Page 30 of Coach
“Oh my God,” she wheezed. “His vowels?”
“And he talks fast when he’s nervous, says too much, then tries to walk it back like he didn’t just trip over his own tongue. When I spilled water on myself—”
“Wait, you spilled water on yourself?”
“Focus!”
“Fine!”
“My shirt was soaked and all see-through, which made my nipples and abs poke through like I was about to walk a runway. He short-circuited. He looked at me like I was a fire hazard, and then he stared at my chest like he’d never seen one before. And I—” I groaned. “I haven’t stopped thinking about him since.”
Silence.
“You have a boy crush,” she singsonged.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “No, I don’t.”
“You have a feelings-crush,” she sang. “You are emotionally compromised. Shane has actual human emotions for a hot Italian with a tragic accent and a thirst for sideboards.”
“Stevie.”
“You’re into him.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“You want to hold hands and share soup bowls.”
Click.
I tossed the phone onto the bed and sighed like a man who’d just seen war.
Then I realized we hadn’t solved the “what was I going to wear” problem.
“Well, shit,” I grumbled as I grabbed my phone off the comforter and punched Stevie’s face again. Not literally. Her phone face.
“Miss me already?” she asked.
“Fuck, no. Now, just tell me what to wear.”
“For the love of God, no flannel.”
“Already tossed across the room.”
She giggled. My butch, bike-riding, tattooed-and-pierced vampire Lesbitarian actually giggled. “What about that black shirt? You never wear that, but I bet you look good in black.”
“It has paint on the bottom and on some of the buttons. I think it was beige or faded blue something.”
“Well, that fucks the all-black idea right up the ass.”
I groaned.
“Do you have any white T-shirts that aren’t stretched at the neck or torn or have sweat stains or paint on the bottom? Like, clean white T-shirts?”
I stepped to my chest of drawers and began rifling through stacks of white T’s. I had lots ofthose—though it took me a solid three minutes to find one meeting her very particular description.
“Got it. What goes with a white T-shirt?”
The sound of the phone dropping from her hand and smacking the floor was followed by more laughter, this time far less controlled or contained than her prim little giggles. The muffled sound of her retrieving her phone was followed by heavy breathing and a failed attempt to rein in snickers.
