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“It’ll fly by,” I tell him. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice about attempting figure skating while under the influence.”
“You sound like Dee,” he grumbles with a roll of his eyes.
The mention of Lila makes me pause; I haven’t spoken to her since she texted me the night after we filmed the episode earlier in the week, even though I’ve wanted to. I keep trying to think of something to say to her, something that doesn’t feel weird, but everything I type into our message thread feels weird, and I can’t even pinpoint why. I keep telling myself it’s because we’ve both grown up so much. So much time passing between two friends is bound to make reconnecting a little awkward.
“How is Lila?” I ask casually.
Jack cocks an eyebrow. “Didn’t you just see her?”
“Well, yeah, while we were filming. Didn’t get much of a chance to talk to her after.”
“So you could just text her,” he says. “If you wanna know how she’s doing.”
I tap my hockey stick idly against the lower railing, averting my eyes. “Oh, well…I don’t want to bother her. I know how busy she probably is.”
“Why are you being weird?”
I tense up. “I’m not being weird.”
“You’re second-guessing texting Dee to see how she’s doing. That’s weird.”
“We just haven’t really spoken in a long time, okay? It’s strange seeing each other again after so long.”
“It’s just Dee,” Jack huffs. “You’ve seen her in her underwear.”
“Yeah, when I was twelve,” I splutter. “She was seven!”
“Eh. Whatever. You still grew up together. Don’t be a weirdo.”
I would love to continue to argue that I’m not being weird—but that wouldn’t be entirely true. A decade ago, I wouldn’t think twice about texting Lila to check in on her. Hell, I did it at least once a day. Why is it strange to consider now?
My mind inadvertently goes back to that moment during filming—as it has unfortunately done several times in the last few days—of her small hand in mine as she stood impossibly close, watching me lick some batter I can’t even remember the taste of from her spoon. Why the fuck did I do that? I’ve been mulling it over again and again, and I can’t come up with a good reason why I played into it. I don’t even want to consider the tremor of satisfaction that had run through me with the slight widening of her eyes, the small hitch in her breath.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me?
A ping in Jack’s pocket distracts me from spiraling into my thoughts too deeply, and I turn my head to watch him attempting to wrestle it from his pocket one-handedly, finally managing to grip it with his palm and slide it unlocked.
“Oh, hey, you have a new alert on Google,” he says.
I groan. “I told you to turn off my Google alert.”
“But how would I keep tabs on all the hot goss? We gotta stay on top of that shit.”
He squints as he scrolls with his thumb, his expression twisting into one of confusion the more he reads. He glances up at me with that same pinched face, looking at me like he’s trying to figure something out.
“Is there something we need to talk about?”
Now it’s my turn to look confused. “What?”
“Is there something going on between you and Dee?”
I rear back, at a loss for words. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about this.”
He turns his phone so I can read, met with an article that has a glaring caption above a picture of Lila holding that damned spoon up to my mouth, my eyes boring into hers with an intensity I hadn’t even realized I’d had and hers meeting mine with an equal amount of interest. We look…Well. The headline isn’t as out of left field as I would like. Not with a picture like that right underneath it.
IS SOMETHING COOKING BETWEEN BBTV’S DARLING AND RETURNING DRUIDS HEARTBREAKER?
