I was having such a good time with you, and I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” I said.
“Do you forgive that easily?” she asked, eyes narrowing.
“Let’s find out.” I dipped my fingers into the V of her shirt and yanked her up against me. I’d been thinking about it since I woke up with her this morning. Feeling the weight and heat, the press of her body.
Before she could complain or take a swing at me, I crushed my mouth to hers.
I told myself I was just doing a little PDA duty, putting on an act. Maybe making her forget all about Travis Hostetter and his alligator shirts.
But then her tongue danced around mine. Her hands gripped my shoulders. Her hips rocked into me. Blindly, I stumbled over to one of the library’s pillars at the foot of its stairs. I pressed her against the brick and tasted her. She made my blood sing with those sexy little moans.
I went hard in the blink of an eye and shamelessly thrust against her. My dick demanded to be let loose, and I had trouble remembering where we were. My hands were everywhere. Skimming her sides, teasing the undersides of her breasts. I wanted them bare and crushed against me. I wanted to rut inside her and hear her say my name, breathless and needy.
Loud throat-clearing yanked me back to reality. I stopped kissing Marley but couldn’t bear to step away from her and give her some space.
“The library is not for necking,” Mrs. Ritter, the head librarian, said crisply. She was dressed in schoolmarm brown. Brown clogs. Brown dress. Brown cardigan. Disapproving look on her face. When I was a teenager, I’d been a little obsessed with wondering whether letting her hair out of her tight bun and taking off her nerd glasses would transform her into the sexy librarian. I never got my answer, but I liked to think at home Mrs. Ritter would let her hair down and do naked Pilates or something.
“Sorry, Mrs. Ritter,” I said sheepishly.
“Ms. Cicero, I would have expected better from you,” Mrs. Ritter sniffed before toddling off with her tote bag that said, “DON’T INTERRUPT ME. I’M READING.”
“Sorry,” Marley croaked after her. She turned her attention back to me and punched me in the arm. “What the hell was that?”
“I kissed the hell out of you, and then we got yelled at by the librarian,” I recapped.
“You’re a jerk.”
I stuffed her into the passenger seat of my car. “Do swans really need a mate?”
39
Marley
It was our first home game under the lights in the stadium, and the dozen or so spectators, mostly parents, spread out in the stands trying to look like a bigger crowd. The opposing team, the Blue Ball Blue Jays—Lancaster County had some weirdly named towns—arrived caravan-style with parents and friends pouring out of cars behind the team bus. We Barn Owls were officially outnumbered on our home turf.
It was not an auspicious start.
My parents were there holding a Coach Cicero is Our Snack Cake sign. I waved weakly at them, and Dad held the sign over his head.
Libby tugged her new socks into place over the shin guards I’d sweated over for thirty minutes before making the decision to buy. I was trying to weigh the expense of name-brand sports equipment with the nasty snark that came from generic second-hand stuff.
“Is this normal?” she asked, nodding toward the nearly empty stands.
“Got me. I’m new.” When I was in high school, the girls team didn’t draw the crowds that the boys soccer teams did. But I didn’t remember it being quite this dismal.
“They don’t have a reason to come see us,” Morgan E. said, threading her fingers through her purple mohawk.
“Yet,” Vicky corrected her from her bottomless well of delusional optimism. “They don’t have a reason to come see us yet.”
“New girl’s playing varsity, isn’t she?” Angela asked, sticking her chin out in Libby’s direction.
I sent the varsity team, with Libby, up to the stands to spread out and make it look like there were actual fans present. The JV game went reasonably well. In a year or two, they’d be a solid team since they hadn’t had as much time to be scarred by the varsity assholery of Lisabeth.
At the end of the first half, we were down 1-0, but I’d seen a lot of potential on the field. I took Rachel, the shy forward, aside while everyone