Page 219 of The Fake Date Agreement

A hint of a smile briefly warms her hazel gaze. “What’s going to happen after? Soon, we’ll have graduated, and you won’t always be so busy, right?”

“Right,” I confirm.

We still don’t know what’s happening with the draft, but the dream is that we play for the same team and get a place together.

“So maybe there will be times we’ll all be together.” She darts a rapid glance my way.

When my phone vibrates again, I’m ready to toss it out of the window. “You’re asking about all of us…”

She clears her throat. “I’m curious. I mean, I thought one of you would bring it up first, but none of you are, and I thought, well, is this going to be the way it always is? Or will… other things happen?”

I stare at her without speaking.

I’m not sure what she’s hinting at, but I think I can guess.

“Javier?”

“This practice is going to be terrible,” I mutter.

She blinks. “What?”

I shake my head. “This is new for all of us, so we wanted to go slow. If something more happens, then it happens.”

She peeks up at me through her lashes. “Would something more mean all of you and me together?”

Ten minutes late, I climb out of my car in the arena parking lot, rock hard, and my mind still back in the hotel with Tobie.

I stuttered something that probably didn’t make much sense and told her I’d be back later. Then I left before I could get deeper into a conversation that would have seen me miss practice altogether.

Feet from the arena entrance, a car door flies open, and Nessa scrambles out, flinging herself at me and rocking me back a step. “Surprise!”

I wrap my arms around my seventeen-year-old sister, happy to see her. “Nessa? What are you doing here? You didn’t run away from home, did you?” She did. I can totally see my little sister doing something like that. I start pulling her toward my car. “Come on, I need to get you back to Boston before Mom calls the cops thinking?—”

“I didn’t run away from home,” she says, struggling.

“I don’t believe you. You?—”

“She’s telling the truth. We brought her,” my mom says, climbing out of the same black Mercedes.

“Mom?”

Dad joins her outside the car. “I think it’s time we had a conversation that needed to happen a long time ago, Javier.”

After the talk I just had with Tobie, I’m not ready to deal with this. Not now.

But if my parents are here with Nessa, then something has changed.

“Come inside.” I fish my keycard from my pocket. “We can talk in the arena.”

Other than a few parked cars belonging to my teammates and the coaches, the parking lot is empty. The arena is emptier still, though the faint sounds of laughter and conversation spill from the rink into the lobby.

I’m already late, but this is important.

I lead my parents and Nessa to the seats near one concession. It’s closed, and it won’t reopen until the next game.

Only Nessa sits in one of the leather chairs, crossing her denim-clad legs as she peers around with brown eyes identical to mine. “Everyone is saying you guys are going to win this year,” she says.

“Yeah.”

---