Page 107 of Win Some Love Some
Was I freaking out? Maybe. I might be. Hard to say. Getting too comfortable felt risky. He’d broken my heart so hard, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
“You all right?” he asked, like he could read my mind, and of course he could.
“Great,” I said. He watched me like he knew I was lying. Like he knew I was scared he was going to hurt me, that we were going to get this wrong, and I could only sit there and let him see all that fear.
He nodded once, like the message had been received, and squeezed my leg again. Nick had always been a man of action and very few words. That thigh squeeze was his way of saying he wasn’t going anywhere.
Or that was me making up fairy tales about a man who was emotionally stunted by his childhood. God, I was on a date, could I stop exhausting myself for one minute?
“Feed me,” he said and opened his mouth.
I laughed and popped some popcorn in his mouth. We couldn’t really talk between the noise on the ice and the noise in the stands, but it was okay because we were here together.
And after this game was over, we were going to go back to his apartment and make love.
Then I was going to scramble back into my clothes, like a teenager, make him drive me home, and hope we didn’t get caught by my parents.
Maybe he was right and we should just tell my family, because it was starting to feel wrong to hide him. Us.
My phone, in the back pocket of my jeans, buzzed. A text. Followed by another one. And another one. And another one.
Uh oh. I had a feeling I knew what this was. Family group chat.
Slipping my phone out of my pocket, I realized it wasn’t a group chat, just my sister Charlie having some kind of meltdown.
Charlie: HOLY SHIT! WHAT IS HAPPENING?
Charlie: Also, how could you not tell me. ME? You’re closest sister. So mad at you right now.
Charlie: Does Mom know? Wait! Does Dad know?
Know what?
“What is it?” Nick asked, bumping his shoulder into mine. A buzzer went off and the crowd was deafening.
“I don’t know,” I shouted over the roar. “Charlie’s blowing my phone up about something.”
“Really?” he shouted back. “Because my phone is also going crazy. I was going to ignore it.”
Me: What are you talking about?
Charlie: The video!!!! WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?! YOU AND NICK? OMG.
Video? What…
My stomach sour, I turned to Nick. “Did you post the video?”
“What video?”
“The one from the wedding?” I asked, like there was any other kind of video that had the power to blow up our phones like this.
“I don’t know,” he said. “How do you post a video?”
“Gimme your phone,” I said. He handed it over, and sure, fucking enough. There was the video posted on his account. Twenty-five thousand views. I refreshed the screen. Thirty thousand views.
I was going to be sick. There were no hashtags and his was a nothing account, it should have sunk into obscurity. But someone found it. I looked at the comments.
@buzzybaby: Is this @anamericaninparis? with like fifty other people tagged.
