Page 85 of Just Playin'
I jump out of my skin when a crackling voice shouts, “Willow, wait!”
My hands scrape my cheeks to make sure they’re dry before I turn to face Skylar. I swear I nearly blabber like a baby when she pushes off her feet to span the distance between us. “I’m still mad as hell at you, and perhaps a smidge jealous, but you need to see this.”
When she drags me toward our room, I dig my heels into the carpet. “I don’t need to witness the carnage firsthand. I got the gist of it from the moans in the foyer.” I can still hear their gripes now. They’re not impressed with Elvis or any of his teammates. “It’s nauseating.”
Although I’d love to use this opportunity to bridge the rift between Skylar and me, I honestly can’t handle any more drama tonight. My plate is overloaded. I’m full to the brim—and I don’t just mean from the pizza I gorged down like a fat piggy as I strived to forget what day today is.
With slumped shoulders, I enter the room I used to call “ours” before slumping onto my bed and throwing my arm over my eyes. I’ll never been a crier, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to hold back the occasional sob.
I lower my arm from my eyes when Skylar’s glare heats my face. “How is defending you nauseating?” She air quotes her last word before walking over to smack me upside the head. “I’m sorry for hitting you, but I had to check if there’s more than dust bunnies in your head lately. This is not the Willow I love.” She tugs on the hideously ugly jumper I’m wearing before yanking on an unruly curl in my unwashed hair. “You don’t wallow in self-pity. You pull up your big girl panties; you admit your mistakes, then you get your best friend lifetime tickets to her favorite team’s home games to soothe volatile waters.”
A gleam in her eyes reveals she doesn’t need anything more than words to accept my apology, so I test the theory by saying, “I’m sorry, Sky. I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know.” She bumps me with her hip before moving to my desk to gather my laptop. “Doesn’t mean I can’t be jealous though.”
Sitting up, I sigh. “There’s nothing to be jealous over. I screwed everything up.”
It took me playing my last conversation with Elvis on repeat for days before I fully comprehended it. Not only was he at a loss as to what my accusation centered around, he didn’t have the means to circulate my performance. Don’t get me wrong; his eyes were fixed on me the entire time, but even a highly-skilled dancer can’t memorize a routine after only seeing it once.
That could only mean one thing: Elvis didn’t share my routine with Francesca. If I weren’t the wallowing, miserable half a woman Skylar pointed out seconds ago, I would have called Elvis to admit my error. Alas, hormonal college students could never be accused of being rational during a crisis, and my ego is still a little stung from his shredding weeks ago.
“I think you still have some tricks up your sleeve.”
Skylar looks like she wants to say more, but a roar projecting out of my laptop speakers stops both her words and my heart.
“You better shut your mouth before I shut it for you!”
My eyes rocket to my laptop screen in just enough time to witness Elvis fighting to get out of Dalton’s hold. Confident Dalton has him contained, I drop my eyes to the heading of the video. “Football Bad Boy Back to His Old Tricks.”
My eyes dart back to Elvis when he shouts, “You’ll need more than duct tape when I’m done with you!” I don’t know how he does it with an injured shoulder, but he leaps off the stage with Dalton clinging to his back like a baby koala. “You could only dream of sharing the same air with a girl as beautiful as Willow. She’s smart. She’s quick-witted, and when she dances, the world fades into the background. She’s fucking perfect, more than I could have ever wished for.”
I curl my hand over my mouth to stifle a shriek when he punches a man with greasy hair and an even slimier smile. He doesn’t just hit him once. He pounds into him multiple times, his fight only ending when Coach James steps in, showing impressive strength for his age. He pulls Elvis off the man wearing journalist tags, throws him into the locker room, then demands for the room to be put on lockdown.
“What the fuck did I just watch?”
My wide eyes bounce between Skylar’s as I struggle to unravel the bundle of confusion in my head. She said Elvis was defending me, but from who and why?
Realizing the answer is right in front of me, I attempt to rewind the video. My laptop pinches my finger when Skylar slams the screen shut. “You don’t need to see that.” She tosses my laptop onto her bed before pivoting to face me. “You need to focus on how we can get Elvis’s head back in the game before they get slaughtered even more than they already are. They can’t lose tonight’s game, Will. If they lose, they’re out of the playoffs. I know you don’t like football, but even you must understand how important this game is to him.”
“I don’t have a direct line to his subconscious, Sky.”
When she cocks her hip and spreads her hands over them, calling bullshit without any words, I try another tactic. “How am I supposed to fix something if I have no clue what caused it?”
That stumps her. Not for long, but long enough she fails to notice me yanking my cell out of my pocket until it’s too late. While leaping onto my mattress and bouncing to the very far corner, I punch in the title of the video Skylar just showed me.
“You don’t want to see that!”
I’m not tall—compared to Elvis, I’m a midget—but I have a height advantage over Skylar, meaning she can’t reach my outstretched arm when I hold my cell into the air.
Skylar’s demands for me to hand her my phone ramp up when the video begins playing. The start is the standard conferences you’d anticipate before a big game, but one question completely stops my heart. “He’s endorsing a weight-loss product he can’t even get his girlfriend onboard with. Bit of a hypocrite, don’t you think? Here, buy my fat-slimming products but don’t look at my girlfriend while doing it.”
Elvis stills for several long heartbeats before he yanks off the company cap he’s wearing and throws it on the floor. I can’t stop the smile crossing my face, so I set it free. He has a long way to go before he’ll fix the misconceptions his endorsement instigated, but it’s a step in the right direction.
My smile is wiped off my face two seconds later when a male voice off-camera snarls, “Bit late to back out now, isn’t it? They’re paying you to endorse a fat-shredding product while dating a fatty, so why not keep running with it? Milk that cow for all it’s worth.”
Recognizing that I’ve heard the worst of it, Skylar stops springing into the air like Tigger. She returns her feet to the ground before watching me with wide, cautious eyes.
I clamber down from my bed and sit on the edge of it. “The reporter thinks I’m fat?” I’m unsure what’s taking hostage of my vocal cords: shock or disbelief.
