Page 97 of Lovesick
“Of course not! I want you, Crew.”
My heart is doing a quickstep in my chest, my temples are scorching, and I can’t tell if my shortsightedness is because I’m utterly exhausted or I’m borderline infuriated. I don’t want my tears to show, but the rusty faucet behind my eyes is already turning.
“You sure have a weird way of showing it,” he states apathetically.
Before I can correct him, Irelyn shoves her way into our conversation, shaking a camera in her hand. “Merit, we need to get headshots for the catalog.”
“Wait, but…” I flounder.
Crew doesn’t stick around to listen to another one of my pathetic excuses. He just walks out of the pavilion without another word. Before headshots. Before his individual practice run. It’s like being near me was too much for him to handle.
Professionalism, Merit. You have a job to do, remember? You can’t break down right now. The auction is going to go on whether you and Crew are a couple or not. You made a commitment to the marketing class.
I shake my head, blinking back a torrent of tears. It feels like someone’s pressing on my emotional gas pedal and brakes at the same time, and all that excessive friction is going to overheat the transmitter.
“Right. Um, do you want to do it now? I thought we were photographing them in their game day formal suits?”
“I’m fine with whatever. Marley just suggested that we do it now so we don’t have to arrange another meeting. Marching band is really stingy about giving up the pavilion.”
“Do the players even have their suits with them?” I ask.
As if on cue, Harlan bursts through the double doors, panting as he carries a stack of neatly pressed garments in his arms. He almost disappears behind the leaning tower of menswear.
Confusion crosses my face. “Did you run all the way here from the locker room?”
Harlan sets the twenty-five suits down—somehow without dropping any of them—and brushes the back of his hand across his forehead. “Yeah, Irelyn needed them,” he answers, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
That’s quite an act of service. Some might even say a…romantic…act of service.
I balk. “That’s a ten-minute walk.” And there’s over fifty pounds weighing him down.
Harlan points finger guns at me. “Five if you run.”
“Thanks, Har,” Irelyn says, her sweet, Minnesotan accent sprinkled with the right amount of concupiscence, and she even tops it off by batting her eyelashes at him.
Poor Harlan practically enters rigor mortis. He looks like he’s about to tip over like one of those fainting goats that get scared by their own shadow. I didn’t realize the two of them were so friendly.
Fuck, I don’t think I can do this right now. It feels like everyone’s looking at me. Did they all just watch Crew walk out of here? I’m not in the right headspace to help pose the hockey team.
Anxiety revolves in my cotton-insulated skull—splitting my focus between two different points—and I start to feel a febrile heat blight my overstimulated body. It hurts to breathe. My heart thumps against my chest like the capering of hooves against a well-trodden path. Muscles tensing, the pain that overcomes me is the equivalent of someone taking a still-hot fireplace poker to my limbs.
I’m losing Crew—if I haven’talreadylost him. I hurt him. Ikeephurting him. He’s tried so hard to move on from his past trauma, and I remind him of it every time I screw him over like one of his shithead exes. I’m no better than them, am I? It doesn’t matter if our intentions are different, the outcome is still exactly the same—him questioning his worth. I can tell Crew he’s good enough a million times over, but he won’t believe me until I take action.
My eyes summon a baptism of tears, and if I don’t get the hell out of here soon, the whole hockey team and marketing class are going to watch a grown woman lose her marbles.
Irelyn fidgets with the settings on her camera. Some of the suit-clad players begin to roll out for their headshots.
“I’m sorry, I just—I need a minute,” I whisper under my breath, excusing myself to the conveniently placed janitor’s closet toward the far end of the room.
Panic champions inside me, coercing my legs to move at a speed I didn’t even know was possible. The minute I seek shelter, I slam the door shut, yank on the pull switch to turn on the light, and suffer through a tsunami of tears.
Sobs punch from my throat as I take a seat on an overturned mop bucket, using my forearms to erase the briny evidence. I’ve done it. I’ve finally hit rock bottom. I’m crying my eyes out in a crusty, dusty walk-in closet, surrounded by all-purpose cleaner and possibly asbestos. I plant my face into my palms, trying to muffle the sniffles.
“Love?” Irelyn pipes up from behind the door, slowly inching it open.
“Go away,” I mumble.
She slips into the closet, airing out a cyclone of dust with a flap of her hand, her auburn curls jouncing with every turn of her head. Sympathy charts the expanse of her features as she daintily maneuvers her way around cleaning carts and garbage bins. “No can do. Not when my best friend is in crisis.”
