Offside

I dozed.

Through the clouds of sleep, I felt the soft tips of her fingers on my cheek, over my jaw, and into my hair. I was pretty sure I moaned as I rolled to one side and opened my eyes.

I hadn’t been dreaming.

“Hey,” Nicole said. She sucked her lip into her mouth and glanced around nervously. “I knocked, but you didn’t answer. I, um…I still had your keys and everything, so I came in to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

She raised her eyebrows.

“Well, I’m not,” she replied.

Fuck.

Now that she was here again, and the memory of her lying next to me was the most important thing in my head, what had happened a few hours ago didn’t matter so much anymore. She was here. She came back. Even though I had been an ass and told her not to, she still came back.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to…to freak out on you.”

Nicole’s mouth turned up into a slight smile, but her eyes stayed melancholy.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said. Her fingers stroked my cheek. “I know just taking off like that was…well, it was rude. I didn’t know…”

She sighed and shook her head.

“Why did you have to leave so quickly?” I asked.

Nicole placed her hand on my shoulder and rubbed against the muscles there. It felt good.

“Some stories aren’t mine to tell,” she said softly. “I asked if…well, if I could tell just you, but…”

She let out a big sigh.

“Well, Thomas, you have a bit of a reputation.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that.” I tried to smile a little, but I still didn’t like what she was saying. I guess being king of the hill wasn’t always a good thing. I looked up at her hopefully. “You can’t even tell me who this Timmy is, though?”

Nicole shook her head.

Since my focus was always on soccer, my first thought was of the goalie, Tim Howard. Images of his pictures from ESPN’s The Body Issue flashed in my head. He was tall, ripped, and one of the best goalies in the world. I thought about my Rumple running away from me to be with him, and it felt like there was a fist squeezing my heart. A question I didn’t want answered popped out of my mouth without warning.

“Are you…are you seeing him, too?”

Nicole laughed. Her hand covered her mouth, and she laughed even harder. I narrowed my eyes at her because I didn’t think there was anything funny about any of this shit, but she just kept laughing u

ntil she had to wipe tears from her eyes.

“Um…no, Thomas, I am definitely not seeing Timmy.” She giggled again. She looked at my face and must have seen how humorless this was to me.

I rolled over to my stomach and propped myself up on both elbows. I stared at the gold duvet on my bed.

“Don’t look like that,” Nicole said. Her hand ran over my jaw again. “I promise you have nothing to worry about.”

Well, that wasn’t going to stop me from worrying anyway.

“What’s this?” Nicole said, and she reached over me to grab the paper that had been hidden behind my body.

“Nothing!” I said, and I grabbed it away from her, but it was too late. She had already seen it.