Page 35 of Shutout
Did we really turn into strangers? Is that why? Because this is like getting to know each other again, getting familiar with our spaces again.
No. It’s because for a second I had the wild notion weshould be doing something else in my bedroom. Or in the bathroom. Wherever she wants.
“She doesn’t, asshole,” I mutter to myself, running a hand down my face.
My pants vibrate, but it’s not because of the blood rushing down my body. I take my cellphone out of my pocket and the name that pops up on the screen is more effective than an ice bath.
Male Progenitor
Why didn’t you show up for Lee’s birthday party today?
I stare at the text from my dad, my eyebrows scrunching up with the effort it takes me to decipher it. But it’s not some secret intelligence code. I swipe open the text app to look at the thread between us, in case I missed the invite. But the last text was from me saying I’d just made team captain, and I’m pretty sure he hadn’t read it until now.
Just in case, I also check my emails, and there’s nothing there either.
Me
I didn’t know about it
Isn’t his birthday tomorrow?
My texts show as read immediately. I wait for the three dots but they don’t appear. Clicking out of the app, I stuff my phone back in my pocket right as a bedroom door opens down the hall.
I narrow my eyes like I need that to sharpen my already perfect vision. But they’re not deceiving me: that is indeed Trent McFadden walking out of a room with a girl. And like what they were doing is not obvious enough, he stumbles while trying to walk and zip up his pants at the same time.
Something like a hot hand grabs me by the throat, or it could just be from how hard it feels to hold back from cussing the shit out of him. I lock my muscles tight so I don’t rush down the hallway and pound him to the floor. He should be feeling absolutely wrecked after losing someone as amazing as Liv.
And then one neuron in my pea brain produces a spark of important thought.
Liv can’t see this—seehim.
Before her shitface ex spots me, I slip into my bedroom and lock the door. The water stops running in the bathroom and a moment later, the door opens.
CHAPTER 14
OLIVIA
I’m in Brooklyn’s bathroom.
It’s funny, because he still buys the same brand of soap. Pretty sure it was the housekeeper who used to buy it back when he was a kid, but he must still like this brand now that he has a choice to buy whatever he wants for himself. It makes me feel like maybe some parts of him are still the same.
But there’s been changes. For example, when I came in, the toilet paper roll was almost out. I had to—out of necessity, not out of stalking—look into his cabinets until I found a stack of rolls on a shelf right below a giant box of condoms, like a regular size one wasn’t enough. Brooke’s never had a shortage of girlfriends and hookups ever since he bloomed in high school, but he used to be shier about it.
Leaning down, I splash water on my face for as long as it takes to cool it. I turn off the faucet and grab a handful of his towel to dry my face.
His towel. That maybe he dries himself with.
I drop it like it’s on fire but I’m the one who’s burning up.
“Friendsforever, he said,” I mutter to myself through grittedteeth. “Which is the entire opposite of what you’re thinking about, you freaking perv.”
Taking a deep breath, with water dripping down my chin and on the skin of my chest, I open the bathroom door and step back into his room. I calculate I have maybe five seconds to scan it before leaving?—
Zero seconds. Because Brooke’s in his room, his back against the closed door. He lifts his eyes from his phone screen for a second and does a double take. For a long moment there’s only silence.
“Uh, need a towel? I thought I had one?—”
“Yeah, you do. I just… didn’t know if…”
