Jockblocked: A Novel (Gridiron Book 2)(59)

My happiness fades when I hear the voice.

“It’s me. Let me up,” Ace says impatiently.

He texted a few times since the Tuesday night debacle, but I haven’t completely forgiven him. It was an * thing to do, and none of his texts have been apologies. I suppose he thinks I’m going to that movie with him tonight. I’m not. I scheduled a practice with Heather and Randall.

I feel a twinge of guilt that I broke my pact with Ace: he’d stay away from my roommates and I’d stay away from the football team.

It was easy up until I met Matty. After all, I lasted nearly three years unimpressed and unmoved by the entire team. And it’s not like there weren’t opportunities, but none of them interested me. If I’m going to date Matt, I’ll need to tell Ace. He deserves it.

However, Ace acting like an * doesn’t really mean we aren’t friends anymore. At some point, we’re going to have to hammer this issue out so we can go on being friends. I press ‘9’ on the phone for a few seconds to release the lobby door and let him in. “Hey, Sutton. Ace is here and I think he wants to talk about something.”

“Want me to disappear into the bedroom?” she asks from the couch where she’s been vegging out the past forty-five minutes.

“Do you mind?”

“Nah, I can work on my Roman history paper. Should I pop out and save you in say, twenty minutes?” She flicks the television off and pushes up off the sofa.

“Hopefully not.”

A knock on the door signals his arrival. Sutton mouths that I should yell if I need her.

I pull the door open to find Ace bracing himself with one hand against the wall. He looks worn and tired.

“Are you still drunk from last week?”

“I wish.” He raises his sunglasses so I get a good look at his bloodshot eyes. “Sorry about the other night.”

Finally, an apology. I forgive him immediately. No point in holding grudges, but hopefully he’ll tell me what’s wrong. Still, I tell him exactly what I thought of his behavior. “It was a shitty thing to do, but you’re forgiven.”

After all, I got to spend the night with Matt, no matter how chaste it was. And since then I’ve had my “spa day” with him. No, spa day does not work. The night spent with Matty was not full of zen moments and tinkling wind chimes but of hot, needy, sweaty excitement. I’ll need to report to Hammer that spa day as a euphemism for sex has to go. “Come on in.”

Ace sort of slumps in, walking heavily as if his joints hurt. He drops into a kitchen chair with a thud and leans back on two legs.

The kitchen set is my favorite piece of furniture in the whole apartment. Charity, Sutton, and I had driven to Chicago over Spring Break because that’s all Sutton and I could afford. Halfway there we stopped for lunch at a small-town diner and discovered they were renovating the place, getting rid of their old metal-rimmed tables and vinyl-covered chairs—the ones with the sparkly fabric underneath the plastic coating. We fell in love with them immediately and Charity’s parents paid to ship them back to our apartment.

The set will be Charity’s when we graduate, and I don’t want Ace breaking a chair leg before then. I hit him on the back of his head on my way to the microwave.

“Ouch! What the hell was that for?” he yelps. The chair, however, is safely back on all four legs.

“You were leaning back on the chair.” I stick my bowl of soup in the microwave and punch in the time. Turning around, I rest my butt against the counter and wait for Ace to tell me why he’s here. Other than to apologize.

He heaves a sigh. “I guess I deserve that.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on? First, you’re a total ass on Tuesday. If you didn’t want me to stay at your place, you should have told me.” I count off his sins on each finger. “Second, you send me lame ‘what’s up’ texts when you know you should be apologizing. If you don’t start talking, I’m calling your mom.”

“You got any more soup?” he asks, ignoring my question.

“Third, you’re ignoring me even though you’re about to eat my food, which is so rude there’s probably a picture of you next to the word in the dictionary right this minute.”

He waves his hands in surrender. “Yes. Fine, I’ll answer whatever you want, just…I need some food.”

The microwave beeps, and I carry the soup over to him. “Start talking.”

He stirs the beef stew around a few times, as if he can find the answer to his problem when the potatoes and carrots are positioned exactly right.

“Is it that your coach wants to replace you with a new player?”

His head jerks up. “Christ, is it already out?”

My heart squeezes at the pain in his voice “No. No, it isn’t. I guessed based on what you said the other night.” He gulps, and the look on his face reminds me of the time he showed up on my doorstep when we were ten to tell me his daddy was moving out. I say as gently as possible, “Eat your soup, Ace.”

I turn and busy myself with the routine of lunch. All the noises of meal prep—opening the can of soup, dumping it into the bowl, opening the microwave—sound overloud when there’s complete silence behind me.

When Ace does speak, his voice is tight and hard. “The Warriors are signing a five-star recruit, ranked number three in the country. He’s a quarterback.”