Beautiful Player
Page 29

I kept my head down as I crunched through the thin layer of snow, cursing the March weather, as snowflakes tangled in my loose hair. A young couple was just leaving the restaurant, and I managed to slip in through the open door as they passed.
“Zig,” I heard, and looked up to see Will smiling down at me from the loft seating area. I waved before I walked to the stairs, taking off my hat and scarf as I went.
“Fancy seeing you again,” he said, standing as I neared the table.
I found myself becoming irrationally annoyed by his good manners, even more so by his still-damp hair and the way his sweater clung to his unending torso. He had a white shirt underneath and, with the sleeves pushed up his forearms, the lines of his tattoos peeked out from beneath the folded cuffs. Gorgeous ass**le.
“Morning,” I said back.
“A little grumpy? Maybe a little tense?”
Scowling, I said, “No.”
He laughed as we each took a seat. “I ordered your food.”
“What?”
“Your breakfast? The lemon pancakes with berries, right? And that flower juice thing?”
“Yeah,” I answered, eyeing him from across the table. I picked up my napkin and unfolded it, laying it across my lap.
He bent to meet my eyes, looking a little anxious. “Did you want something else? I can get the waitress.”
“No . . .” I took a deep breath, opened my mouth, and closed it again. It was such a small thing—the food I always ordered, the type of juice I liked, the fact that he’d known exactly how to stretch me this morning—but it felt big, important somehow. It made me feel a little bad that he’d been so sweet and I couldn’t seem to keep my head out of his pants. “I just can’t believe you remembered that.”
He shrugged. “No big deal. It’s breakfast, Zig-zag. I’m not donating a kidney here.”
I forced away the unreasonably bitchy attitude that flared up at that. “Well, it was just really nice. You surprise me sometimes.”
He looked somewhat taken aback. “How so?”
I sighed, deflating somewhat into my chair. “I just assumed you’d treat me more like a kid.” As soon as I said this, it was clear he didn’t like it. He sat back in his chair and let out a slow breath, so I continued on, rambling, “I know you’re giving up your peace and quiet to let me run with you. I know you’ve canceled plans with your nongirlfriends and had to rearrange things to make time for me, and I just . . . I want you to know that I appreciate it. You’re a really great friend, Will.”
His brows drew together and he stared down at his ice water instead of looking at me. “Thanks. Just, you know, helping out Jensen’s . . . baby sister.”
“Right,” I said, feeling my irritation flare up again. I wanted to take his water and dunk it over my own head. What was with the hot temper?
“Right,” he repeated, blinking up to me and wearing a playful little smile that immediately defused my crazy and made my girl parts perk right back up. “At least that’s the story we’ll tell everyone.”
CHAPTER SIX
Something had changed, some switch had flipped in the past few days, and there was a leaden weight between us now. It had started a few mornings ago, on our run when she was quiet and distracted and had fallen to her side when her leg cramped up. Afterwards at breakfast, she’d clearly been irritated, but that was easy to read: she was fighting something. She was annoyed in the same way I was, as if we should be able to wrestle against this magnet that seemed intent on pulling us to a different place.
A non-friend-zone place.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table and I jerked upright when Hanna’s picture lit up the screen. I tried to ignore the warm hum of levity I felt simply because she was calling.
“Hey, Ziggs.”
“Come to a party with me tonight,” she said simply, completely bypassing any traditional greeting. The classic sign of a nervous Hanna. She paused, and then added more quietly, “Unless . . . shit, it’s Saturday. Unless you have an otherwise-platonic regularly-scheduled-sex-partner over.”
I ignored the elaborate implied second question and considered only the first, imagining a party in a conference room at the Columbia biology department, with two-liter bottles of soda, chips, and grocery store salsa.
“What kind of party?”
She paused on the other end of the line. “A housewarming party.”
I smiled at the phone, growing suspicious. “What kind of house?”
On the other end of the line, she let out a groan of surrender. “Okay, fine. It’s a grad student party. A guy in my department and his friends just moved into a new apartment. I’m sure it’s a shithole. I want to go, but I want you to come with me.”