Page 145 of Gamebreaker

We texted for a few days. Easy and light and completely devoid of the electric friction that had charged every single interaction I'd ever had with Cam, including the ones where we'd been actively trying to annoy each other.

Elyse was nice.

Nice was good.

Nice was what I needed.

I told myself this was what I needed, and when it wasn't 3 AM and quiet and dark, I could almost believe it.

Friday night. Two weeks post-Cam, which I was not counting, and which I definitely hadn't marked in my phone calendar under a label I refuse to disclose to any living soul.

I stood in front of my open closet in my bra and jeans and tried to locate the version of myself who used to get excited about first dates. She'd existed once. I remembered her. That pre-Henry Harper who approached new people with genuine curiosity, with a confidence that was mostly performance but real underneath, who loved the delicious uncertainty of not knowing yet how a night would go.

She was currently nowhere to be found.

I tried on a red dress. Too much.

I tried on a silk blouse and trousers. Too corporate. Too I am definitely a person who has her life together, which was the kind of lie that always collapsed under scrutiny.

I tried on the orange wrap dress Mia had once told me made my curves look incredible, and I kept it on, because it was the first outfit that didn't feel like a costume of a woman who was excited about this.

In the bathroom, I refreshed my curls with the spray bottle and a little gel, scrunched, and let them be. Then I leaned toward the mirror and tilted my head, and looked at my collarbone.

The last mark was gone.

It had been fading all week, plum to brown to a shadow I could only find in certain light, and at some point between Tuesday and tonight, it had finally disappeared. I'd known it would. I'd told myself in the shower that morning after Cam's that the day I couldn't find them anymore would be worse than the day I could.

I hadn't known I'd be right about it.

I pressed my fingertips to the spot where her teeth had been. Smooth skin. No trace. Like it had never happened at all.

I stood there with my hand on my own collarbone for longer than I'd like to admit.

Then, I did my makeup. Carefully, methodically, the same way I'd done it before the game last Friday. Armor, layer by layer, until the face in the mirror looked like someone who was fine.

I checked the result.

"This is good," I told my reflection. "This is healthy. This is you, moving forward, going on a date with a perfectly nice lawyer who has never once made you feel like the most interesting person in the room just by looking at you from across a basketball court."

I paused.

"That last part wasn't supposed to be in there."

My reflection offered no comment.

I pointed at her anyway. "You're going. You're going to sit across from a nice woman and eat an overpriced dinner, and you're going to have a good time, and you're going to like it. That's an order."

I almost believed the first part, at least.

The restaurant was nice, I guess. Warm lighting, a menu that used the word artisanal with a straight face, the low murmur of other people's conversations making a pleasant buffer of noise. Elyse was already there when I arrived. She stood when I walked in and smiled, and I could tell she was someone who was comfortable in her own skin, someone who had probably never once lain awake at three in the morning replaying three seconds of eye contact.

Must be lovely.

"Harper." She pulled out my chair, which was very charming of her. "You look beautiful."

"Thank you." I sat, arranged my napkin, and accepted the menu from the server with a smile I was about seventy percent sure reached my eyes. "You look great too."

And she did. Genuinely attractive, with a sharp jawline and dark hair cut close on one side, the kind of put-together that belonged to a person who had her life figured out in ways mine currently did not. Nice watch. Easy smile. Eyes that were...