Team Spirit

20. Lars Makes a Mistake

20. Lars Makes a Mistake

My car bakes in the sun without the A/C running over my one spare period of the day. It's stifling. I can feel myself wilting, but it's so much easier than spending my spare strategically avoiding eye contact. It's better to disappear. It's better to melt into the cracked leather seats. In the heat, it smells like mistakes. Like a heavy backseat makeout session.

Maybe it's my imagination.

I stare at my phone, at the same text message that's gone unanswered for two hours.

where are you??

Two hours after the fact, there's still no reply. I think Sam might be dead, but it's too early to text Pete to ask.

Or is it?

A hand is suddenly at the window, rapping hard against the glass. I can't help but look like a criminal caught in the act, blinking helplessly up at Roman.

I press down on my lock.

I do not have the capacity to deal with this. I am not equipped for stupid boys who twist my heart into knots, who know exactly where to find me when I'm nowhere to be seen. I gave entirely too many of my secrets away to Roman.

"Lars, come on." His voice is muffled by the glass, more exasperated than angry. I shake my head.

For a moment, he looks down at his phone, maybe deciding to sit this one out. Like the intelligent person I know him to be.

My phone lights up in my hand.

Come on it's about Sam

For a moment, my hand lingers on the window crank. It could be a ploy, a way to get his foot in the door, so to speak. Except, it's Roman.

I roll the window down just enough to talk, not enough for him to reach in.

"Did you sleep with Sam?"

"What? Roman, you can't just—you can't tell me you still love me and start this bullshit—"

"He said you did," Roman interrupted.

I freeze. It sinks in like a brick. He can't be right. That isn't Sam. That isn't who Sam is, even the Sam who panics and chokes on his words. But it isn't Roman to make things up. It isn't who Roman is to manipulate a situation for his own purposes.

I open the door so fast I nearly hit Roman with it. In heels, I'm almost as tall as Roman. Still, I have to look up at him.

"Sam wouldn't," I insist, but my hands shake. Sam wouldn't. He wouldn't do that to me.

"I know! But he did," Roman says, "he basically told Zach you waxed for him."

I blink at him. It's impossible to even fathom those words coming out of Sam's mouth, in front of Zach of all people. It's all so wrong.

"What is this really about? It's not like you to be jealous." I run my fingers through my hair. His face is so full of unreadable mixed emotion. His forehead creases over the eyes of a kicked puppy.

"You didn't answer the question. Did you sleep with him?" Roman says.

"No! Not that it's any of your business."

"So, Sam's lying."

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation right now." My head spins, but I stay sturdy in stilettos. The way Roman looks at me like someone searching for answers, trying to understand, but I'm not the one who knows everything.