Page 51 of Don't Puck His Best Friend
By the time seven o’clock rolls around, Sirus’s already here helping me move the coffee table to make more space, and I can hear a car pulling up.
When I open the door, Harper’s standing there, and the sight of her hits me like it does every time. She’s wearing black leggings and an oversized gray hoodie, hair twisted up in a casual knot with a few pieces falling loose around her face. She looks completely relaxed, like she just rolled out of her dorm without much thought, but somehow still manages to knock the wind out of me when she smiles.
“Hey,” she says, holding up a bag of chips. “I brought reinforcements.”
“Perfect. Come in, it’s freezing out there.”
Sirus appears in the doorway behind me, grinning when he sees Harper. “Harper! What’s up, girl? Huh? Hanging with my dude?”
She eyes me, and that look reminds me of her text message last night. I grab his shoulder and say, “Don’t be weird, man, or she’s dipping.”
Maddie walks in behind Harper, and he says, “What is she dipping?”
Sirus greets Maddie as I narrow my eyes and ask, “He doesn’t count, right? I mean, your cousin’s dating him.”
She smiles. “He’s alright.”
Maddie emerges into the kitchen carrying two bottles of wine, immediately launching into a story about how they got lost trying to find the right wine. Harper adds in some of her commentary, teasing Maddie about her taste in alcohol beverages. And I find myself watching her more than I should. I can tell her and Maddie are close like really close.
Two of my teammates show up—Marcus and Tommy, both good guys who know how to behave around people who aren’t hockey players. Liam was supposed to come, but he needed to catch up on homework and called a raincheck. Apparently, Trouble kept him up late last night.
We sit at the couch and decide on a trivia game that quickly devolves into friendly competition and increasingly ridiculous answers as the wine starts flowing.
Harper ends up sitting next to me on the couch, close enough that our knees bump occasionally when one of us gets animated about a question. During a particularly heated debate about whether Batman counts as a superhero or just a rich guy with gadgets, she leans over to whisper something just for me.
“I’m pretty sure Marcus is making up half his comic book knowledge,” she says, her breath warm against my ear.
The casual intimacy of it—her choosing to share the joke with me instead of the whole group—sends a little thrill through me that I try to hide behind a sip of beer.
“Definitely,” I whisper back. “But don’t call him out. He’ll cry.”
She laughs softly, and I catch a hint of her shampoo, something clean and light that makes me want to lean closer.
When her team wins the next round—her, Maddie, and Tommy against Sirus, Marcus, and me—Harper throws her arms up in celebration, nearly knocking my beer out of my hand in the process.
I catch it just in time, grinning at her enthusiasm. “Trying to sabotage the competition?”
“Maybe,” she says, eyes glinting with challenge. “You guys needed to be taken down a peg.”
“Is that right?”
“Absolutely. Your confidence was getting out of hand.”
“My confidence?” I set my beer down and turn to face her more fully. “I think someone’s getting a little cocky about one lucky win.”
“Lucky?” She raises an eyebrow. “I’ll have you know that was pure skill and strategy.”
“Sure it was.”
“I’m a natural winner, Cole.”
I look at her lips as she says my name.
The rest of the group is already moving on to the next round, but Harper and I are still looking at each other, caught in this little bubble of flirtatious competition that feels both playful and charged with something more.
“You’re a sore loser,” she informs me.
I shake my head. “I, too, am a natural winner.”
