“Walk around. There’s food on the tables over there. You already know to make yourselves at home.” Henry takes some hot dogs and sets them on the grill. My brothers and I are walking away when he stops me. “Jag. A word please.”
“Sure.” I nod at my brothers, who are idling around wondering if they should stay behind. Once they start walking away, I turn my attention to Henry.
“What have you been doing for your shoulder?”
“Honestly? Not much.” I take a long sip of beer. “I was doing therapy in New York, but . . . ” I glance away momentarily, hoping to avert the situation but knowing it’ll be impossible.
“Don’t you want to heal your shoulder?”
“Of course.” When I meet his eyes, he’s watching me closely.
“So come by the practice.”
“I have to see when I have time to with classes and—”
“Come by on Monday after five. It’ll be closed by then, but I’ll be able take a look at it myself and see what I can do.”
“I can’t ask you to stay there late for me.”
“You didn’t ask me to do that.” He raises an eyebrow. “I’m telling you to do it.”
I nod, because there’s no way out of this. Henry is like a brother to my father and they speak often enough that if I don’t go to his practice he’ll mention it to my father, who’s been telling me to go over there since I got here.
“Go. Enjoy yourself.” He nods toward the lawn. “I’ll see you Monday.”
“See you Monday.” I smile and walk away and join my brothers, who are already talking to a group of guys.
Chapter Eleven
Jagger
We’re there long enough for me to get a second beer before Josephine opens the door to the back of the house. She’s wearing a jean mini skirt that show off her long, defined legs, a white T-shirt that’s tied up and shows off just a bit of her toned stomach, and checkered Vans. I know most guys want to see women in lingerie or naked, but she is my literal wet dream. My heart skips a beat at the sight of her, and it’s because of it that I look away, trying to pay attention to the conversation going on in front of me. I think they’re still comparing Lebron to Jordan, but I can’t be sure. When Steph Curry comes up in conversation, I know I’m definitely far behind. Still, better to pretend I’m paying attention than look over at Jo again.
“Damn, she’s hot.” My eyes snap up to the guy across from me who spoke the words. He’s on the hockey team. A junior who said he’s not finishing the year because he’ll be drafted in November. All eyes follow to see where he’s looking and sure enough, it’s Josephine.
“She’s like a sister to us,” Mav says, making a face.
Mitch shoots me a smirk as he takes a sip of beer. I shoot him a look that says don’t mess with me right now. He looks away with the same damn smirk. Jo may be one of our oldest friends, but she’s never been like a sister to me. Or maybe she was before I noticed how damn pretty she was, but that was three years ago and I haven’t stopped wanting her since. I can’t stand it sometimes. I can’t stand her most times. Not because she’s not cool or funny or straight up hot as hell, but because I genuinely thought there was something more between us before she started dating Lawrence. Then again, I thought he was my friend before he went behind my back and started going after her. It wouldn’t even bother me if I hadn’t told him I had my eye on her. Some would say the fault is mine for not moving fast enough. I still think he’s an asshole.
“I’d ask her out, but I’m scared of Dr. Canó.” The guy wiggles his eyebrows. “Maybe I’ll ask her to come to my draft party, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Maybe you should do whatever you think you’re going to do before November,” another guy says. “She just broke up with Lawrence.”
“Damn that bastard. I knew he was cheating on her, but I didn’t realize how bad it was,” guy number one says. “I just don’t understand who would cheat on that.”
“An idiot,” guy number two says.
I can’t disagree with them there, but I finish off my beer and walk away. Standing by while they’re fawning over Jo is definitely not my idea of a good time. I toss the glass bottle into the recycling can and look up to see Jo standing in the corner texting furiously. I walk over to her, reminding myself that no one will think anything of this. We’ve known each other since we were kids. We had a lot of firsts together. I cringe inwardly thinking about the last time we actually spent time together before this semester. The party we bumped into each other at was wild, to say the least, and things got out of hand faster than I anticipated. We’d both been drinking, but we weren’t drunk. We couldn’t blame the alcohol for what we did. For years I’ve played the scenario over in my head. For years I’ve thought about and fantasized what it would be like having her underneath me again. For years I’ve tried just as hard to block it out, especially when I find myself on the field playing against Lawrence, but most of the time in those situations I wish I played defense instead of offense, because I would love to light his ass up once and for all. I take a breath when I’m almost at her side and remind myself to stop being an asshole and start being nice. It’s the only way I can fix what happened and the only way we’ll survive rooming together.