longer.
She had Fanny and Jess. Sara and Brit and both Rebeccas and—
The point was that she was living her life like it was the past, instead of realizing she was a thirty-year-old woman who wasn’t on the receiving end of a bunch of mean-ass kids.
And it was high time she stopped giving that past power.
“Dani?” A shake of her shoulder. “Booze. Carbs. Sleep. Okay?”
Since that was better than living in her own head, letting it twist around her like barbed wire, hurting whether she moved or not, but doubly so when she moved, Dani pushed up from her seat and nodded. “That sounds good.”
Fanny smiled, laced her arm with Dani’s. “Great. I’ll drive.”
“But—”
“We’ll have a slumber party at my place, but we’ll stop by yours first, get your stuff packed for the road trip. That way in the morning, we can grab brekkie at Molly’s and come straight here to hop on the bus.”
Dani’s brows drew together because there was a lot to process in that. Starting with, “But you don’t travel with the team.”
“I’m hitching a ride,” she said. “My family is coming to the game in Chicago, and then we’re road-tripping it for a week.”
“That sounds fun.”
“You haven’t driven with my mother.” A grin. “I’ll be lucky to come back in one piece.”
Dani found herself laughing.
Somehow, after she’d spent the last hours in a perpetual cycle of self-flagellation, she was laughing and walking arm-in-arm with her friend, and the bottom wasn’t falling out of the world, and . . . she was beginning to wonder if she hadn’t been the least bit hasty with Ethan.
Cue more internal whipping.
“Dani? Is there a reason you look like you’ve swallowed a lemon?”
“I’m . . .” She sighed. “My head is a mess.”
“And here I’ve promised to not give you an inquisition.”
Dani snorted. “You’d take advantage of a woman on the edge?”
“Hell yes, I would.” A beat, a squeeze of her arm. “But I won’t because I promised.”
“A woman who sticks by her word.”
“Yeah.” Fanny nudged Dani with her elbow. “Kind of like my friend.”
“I haven’t had that many friends,” she whispered, the words slipping off her tongue uninvited.
Fanny tugged her to a stop. “And why’s that, do you think?”
“Because I’m . . .”
A nerd, shy, self-conscious . . . not worthy.
The last crept through her mind like insidious ivy crawling up the trunk of a tree. She waited, expecting the pang that usually accompanied the thought, the cold frost that followed, creeping in through the fronts of her sneakers, soaking into her socks, chilling her toes.
But the pang, the iciness didn’t come.
Instead, something red-hot flared in its place, and suddenly, her brain went clear. She wasn’t what they had said.
And why, why had it taken her so long to see?
“I was . . . well, for a long time I’ve made myself small.”
Fanny’s expression gentled. “Why, babe? When you’re so fucking big and bright?”
“Because I’m an idiot?”
A shake of her head, brown locks flailing behind her. “Nope. That’s one thing you’re not.”
A sigh. “Because I’m scared?”
Fanny tapped her nose. “Ding. Ding. Give the girl a prize.”
Laughter floated up, like a balloon drifting toward the sky, escaping her lips in a quiet puff of sound. “I thought you said no inquisitions?”
“Well, you gave me a freebie, what’s a girl supposed to do?”
“I—”
The question was what was she supposed to do? Because seriously, what the fuck was she doing? She needed to find Ethan and explain, to tell him . . . something that would come to her, knowing coming to fruition as she went after him.
It was bad. She needed to—
“Hang on.” She tugged her arm free, started down the hall. “I need to—”
“Hey!”
She stopped, turned around.
Fanny’s mouth was tipped up at the corners. “Should I wait?”
Nerves bubbled into the space laughter had just occupied. But . . . fuck . . . hadn’t she been scared long enough?
Yes. Yes.
“No,” she told Fanny. “Don’t wait.”
“Carbs and booze another night!”
She nodded in agreement . . . and then she ran in a very undignified manner toward the parking lot.
When she burst out through the door, the air was cold, spreading across her face, tightening her skin, drying out her lips—or maybe that was nerves. Because the urge to spin back around and run inside to find Fanny for the booze with a side of carbs was intense.
Grew even more intense when she found Ethan standing there, his gaze on the ground, his hands fisted at his sides.
Turn tail.
Run.
Hide.
Her spine prickled, her foot slid