to the locker room, where I knew my teammates would gas me up as soon as they saw me. And I was right.
“Q, you STUD!” yelled Kate. She ran over and whipped me in the butt with her jersey.
“I don’t know how you did it,” said Janelle. “But I’m impressed.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know how?” I grinned, pointing to my face. “Have you seen me?”
Janelle rolled her eyes, and the other girls laughed and hollered over each other. It felt good to pretend I was really that sure of myself. In here, with my team, was the closest I came to feeling invincible.
I maneuvered my way over to my locker and found Ronni seated on the bench behind me, tying up her cleats.
“So did you tell them, or is this all Alexis’s work?”
“Oh, Kate was texting me for confirmation by fifth period. This is all Alexis and associates.”
“God love her,” I sighed. My earlier worries about everyone finding out only for everything to go south were slightly ameliorated by our hallway kiss, and I only wished I had a picture for posterity, and proof. Maybe there was a security camera around there. I could check tomorrow after—No, I thought. Calm down. Don’t be crazy.
“I think Jamie was upset,” Ronni said, so quietly I only heard it on delay. I didn’t know she could even speak at that volume. I shut my locker door and sat down next to her.
“Really?” I asked.
She nodded. “I walked to class with her after.” She feels sorry for Jamie, I realized. Which was outrageous.
“What did she say?” In my head, totally without my permission, I heard Jamie’s voice say: I still love her. I miss her. I never should have broken up with her. I ran my hand over my hair, like I might wipe my brain clean. Jamie would never talk like that, and I knew it.
“Nothing, really. It was just how she seemed.”
I bent over to pull on my cleats so Ronni couldn’t see me wilt. “I’m sure she doesn’t care,” I said. “She has Natalie.”
Ronni shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Doesn’t she? Were they at homecoming together? Did Alexis say?” My heart raced suddenly. I didn’t want to know. I had to know. I’d scoured Instagram for evidence after lunch and found nothing.
“She was there, but I don’t know if they were there ‘together,’?” she said. “Alexis said it’s complicated.”
My eyes closed reflexively, like I could keep what Ronni had just said out. Complicated was not good. Complicated means there was something to complicate.
“Why’d you bring this up, anyway?” I said. “Jamie and I are friends. Like she wanted. She should be happy for me. And so should you.”
“You know I’m happy for you.”
“I thought I did.”
Ronni stood up, annoyed with me now. “Look, I just thought you’d want to know. I know you still care.”
“Not like that, I don’t.”
Ronni looked at me steadily, seeing right through me.
“Okay,” she said. The if you say so was implied.
I was mad all the way through practice, and all the way home. This was not the triumphant Monday I’d envisioned. My friends didn’t care that I had a new girlfriend. Apparently, the only girlfriend I was allowed to have was Jamie. Never mind that I hadn’t been the one to end that—Ronni was going to make sure I felt guilty about it, as if Jamie’s feelings were still my responsibility. Jamie, who went to freaking homecoming without me. (Jamie! Homecoming. I still couldn’t believe it.) It wasn’t like she was sitting at home all weekend, every weekend, crying her face off over me. She’d moved on, to another girl, to a life without me. Why wasn’t I allowed to do the same?
When I got home, after I showered, while I was eating last night’s reheated salmon and vegetables and once again searching all social media for photos of Jamie and Natalie together at homecoming, Jamie texted me, and I nearly choked to death