I shook my head. “No, I asked, but he refused to say.”
“Well, make him tell you.”
“How?”
“Good God, Spitz, are you slow or something?” She poked me in the chest with one of her sharp talons. “Use your feminine wiles to get it out of him.”
I blinked. “Feminine what?”
“Tell him you won’t have sex with him unless he tells you.”
“We don’t…I mean, Becks and I have never…,” I sputtered.
“Well now, that doesn’t sound fair.” Ash reached between us and grabbed a bottle of his own. Looking at my face, he added, “Spitz isn’t the kind of girl to hold something like that over a guy’s head.”
“There’s nothing to hold,” I said through gritted teeth.
“In that case—” He turned to our evil editor. “—Priscilla, I think you’re going to have to come up with a new plan. Sounds like she and Becks have yet to do the deed.”
Cheeks hot, I glared at them both. “That’s none of your business.”
“I don’t care how you do it,” Priscilla sneered. “Just get the info. I want it before anyone else, got it?”
She flipped her blond mane over her shoulder and strutted away, heels clicking sharply against the hardwood floor.
“Sounds like she really wants that story,” Ash said.
I looked at him. “Well, I do, too. Becks just won’t tell me.”
“Hasn’t told any of us on the team either. I think Crenshaw might be pulling for Penn.”
“Hmm,” I said, noncommittally.
“Know where you’re going to school?”
“No, not yet. You?”
Ash smiled. “I’ve still got another year to think it over.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot,” I said, grinning. “You’re still a junior. Enjoy this time while you can, young one. You’ll be a grown-up soon enough.”
He shook his head, keeping his eyes on mine. “I’m not that young.”
“Yeah right,” I teased. “Compared to me, you’re practically a baby.”
“You know, I’ve always had a thing for older women.”
It wasn’t what he said, but the look he gave me that made me blush.
Ash just smiled. “You’re so easy, Spitz.”
I laughed at myself. Of course, he was just joking. Guys didn’t see me like that, and the only one I wanted to was currently over on the other side of the room, sitting on the couch, getting his scruffy cheeks rubbed by a line of people that’d formed sometime after I’d left. It was like they were at a petting zoo, and Becks was the main attraction.
Ash followed my gaze. “Does he really think that works? The non-shaving thing?”
“Guess so.” I shrugged as one guy took it a step farther and placed a passionate kiss on his cheek. If Becks swung that way, I might’ve been worried. He was a very pretty guy. As it was, I smiled as Becks tried not to look too uncomfortable. “He’s a great player, but he’s also superstitious. Three days before a game means no more shaving.”
“That’s just stupid.”
I shifted my eyes to his. “You guys won yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Ash said, “because we’re good, not because of some stupid lucky beard.”
“I tried to tell him that.”
“Guess you and me are the only ones who think that way.” He gestured to where Becks sat. “Everyone else seems to buy it.”
I looked over and saw Mercedes sitting in Becks’s lap. She was running a hand through his hair and staring deeply into his eyes, pressing against his chest in her too-tight dress. The sight made me furious. Who did that skank think she was?
“Looks like someone’s trying to steal your man, Spitz. Better run on over there, and claim what’s yours.”
The anger in my chest withered away, settling in my stomach like a dead weight. Becks wasn’t mine, not really, just for pretend. At some point tonight, after our break up, he wouldn’t even be that.
“He’s not my man,” I said sadly.
Ash looked unconvinced. “Isn’t he?”
I shook my head.
“Well, he’s looking at you like he is.”
Snapping to attention, I saw Ash was right. Becks was staring at me from across the room, his face unreadable. As he went to stand, Mercedes caught his neck, and I made a break for it.
“Later, Ash,” I said, speed walking through the crush of people and entering the first door I saw.
It was a bathroom, the perfect hiding place.
Flipping the lock, I took in my surroundings.
It looked like one of those fancy schmancy bathrooms you’d find in a high price restaurant. Seriously, there was a small chaise, two chairs, toilet, shower, jet tub, mints, perfumes, hand soaps, gels and lotions, anything you’d need. A person could live in Mercedes’s bathroom, and I was going to do just that, at least for a while.