Page 109 of End Game

“Okay.” I won’t push him, not on this. “You and me, we’re still good?”

“We’re golden, Dee,” he says. “We’re great.”

Tucker and I meet outside the psychology building at nine. He opens his arms, and wordlessly I step into his hug. I need this easy comfort from him, the simple reassurance that I didn’t singlehandedly wreck all of my friendships in one fell swoop.

“How you doing, girl?” he asks quietly.

“Oh, I’m great.”

He laughs. “Yeah, I can tell.”

“Thank you for letting me borrow your notes.”

“Any time. Hope they make sense,” he says.

They’ll have to do. I was able to text at least one person in each of my classes for help with notes, and none of my professors quibbled over me missing a week of class. The word “ICU” really brought them around quickly. There was a quiz in my dietetics class that I can make up, and I was able to submit my nutrition paper via email, so I shouldn’t be too far behind… hopefully. I have a metric fuck-ton of reading to do this week on top of practice every afternoon and two home games back to back.

Tucker pats me on the back. “How is he?”

“He’s… fine.”

He rolls his eyes, and I roll mine, too.

“My dad’s in a rehab facility for a few more days, learning how to walk again.”

“That’s not who I’m talking about.”

“Huh?”

He gives me a smug look. “Barrett didn’t come back downstairs last night. Wasn’t he with you?”

My face heats. “Yeah. How did you know…?”

“So?” He raises his eyebrows suggestively.

“We had a slumber party.”

“I remember when Mason and I used to have slumber parties, back before we got together,” he says with a fond smile. They were high school sweethearts… until college started and she blew up their relationship, and they only recently got back together last semester after she transferred to Newton and tried to win him back. “We would all be in one bed, the two of us and her twin brother and sometimes my big brother. I would always try to spoon with her, even when I was nine years old. I was in love with her before I even knew it.”

“And now you know you’re in love with her. She knows it, too.”

“Yeah. And we still have slumber parties,” he says with a smirk. “Only this time we’re both naked, and our brothers aren’t in the bed with us.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re so pleased. I get it. You get laid regularly. You have a steady girlfriend. Big deal.”

“Yeah, it is a big deal,” Tucker says. “You weren’t here, so you don’t know how hard it was when we first got together. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. It was work. It’s still work sometimes.”

We’ve never talked this much, especially not about something so unrelated to school. Still, this is a different side of Tucker I’ve never seen before. I like that he’s opening up, that he’s letting me in.

I feel very small when I ask: “Do you regret it? Going from friends to more?”

“No. Fuck no. Not in the slightest,” he says firmly. “Even though we were best friends growing up, we were always meant to be more. Once we’re done with grad school, we’re going to get married. I don’t have to put a ring on her finger yet to know we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.”

“Wow. I want that.”

“You want to get married?” He raises his eyebrows.

“No. I want that person.”