Page 33 of Try Hard
“I did,” she agreed, and it was there again. Something deeper, somethingmore. I desperately wished that I knew what she was thinking.
I sighed. “I assumed you’d want her to call you Fia, so it seemed easier that way. You know, like with your dad. And Terrance, my mum’s partner. He called me out on it, too, because Soph calls you Fia.”
“Am I dinner conversation at the Archer house?” She was amused. I could have cheered. I’d amused her again. It was rapidly becoming one of my favourite things in the world.
I shook my head, unable to suppress my grin. “Breakfast, actually.”
Her bottom lip disappeared momentarily into her mouth and I was certain she was biting down on her smile. “Oh, of course. My apologies for getting the wrong meal.”
“I think I can forgive you.” I’d forgive her fuckinganything.
“How magnanimous.”
“I’m truly a gift to the world.”
She dropped her head towards her chest, breathing the lightest laugh, and I thought I’d die of happiness.
How could she possibly think I’d flirt with Sammy while she was on my mind? Of course, she probably had no idea just how much she was on my mind, how she hadn’t left it for even a second since I’d first spotted her yesterday.
“Maybe don’t let Sammy know your whole family is so eager to talk about me,” she said. “I don’t think she’d like it.”
Sammy was lovely, but I wasn’t planning on telling her anything. I didn’t want to talk to anyone but Ophelia. Even at the wedding, two hundred and fifty people wouldn’t hold a candle to her.
I took a deep breath as subtly as I could, willing my chest to work normally. “I promise Sammy was just after a momentary ego boost. She flirted with an athlete who was nice to her. She’ll move on.”
“Will you?”
I barked a laugh. “Already there.”
“Devastating,” she said, smirking, and I knew she didn’t think the news was devastating at all.
That smirk was, though. The kind of devastating, heartbreaking smirk that destroyed whole worlds.
“Somehow, I think it will be okay,” I said, looking around when someone started calling us all over to the dining area they’d cordoned off for us.
“Did you ask if she wanted Sophie’s number?” she asked lightly, and I knew this was her calling out my repeated efforts tocheck if she wanted it, but it still rankled something inside of me, some fear it was her actually angling for Soph’s number.
“I did not. Do you think I should?”
She shot me a look, picking up her drink and heading for the tables. “If Sophie’s still the same person she was back then, I can only imagine she’d beat you up if you gave her number to every woman you met.”
“You’re not wrong there.” I walked close to her side. Too close for friends, really. Definitely too close for two people who had never really been friends and only reconnected yesterday, but I couldn’t get myself to step any further away from her. She was like a magnet, one I was more than happy to be swept away by. “She’d hate me giving her number to random women.”
Ophelia watched me with narrowed eyes as she turned sideways to slip through the excited crowd. “And yet you were insistently asking if I wanted it?”
My stomach clenched unpleasantly. “She wouldn’t have been upset about that.”
She was quiet for a moment, looking around to check there was no seating plan, before heading towards one of the tables in the back.
I followed after her like a lost puppy. And happy about it.
When we reached the table she’d picked, a four-seater, I pulled a chair out and gestured her towards it.
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me with a cross between confusion and amusement. But, after a second she sat in the seat, and that felt like a win, too.
“Sophie wanted my number?” she asked when I sat beside her.
“Maybe a little.” More than a little.
