at Truman. Ali hadn’t told Phoebe she wasn’t going either since she’d chosen to attend the goalie camp instead, mainly because there would be no chance of seeing Darlene Maguire there. She felt bad all over again.
“I’m glad you called me,” Ali told Tracy.
“Phoebe was the coolest girl around when we were growing up. I always looked up to her. She never gave a shit what the guys thought of her. It was like … she was invincible.”
“Yeah. I totally know what you mean.”
Ali corralled Phoebe into getting dressed. She was too drunk to bring Phoebe back to her own house, so Ali used Phoebe’s phone to text Phoebe’s parents. They’d reached out twice already, asking when Phoebe thought she might be home. It was a no-pressure ask. After the year she’d had, they were happy Phoebe was out of the house.
PHOEBE: Hey I ran into Ali at the party. Okay if I sleep over at her house?
MOM: How nice! Have fun!
“Where are we going?” Phoebe asked her.
“My house. We’re having a sleepover.”
“Yay,” she said, like a machine powering down.
Later, tucked into Ali’s bed, her eyes already starting to flutter shut, she murmured, “You want to hear something hilarious, Ali? Derek’s penis is so small.” That was the last thing Phoebe said before she passed out.
The next morning, Phoebe woke up looking like crap. When she realized where she was, she was embarrassed but also grateful. And she gave Ali the full story.
She told her how weird it was to be going to a party without any of her teammates with her. To know that none of them would be inside to welcome her, to talk to her, to make space for her on the couch. She had a pang of fear, almost turned around and went back home. But then Tracy spotted her from the front porch and waved Phoebe over.
“I had never been inside Derek’s house before. The foyer was filled with framed pictures of him and his family when we were kids. Dorky sweater vests, pressed khakis, and his basketball sneakers. I always thought he was cute.”
After some puberty awkwardness between them on a driveway basketball court, they’d spent the last several years pretending like the other didn’t exist.
“Anyway, he was surprised to see me walk in the door. Totally checked me out so long that the kid sitting next to him gave him a shove to play his card.” Phoebe shrugs. “It made me feel good.”
They did not speak to each other. Not even a hello. It wasn’t antagonistic. Phoebe didn’t feel unwelcome. It was a flirtation born of the competitive thing they used to have with each other. It was like a game of chicken. Which of them would acquiesce first and acknowledge the other.
Him passing her too close in the kitchen, his hands finding the divots of her hips, steering her body out of his way. Gentle but firm. Confident. Her reaching across Derek to tap someone else, letting her hair sweep across his arm, letting her perfume drift into his nose.
Phoebe drank too much. Those twisted lemonades where you can’t taste the alcohol. She could feel herself getting wasted but the drinks helped her courage. Phoebe knew they were going to hook up. It was fun. She missed fun.
The party thinned out around midnight. It became harder for her and Derek to hide the game they were playing with each other. Fewer buffers to keep them apart. At some point, he cocked his head toward a hallway. Phoebe set down her drink and headed in that direction.
She wasn’t sure which room was his but then Derek was behind her, reaching around her for the doorknob, nudging her inside with his body, like a shadow.
Phoebe took quick glimpses of the room in the dark like a camera snapping shots without a flash. His unmade bed, his dresser with cologne bottles lined up, a set of dumbbells on the floor, a chin-up bar in the frame of his closet.
She turned to face him and then they were kissing. Hungry kisses, like they’d both wanted this for years. It wasn’t romance, but more the release of something bottled up that had always existed between them.
Her hands over her mouth, Ali asks, “Did you … have sex with him? Because you did mention his penis last night.”
Phoebe laughs. “I mean, I would have. Probably. But Derek passed out cold in the middle of our hookup. That’s why I went outside and played basketball.”
“Do you like him?”
Phoebe shook