Chapter 10:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

The locker room had gone quiet. His teammates had moved on — to Piper’s, probably, or wherever people went after winning. The silence felt different from the shower: less hidden, more deliberate.

I was going to be fine. I had just had a very good orgasm — two, technically — and I was a rational adult who understood that bodies were bodies and that context was context and that none of this required any further examination.

I was extremely fine.

“Piper’s party is tonight,” Beckham said. He was toweling off with the ease of someone who had nowhere to be and no complicated feelings about any of it. “Are you going?”

“No,” I said. “Are you?”

He looked at his feet for a moment. “Some of the guys were thinking about it.” A pause. “I was thinking of going with them.”

Something moved in my chest.

I identified it, set it firmly aside, and refused to acknowledge it further. Piper’s parties were the kind of event where she operated at full capacity: the right music, the right lighting, a wardrobe selected to maximize her strategic advantages. The moment Beckham walked in she would rotate toward him like a satellite dish. I had watched her do it with three different boys since freshman year.

I did not care. I was simply noting the facts.

“Well,” I said, keeping my voice level, “have fun.”

He looked at me.

D𝗶ѕ𝘤оv𝘦r 𝗁𝗂𝖽𝗱e𝗇 ge𝗺ѕ 𝗼ո 𝘨𝘢ln𝗈𝘷𝘦lѕ.𝘤𝗼𝘮

I looked at the middle distance.

“Are you jealous?” he asked.

“I am getting dressed and going home,” I said.

“That is not what I asked.”

I turned to where my clothes had been and found nothing. I turned to where they might reasonably have ended up. Also nothing. I looked at the bench, the floor, the shelf above the locker.

“Where are my things?”

“What things?” He was smiling now, which I found extremely unhelpful.

“My clothes, Beckham. My underwear, which you removed without asking and which I would very much like returned.”

He reached into his locker with the unhurried movement of a person holding all the cards, pulled out my torn lace underwear, and slung it over his shoulder.

“Give me those.”

“One condition.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You haven’t heard it yet.”

“I do not need to hear it. Give me my clothes.”

He was enjoying this. The towel around his waist had slipped slightly, which he had either not noticed or had noticed and was not concerned about. I kept my eyes on his face with great deliberate effort.

“Come to the party with me,” he said. “That’s the condition.”

I stared at him.

“You’re holding my underwear hostage to make me go to Piper’s party.”

“I prefer to think of it as an incentive program.”

The worst part was that I could see the logic. If I showed up with him, Piper’s entire evening collapsed. That was not nothing. That was, in fact, a better reason to go than any I’d had before.

“Fine,” I said. “But I am wearing my own costume.”

He handed me my clothes. I stuffed the torn underwear into my bag without examining the damage — that was a problem for home.

He was already grinning when he turned away.

“Beckham.” He stopped. “Fourteen Maple. Don’t be late.”

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