Page 25 of Knocked Sideways

Ridder

Not everyone is as serious as u r about sex Monty

He’s probably just pissed i checked up on him

Grant

It’s even more messed up if it wasn’t serious

Don’t screw up his head

He has real talent

If you want to know how he’s doing

Ask him yourself

Text me when you have something else to talk about

Ridder

Relax

Cant be healthy to be so uptight at your age

He’ll be fine

Easy for you to say, Jed thought. He just hoped that Mike didn’t make things worse before he figured out how to fix this.

CHAPTER NINE

REMY

Remy leaned against the locked bathroom door and willed himself to take deep breaths.

In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.

Box breathing, the defensive coach in Montreal had called it. Or Navy SEAL breathing, according to his most militaristic juniors coach. It would eventually work. He just had to give it a minute.

So Mike was ghosting him but talking about him with Jed.

No big deal.

Unless Mike was doing it because Jed was a mature adult who Mike’d had a real relationship with, whereas Remy had just been some fun. Or even worse, convenient and easy.

And unless Jed was only giving Remy the time of day because Mike had asked him to.

Okay, it wasn’t fine. It was the opposite of fine.

The deep breathing wasn’t helping.

Remy pulled out his phone and saw that the Wi-Fi was actually working. He wanted to text Mike and demand to know what the deal was with him and Jed, but he didn’t need Lily to tell him that was a terrible idea.

Maybe he should text Lily instead.

Remy

Hey