5. Maggie

"It's not that bad," Olivia told me as I hid under a blanket on her couch. When I had woken up the next morning to multiple text messages from her saying that photos of Tommy and me were all over social media, I immediately took the first bus I could grab over to her apartment. This felt like a massive disaster, and one that I knew I couldn't face by myself.

I was kicking myself from the moment I got on the bus. I had known what Tommy's reputation was and had warned myself not to become one of the girls that left clubs with him. Even if all Tommy did was offer me a ride home, it was becoming painfully obvious that the media loved to twist the reality into something that would draw in traffic for them. If anything, I deserved the consequences for getting distracted by the attention of an attractive man. I knew better than to put myself in any kind of position that could be questioned by anyone. The entire bus ride to Olivia's apartment I had opened and closed each one of my social media accounts with the intention of looking at the photos myself, but chickened out before I could actually scroll to them.

"I don't care if it's not that bad. My face is out there for everyone to see!" I groaned.

"Well, it could've been a really ugly picture for people to see. At least it's not that." Lottie peered over Olivia's shoulder from the opposite side of the couch. She tilted her head, her honey-blond hair falling over her shoulder as she studied the screen. Her blue eyes squinted as she analyzed the photo with a critical look that was Charlotte Thompson's signature look. "You look beautiful in it, Maggie."

Olivia's eyes were also glued to her phone as she thumbed through a thread talking about the paparazzi photos. She had been giving me a play-by-play of Tommy's fans freaking out over the new photos. He had developed a fanbase much like if he were an attractive actor or performer, and from what Olivia was reading off social media, they were ruthless.

Many of them were trying to figure out who I was. Those girls were practically intelligence officers. Within hours, they had found my headshot from the Cougars' staff page and my name. Luckily, no other information had been leaked so far. The unhinged posts from random strangers that were fans of Tommy's were enough to remind me that he was far from the kind of guy I normally dated. Being anywhere near him would put me in the public eye, and that was the last place I wanted to be.

"So what even happened with you two last night?" Olivia asked.

"When you started having your fun, I decided I wanted to go home. Tommy offered to take me so I didn't have to get on the L." Olivia would be the hardest person for me to sell this to. She could sniff out a lie better than a bloodhound on hunting days. "There was a guy waiting to snap a picture by the parking lot."

"Unlucky," Olivia mumbled. It was Olivia's typical catchphrase for my life. She started using it after one thing after another went wrong in my life as a way to lighten the mood. I don't think I had it in me to tell her it never really lightened the mood.

"None of this would have happened if we'd stayed home and watched Pretty Woman like we always do," I whined, still hidden under the blanket.

"If we had stayed at home, you would have missed getting to talk with him." Olivia pulled back the blanket that I had been using to shield myself from the world. She was wiggling her eyebrows suggestively like I was not on the brink of potentially falling apart. For all I knew, those groupies that fawn over Tommy after games would show up at my apartment and throw their foam fingers at me. I shuddered as I imagined that scene unfolding.

"And how does that make up for missing Pretty Woman and having the hashtag ‘Mommy' trending on social media?"

Olivia grimaced at the hashtag.

"At least you had a good night last night from the sounds of it," I directed toward Lottie. Olivia had sent multiple photos in our group chat last night of her sister actually letting loose on the dance floor with her and Jamil.

"You act like I'm attached to my email inbox," Lottie murmured as she scrolled through her email inbox.

"Lottie, you are the very definition of a workaholic. Your face would be stamped in the dictionary next to the word," Olivia replied as she switched to a different social media app.

There was a reason that Charlotte Thompson was the most sought-after sports physical therapist in Chicago. Charlotte Thompson didn't do fun, and last night was a definite exception to her very strict rules.

Lottie rolled her eyes at her sister before she looked at me with sympathy. "‘Mommy' is a terrible couple's name."

It was definitely not the most glamorous couple name the public could have come up with. I groaned inwardly at the fact that my brain was already using the word "couple" for me and Tommy. But I couldn't deny the flutter of my heart that I felt at the idea of being associated in any way with him.

I blamed my hopeless romantic tendencies. When I met Luke, I swooned the first time that he looked at me like I was the sun and he was a planet in orbit. At that moment, I knew what people meant when they said it was love at first sight. It was amazing to me that out of all the people in the world, someone like Luke had decided to give me a chance. After Luke, I was sure I would never have something like that again. I was sure that Luke was my once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, and I was either doomed to live my life alone or never feel fulfilled romantically.

Another piece of me felt guilty to even find another person attractive or have daydreams of tracing every tattoo on a certain person's arms and running my hands through his long hair. It felt traitorous. But what was even scarier was that the piece of me that had felt called to Luke the first time he had looked at me like I was the most important thing in the world felt like it was stirring, knocking the dust off itself the moment that Tommy had caught my eye there with Jamil and Adam.

It would be a lie that he didn't pique my curiosity. Everything I had read about him made me think that he was a self-centered asshole who only cared about having the prettiest woman in the room on his arm. The man that I had sat with at the club was the exact opposite of the person I had painted in my head. He hadn't bothered with any woman that had been hanging around the VIP section waiting to pounce on the first player that paid them any attention. He also hadn't even sipped one drink. It was a complete one-eighty from the person I had read about in articles that had been posted when he was in San Diego.

When I considered the way he had protected me against the paparazzo and actually seemed genuinely interested in my life, it had me questioning everything I knew about him. I was becoming increasingly curious in a dangerous way, like a door opening, calling me to try to peel back more layers of Tommy Mikals to figure out the truth.

"Okay, yes. The current situation is less than stellar. I get it," Olivia continued. "But my Spidey senses are tingling, and I feel like this could be something."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Just hear me out," Olivia started as she threw her arms wide and situated herself on the couch. Lottie and I shared a look, because we knew whatever was coming next was going to be the kind of far-fetched idea that Olivia was known for coming up with. "Judging from how the only interest that Tommy showed that night was directed toward you tells me that he must find you fascinating. That's something we can work with."

Lottie let out a loud sigh from the far side of the couch. "Maggie is not you, Olivia. She doesn't pursue men like a game."

"Excuse you." Olivia shot daggers at her sister before she turned back to me. "What I'm trying to say is, what if he's actually interested in you? What if you flirt a little bit with the Tommy Mikals and see what happens?"

"There is no reality in which Tommy would ever want to date me," I tell her.

"Maggie, you need to stop this self-doubt train that you are constantly on. I'm tired of watching you think of yourself as a second fiddle when you are the star of the show. You always have been." Olivia finally put her phone down so she could take my hands in hers.

"I can't risk dating a player, Olivia," I told her. "I love my job too much. And I have so many ideas to help our media department that I haven't been able to implement yet."

"You are such an asset to the Cougars, Mags." Lottie reached across her sister to wrap me in a hug. "If you feel like Tommy would jeopardize that, then don't pursue it."

"I'm afraid that photo is going to jeopardize my job without my even trying to flirt with Tommy." My chest felt heavy at the thought of losing the job that had saved me from one of the darkest moments in my life.

"It'll be okay, Mags." Olivia joined in on the hug. "I promise."

Everything in me sincerely hoped that Olivia was right. That everything was going to be okay and my job wasn't on the line because of some guy with a camera and Tommy's reputation. I was hoping that maybe for once the world would skip me on this deliverance of luck or lack thereof. But if I had learned anything over the past year, it was to not hold my breath for the tide to turn.