Page 8 of Icing the Cougar
Maybe more.
I check my Fitbit, hoping for an excuse, something I have to leave for, something I have to rush to. It’s early, but there’s nowhere to be except drenched, jogging laps around downtown.
Okay, Trinity. Just rip off the Band-Aid.
I press call and flick back to the draft.
I type, "We PROMISE not to leave you soaked and wanting MORE!"
Delete.
This is hopeless.
The phone is still ringing, and I can picture Nova rolling her eyes every time it rings. On the fifth, she picks up. "Trin." Cough, cough, cough.
"Please tell me you aren’t in the hospital?" I say, worried. "You sound like death."
“Not death,” she reassures me, and I sink into my favorite spot on the couch.
"How are you surviving the flu?"
Nova hoarsely laughs. "I am, barely."
“Good, I miss you at the studio,” I admit.
"So why the check-in?" Nova doesn't wait for my answer. She hardly takes a breath before deciding what it should be. "Not your style to worry so much. Don't tell me this is about the e-mail again."
"It's not," I say, wishing it were. The marketing campaign does need work, but Nova can sense a distraction from twenty miles away and always zeroes in. "Well, it is, but it's—"
"It's something else," Nova finishes for me. "Juicy!" I can hear her sitting up in her bed and a few more coughs. "You sounded flustered. Are you sick or just swoony?"
"Neither," I say, too quick, like a kid caught sneaking a candy bar and asked to hand it over. "I just thought you'd want an update."
"Oh, I want updates, all right. Especially about the new client—"
"All is going well," I cut her off. "Kind of."
Nova's quiet for a second, but I know better than to hope she’s given up. "You saw him, the hockey player," she says. Not a question. A trap.
"I did. I mean, he said he’d go ahead and let me do his yoga session rather than rescheduling with you."
I sink further into the couch and brace for her full attention.
"Go on," Nova says. It's amazing how two words can be so smug, so effective with pulling info out of me.
"It was nothing," I say. "Really." It feels like deja vu, but we both know she'll wear me down. "I just thought you'd want to know we crossed paths."
"Spill it, Trin. Don't leave anything out."
This is the problem with best friends. If you breathe too loudly on a phone call, they know about your deep, dark secrets. They make you admit to them, even if you’ve only half-admitted them to yourself.
"Okay. We may have gone a little too far during his session."
"Too far—" Nova crows like she just won the lottery.
“And…” I pause to swallow hard. “He was the one from the hotel that night.”
"What the actual fuck?" She coughs again with the voice strain.
