It's hot in the library, and the sweater she wore earlier is draped over the back of her chair, leaving her in a soft gray tank that shows her freckled shoulders.
She lifts her head from her book, as if sensing my appraisal. Our eyes lock, and my stomach flips.
I swallow. "I didn't know you had something going with Brogan."
"I didn't know you had a girlfriend."
"I-" I snap my mouth shut. I'm not going to insult her by pretending nothing happened between us today. We may not have touched, but we connected, and if Bailey hadn't texted, I would have kissed Mia. I still haven't decided if I'm grateful for or resentful of that text. "Not so much a girlfriend as a girl I've been seeing."
"And does she have a thing?" Mia asks.
"What?"
She cocks her head. "A thing she wants so desperately that the idea of having it makes her as sick to her stomach as the idea of never having it?"
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my heart. Right there in the teeth of the woman my best friend has fallen hard for. "No," I admit. "She doesn't have a thing. Most people don't, Mia."
"Does Brogan?"
I close my eyes. "I couldn't be best friends with someone who didn't."
"You're best friends." She chuckles softly and shakes her head. "Of course you are."
I take the chair across from her, spin it around, and sit. "Mia?" I like saying her name. I like how it rolls off my tongue, how it suits her, and how her lips part just a fraction when I say it. Mia. Mine. But she's not mine, and any connection I felt to her today is meaningless if she has feelings for my best friend. "What are you going to do? Are you going to give him a chance?"
With pursed lips, she closes her book. Her mouth is perfect. Pink and soft. I bet she doesn't even wear that sticky gloss crap that girls seem to like so much. "I don't even know him," she says.
"He's a really good guy." I'm underselling it. Brogan isn't just a good guy. He's the best. He's been there for me like no one else has. "He's the kind of guy a girl like you should want."
She looks at my fingers, and I realize I've settled my hand on the table less than an inch from hers. "Is that why you're here? To convince me to go out with your best friend?"
"I'm not sure why I'm here." My pulse beats in my throat. I could shift forward and touch her. Are her hands as soft as they look? Is her mouth as sweet? "Except that I keep thinking how Brogan deserves a girl like you."
"A girl like me?"
Sweet. Vulnerable. Passionate. Someone who makes his heart hammer in his chest like you do mine. "Yeah."
She turns away and sighs. "I don't really have anything going on with Brogan. He found my number on a note I left for Bailey, and we texted a few times. Honestly, I'm embarrassed because when I met you, I assumed you were the guy I'd been texting. And to be fair, I may have read you a little differently if I hadn't been thinking his words were yours."
"You liked him?"
She lifts a freckled shoulder, and the side of her mouth quirks up in a crooked smile. "He's sweet. He made me laugh."
The words are a punch to the gut and they fill me with an emotion I've never felt toward Brogan. Jealousy. I want to be the one to make her laugh. The one she calls sweet. And I hate the idea that any chemistry between us today was created-even in part-by the things he said to her.
"I was with my last girlfriend for five months before I found out Brogan had a thing for her. He'd asked her out before we started dating, but I'd been clueless. He never told me because he thought she was special, and he didn't want to get in the way of me being with someone like that. He's that kind of guy." It sucks by way of an apology, but when she lifts her eyes to mine, I know she understands. "So you see, this is the part where I'm supposed to tell you to give him a chance. I want to be the guy who's good enough to give you that speech."
She tugs her bottom lip between her teeth. "But that's not why you're here."
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Brogan's the closest thing I've ever had to a brother. I'd never pick a girl over him, and definitely not one I don't even know. And yet here I am. I drop my gaze to my hands. "If you have feelings for Brogan . . ." What? I'll watch them be together? Act like I don't care when he holds her hand? When he kisses her?
"What happened with her? The girl Brogan liked?"
I lift my head and meet her soft brown eyes. "I realized later she only wanted me because I'm a Woodison. Brogan's family never had enough money for her to give him a second glance."
Something changes in her expression. Her eyes seem to harden, and she leans back in her chair as she stiffens. "You're a Woodison? As in Woodison Pork. Woodison Farms?"
Figures. She doesn't recognize me as the star football player, but she knows of my dad. "Guilty." That's the worst part about going to college here. Everyone knows my dad's business, or at least knows of it. You can't miss an empire that powerful in a place as small as Blackhawk Valley.
She shoves her book into her bag and shakes her head as she stands. "Don't worry about this, Arrow. I'm not going to ruin a friendship just so I can be the townie who got to go on a few dates with a football player."
She starts to walk away, and I stop her with a hand on her shoulder. "What just happened?"
She shrugs. "I won't be choosing between you and Brogan. I don't want anyone. I don't have time for that in my life right now."
When she steps out from my grasp, I let her. I watch her walk away, and even though my brain is telling me it's for the best, that getting involved with her would be a mistake, my stomach plummets, and it's all I can do to trap the word on my tongue: Stay.
I wander around the trailer park under the light of the street lamps, one hand in my pocket where my knuckles brush the leaf Arrow gave me. "It matches your sweater."
"Hey, sexy!"
I spin around to the sound of Bailey's voice and manage a smile for my friend.
"So did you talk to your boy, Brogan?" She cocks her head, and a lock of her long blond hair falls across her forehead. "Or is it Arrow?"
Sighing, I roll my eyes. "It's neither."
She slings an arm over my shoulders and bumps her hip against mine as we walk down the gravel lane. "Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want to pretend that having two insanely sexy men drool over you is no big?"
I nudge her with my elbow. "No one was drooling. It was a big misunderstanding."
The gravel crunches under our feet as we walk. "Brogan told me about your texts over dinner. He's so cute when he talks about you. If you can call any guy with shoulders that broad cute. Damn, girl, will you just hit that and tell me about it?"
Cutting my eyes to her, I shake my head. "The last thing I need right now is a relationship with a BHU jock."
"Who said anything about a relationship? Use him for his body. You're young."
"You're sick."
She gapes at me. "Using an acquaintance for sex is a rite of passage! A time-honored tradition men have participated in since going off to college became a thing. Hell, probably before that." Her smile falls from her face, and she sighs. "I went back to Mason's room after dinner hoping to get something out of Arrow, but he was studying and tight-lipped, and moodier than my mom was when she was going through menopause. I wanted to ask him about your little walk, but Brogan was there, so I decided not to."
"I appreciate your restraint."
"Come on, Mee. Spill. I'm dying here only knowing half the story."
I shrug and rub my leaf between my fingers. "I thought Arrow was the guy who'd been texting me. Like I said, it was a big misunderstanding, and now it's cleared up."
"There was something in your eyes when you came back from that walk. Will you please admit you like him?"
I fold my arms. "For one, I hardly know him, so any feelings I may or may not have had today were completely superficial."
"Whatever. Insta-love's a thing. I've watched Disney movies."
"Two," I say, ignoring her objection, "he's a Woodison. Uriah Woodison's son. He's literally the son of my father's worst enemy."
"Like Romeo and Juliet!" She throws her arms in the air. "So flipping romantic."
"Why does everyone think those idiots were romantic? Shakespeare wasn't writing a romance. He was writing a tragedy. Do you remember how it ended?"