’t talk about Elijah’s creepy fixation, I guess I’ll ask the question everybody wants to know.” Fridge shifted his chair, his focus on Denali. “What happened between you and the girl who gave you a complex?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about?—”
“Fridge.” Elijah bumped the back of his chair. “You’re always talking about minding your own business but then you?—”
“No, I can talk about this because there’s nothing to talk about,” Denali said. “The truth is, I’m not like most of the guys on the team. I don’t discuss sex and relationships constantly and I don’t base my life around?—”
“What’d you and that girl do to each other?” Fridge interrupted.
“I didn’t do anything toanybody.”
“So you were born bitter?”
“Okay—yeah—I had a girlfriend, so what?”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing!” he insisted, his face red. “It was long-distance, I took buses to see her, and I wrotelove letters. Who the hell writes love letters these days?" He grabbed his drink, his shoulders tense. "She had some personal stuff going on, and one day she dropped me out of the blue, but whatever. I did everything right! I wasn’t the problem!”
I gazed at Denali, surprised. “Oh…Denali.”
Fridge narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
Denali bristled. “I’m not lying?—”
“Then that’s not the whole truth.” Fridge rolled his eyes. “You can’t flash your wound every fifteen minutes and get shocked when somebody asks why you haven’t sewn it up?—”
“Fuck off, Fridge,” Denali muttered, heading to the bar.
Elijah gave Fridge a long look. “Sometimes you can be a self-righteous prick.”
“You’ll always defend Denali, your opinion means very little to me,” Fridge said, leaning back in his chair. “He’s hiding something. I don’t know what it is, but that’s not the whole story.”
CHAPTER 79
BEAR
THE GOODBYE PARTY
I thought runninghockey practice was hard but party planning was goddamn difficult. It would’ve sent a lesser man to male-patterned baldness.
Two of the speakers caught fire from overloaded extension cords, Montoya dropped the dip Fridge spent two days working on, of course, right on the carpet. Buttons accidentally hit aMarrs Student Housingsign with his car, and it sailed through the air, cracking a neighbor’s window.
I was losing my patience, especially with Nick in charge of the pizza order.
“Pause it!” I barked. “I haven’t figured out who can eat what!”
