I glance around. No one’s paying us any attention. “I think you’re safe.”
“Dude, you’re crazy good,” she says. “I mean, I don’t know anything about soccer, but I know your job is to make sure the ball doesn’t go into the net, right? And you, like, really did that.”
I laugh. “You sound surprised.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what I meant. I meant—”
“Joni,” I say. “I know.”
She nods quickly. “Okay. Good.”
“It means a lot to me that you came tonight.”
She looks up at me. Her nose ring glistens in the field lights. “It does?”
I hold her gaze. Why does it feel so good that she came to see me play? Why should it matter to me? “Yeah.”
We stare at each other a minute longer. The sweat on the back of my neck is cooling, and I get a chill. I’m still shirtless, and it’s not exactly warm out here. But the only movement I make is to shift my gaze from her eyes down to her lips. Her tongue darts out to moisten them, almost in anticipation…
“Brooks!” The sound of my name snaps me out of it. Most of the guys are already making their way to the locker room. Coach is waving me over, pointing at his watch. “Bus leaves in ten. Go hit the showers!”
I look back to Joni. The stands are a lot emptier now, the sounds of cheering Downey fans and rowdy, drunk, grumbling Clinton Central fans fading in whatever direction the party is at.
“I should be getting home anyway,” she says. “See you at work tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
She turns to go, and I know I should let her. That would be the right thing to do, the fair thing to do. But then my hand is shooting out and grabbing her wrist. She turns. I catch a fleeting glimpse of her confusion before I pull her to me and press my lips against hers. She melts into me, as if her body was ready, even if her mind wasn’t expecting it at all. I feel exactly the same way.
I know I must taste like sweat, and I’m certain I don’t smell awesome, but Joni doesn’t seem to care. As our mouths move together, our tongues tangling, she reaches up and gently pulls the rubber band from my hair, slipping it around her wrist and threading both her hands through my damp, sweaty, knotty hair. It feels so good I actually let out an involuntary groan and pull her closer.
“Brooks!” Coach calls out again. “Hate to interrupt, Casanova, but we’ve got to go.”
Unlike the last time Joni and I kissed, I don’t want to stop. I want to stay here forever, to lose myself in her soft, sugary, sexy-as-all-hell Joni world.
But I pull away. “I have to go,” I whisper.
She nods, her hands still playing with the hair at the back of my neck. “I know.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You better.”
? ? ?
Since I was too late getting to the locker rooms to shower, that’s the first thing I do when I get home. Tonight must be my lucky night, because Mom and Hope are asleep on the couch when I get home, a movie flickering away on the TV. I sneak past them and go straight to the bathroom.
I think of Joni the entire time I’m in the shower.
The taste of her mouth, the confident possessiveness of her tongue, the way she rubbed her body against mine as we kissed.
I wonder what she looks like naked.
I wonder what else that tongue of hers can do…
? ? ?
I barely sleep that night.
After my, um, shower, my head is a little clearer.
What do I do when I see her at work tomorrow? We can’t just pick up where we left off. Of course we can’t. Nothing has changed. Meg is still dead. It’s still my fault. I still miss her more than I could have thought possible. I still love her more than I could have thought possible.
Joni doesn’t even know me. I’ve been lying to her the whole time.
Kissing her was amazing, yes, and she’s incredibly beautiful, yes, but we’re still just friends. That’s all I want us to be. I’m not ready for anything else. Fuck. I have to tell her that.
She’ll probably hate me when I do. She has every right to, after the way I’ve been dicking her around. So maybe we won’t end up being friends at all.
Which is good, I guess, because damn if I don’t keep thinking about her in a very non-friend kind of way.
Chapter 24
I punch in at ten a.m. and take a deep breath, psyching myself up to go find Joni and put an end to whatever started last night.
But before I can even put my hand on the break room doorknob, the door swings open, and she steps inside and closes it behind her.
She’s wearing black jeans, huge, chunky boots, a black tank top, and a blue belt. Her lips are bright red and her hair is falling over one eye. She looks like some sort of futuristic, ass-kicking warrior.
“Hey,” she whispers, taking a step toward me.