She nods, taking it in. “Hence, the vow of chastity.”
I pat the belt loops on my jeans. “Here’s my chastity belt.”
She slams a hand on her thigh, laughing. “Oh, Coop. I think your chastity belt was broken a long time ago.”
I laugh with her because that’s the thing about best friend’s sisters. They know your dirt. They know who you were when you were six, moving to a new town with next to nothing. They know who you were when your face was covered in zits and your voice seesawed from high to low during the most awful time of life ever—puberty. They overheard you telling your buddy about the night you spent with Katrina Smith your junior year of high school, and how quickly you came when you lost your virginity with the head cheerleader. Violet knows who I am. She knows who I’ve been. But there’s something I don’t know about her. There are parts of her that have simply been private.
“When was yours broken?” I ask, curiously.
A pink blush spreads across her cheeks. She lets her hair fall over her cheek. I can’t resist. I brush it away. “Tell me,” I say softly. “Was it Jamie? The guy I filled in for at prom?”
“Actually,” she says, taking her time with her words as she folds her hands in her lap, “that’s why he broke up with me. Because I wouldn’t sleep with him.”
My jaw falls open. “Wow. He’s a total ass.”
She nods. “He said if I wasn’t going to put out, he didn’t need to shell out for prom.”
“Ouch,” I say, cringing.
“Needless to say, I wasn’t terribly interested in putting out for anyone after that.” She meets my eyes. The look in hers is shy. “I lost my chastity belt when I was twenty.”
I try not to imagine her soft, sensual twenty-year-old body, but it’s a futile effort. Just talking about sex and virginity has me undressing her in my head, and that’s the shit I need to stop.
Instead, I reassure her that I don’t think it’s odd she took her time. “Nothing wrong with waiting, Vi.”
“Yeah?”
“Absolutely. Better to wait until you’re ready. Until it feels right.”
“I believe that, too,” she says, and for a flash, I wonder if it would ever feel right to her with me.
Then I reroute the conversation for real this time. I glance around her shop, gesturing from her to me. “It’s kind of ridiculous that something like this—us supposedly being together—makes a shop more popular.”
She pats my arm. “Sometimes, I think you don’t realize the effect you can have on people.”
My brow pinches. “What do you mean?”
“You think just because Jeff was so popular that you can fly under the radar. That doesn’t happen anymore. Everyone wants to see you succeed because they love the team. They equate things like this—you and me supposedly being a thing”—she puts a heavy emphasis on supposedly, maybe as a reminder that it’s all trumped up—“as part of the key to success.”
“I suppose that’s true. Greenhaven certainly saw it like that, and I don’t want to rub him the wrong way. The GM basically does what Greenhaven wants when it comes to keeping players and letting players go.” I give her the lowdown on what the coach said, then on my meeting with Ford. “He made it clear he doesn’t want me backpedaling during the negotiations. It’s all very sensitive. Like a dance.”
“How long do you think they’ll last?”
I drag a hand through my hair. “I’m not sure. Sometimes it takes a few days. Sometimes it takes weeks.”
Her eyebrows inch up, and she stares at me as if I’ve done something terribly wrong.
“What?”
She leans closer. “Your hair.” Her voice is softer, like it was earlier.
I watch her lift her hand. “Sticking up again?”
“You messed it up.”
“You’re dying to fix it, aren’t you?” I ask, teasing.
She runs her teeth over her lip. “It’s taking enormous self-restraint not to.”
I throw down a challenge. “I’m not sure you can fix it without your lotions and potions.”
She lasers me with a sharp-eyed stare. “You doubt me?”
“Yes. I doubt you,” I say, loving the twinkle in her light brown eyes.
She pokes me in the sternum. “You don’t see me getting on the field and telling you that you can’t get the ball in the end zone. You don’t come into my shop and tell me I can’t fix your hair with my bare hands.”
My smile spreads. Damn, I love this feisty side of her. “It’s so sexy when you talk like that about your . . . bare hands.”