Page 41 of Sweet Little Lies
Chapter 15
Lance
“So, you and Mica, huh?” Cade smirks from across the table. “Finally tapped that?”
I flip him off, the noise from the sports bar surrounding us and reminding me of all of the great times we’ve had together. But now he has a fulltime job and is playing house with his fiancée, so I only get these once a month boys’ night out moments.
Taking a gulp of beer and rolling my eyes at him, he laughs, a deep resounding boom from his chest. He’s just flipping me shit because he can, and has known Mica as long as I have. He also knows she’s not a hoops hunnie or a dime store lay. But it bothers me that he’d even joke about this or lump her in with any of my previous conquests, because Mica’s different. She’s special.
“Fuck off, you pussy. Ain’t like that and you know it.”
He grins. “Yeah, I know. You’ve been chasing her around like a puppy for a year, dude. I got eyes. I see it in the way your tongue hangs out and you go all googley eyed when I mention her name. Oh wait, hold on…just don’t move…I need to take a picture of your stupid face to send to Carver. He won’t believe me otherwise when I tell him you’re whipped.”
Cade makes a spectacle of pulling out his phone and trying to get a shot of me as I try to extricate it from his hands. He’s such a fucker.
“Dude, you and Carver are a hundred times worse than I am. Just admit it. You’re the fucking pussy whipped bastards, not me.”
He just shrugs and laughs, turning in his chair to flag down the waitress for more beers as my mind rewinds over the last year. During that time, three of my best friends and teammates all found the girls that turned their worlds upside down and brought them to their knees.
Cade found Ainsley. Carver reconnected with his former love, Logan. And Van broke it off with his cheating long-time girlfriend, Lindsay, and fell for his friend – and Cade’s younger sister – Kylah. And they’re all now shacking up and planning their futures together.
The similarities between us end there, though. While I feel something special and deep for Mica, I’m not ready to take that kind of plunge, and she’s in the same boat, although she hasn’t come right out and said it.
“Speaking of Carver, last I heard from him he and Logan were going to try and come back for a visit this summer. Before he has to go back to training.”
Our drinks are delivered from the waitress, who’s been giving us flirty passes all night that we’ve ignored, and Cade lifts his glass to toast before taking a drink.
“Yeah, I heard that too. If he does, we’ll have to host a party. God it’ll be great to have all the gang back together.”
I nod in agreement. Since they all graduated and went their separate ways, life has been different. While I’ve always felt a hollow loneliness in my soul, at least when I was rooming and playing ball with these guys there was a sense of brotherhood. And since I don’t have a living brother in my life, these guys were the closest thing to it.
We continue drinking and chatting for a while, in between incoming texts Cade keeps receiving from who I presume is Ainsley. At one point, I roll my eyes and sigh as he looks up from his phone with a stupid grin.
“What the fuck, bro? You can’t go an hour without sexting each other? Chump.”
“Eh, you have it all wrong. She’s telling me about this guy in the nursing home she’s taking care of and how he gets frisky with her.”
I shudder. “Ew, that’s disgusting. Sorry she has to put up with that kind of shit from dirty old men.”
“She knows how to handle herself and thinks it’s kind of funny.” He sets the phone down on the table and nods his chin at me. “So, what’s it gonna take to get it out of you? Do I have to beg to hear the story directly from you? Tell me about what’s going on with Mica. I hear you’re spending a lot of time with her.”
I’d honestly not put a lot of thought in how to explain or describe what’s happening between Mica and me. It’s evolved over the summer into something stronger than a friendship, with the chemical pull of sexual currency, but not to the level of relationship yet. At least, I don’t think it has. It’s still in that friends-with-benefits realm.
“Mica’s great. Not sure what else to say about it.”
Cade anchors his head in his hand, shaking it back and forth in comical defeat.
“You’ll never change, will you?” he laments, pointing his finger at me. “You are a loud-mouth chatty-Cathy when you’re drunk off your ass, but are a tight-lipped and solemn motherfucker any other time. Don’t we know each other well enough by now that you’d me something more than ‘she’s great’? Fuck, dude.”
Cade is right. I don’t share a lot about my life with anyone. It’s too painful. I guess that goes for talking about Mica, too. I’m so used to keeping things related to feelings and emotions bottled up, that I don’t share them with even my closest friends.
I avert my eyes hoping he won’t see the pain and truth lurking behind them. It wouldn’t do anybody any good if they knew my shitty past and history. It’s a story best left untold and kept hidden from everyone. Even my best friends.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You know more about me than anyone else. Maybe even more than Carver.”
“Bullshit,” he curses, seeing right through my lie. “You’ve only ever shown us what you want us to see. I don’t really know a thing about your life before you came to ASU. Between you and Carver, I don’t know who keeps a tighter lid on their lives. But now that I know about Carver’s, I’d say you’re the lucky winner.”
He salutes me with his glass and I glance away.
