32

Piper

Just Enjoy It While It Lasts

Twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes in a bar with nobody from Kennedy Young, Marrs, or any of the RAs who I constantly embarrassed myself in front of. Twenty minutes of practice . I could be in a small crowd of people and I'd be fine. I took another sip of the second glass of Shower Sex and steadied my breathing.

Little by little, I was getting better at this. I took another sip and glanced at my partner for the evening.

I studied Adam, resting against the bar with his arm back, the perfect pose of comfort. Plenty of other people fluttered around like birds or glued themselves to their friends. Not Adam.

Adam was just…cool. Effortlessly cool.

"How do you do it?" I blurted out.

His eyes flickered back to mine. "Do what?"

"Do…" I gestured towards him, perfectly relaxed. "Do all this. You're so…chill about this."

"About what? The smell of the bar?"

"No. You're so comfortable. I mean—you play in stadiums with forty thousand people. How? "

"Are you trying out for the Romans?" He smirked.

I gave him a hard look and purposely turned away from him, back to my view of people dancing without a care in the world. Adam never took anything seriously. I shouldn't have asked him anything.

"Do you want to know the secret?" Adam asked.

I shifted to look at him again and slowly nodded.

He leaned down so we could hear each other over the pounding music. The closer he moved, the more I could see him. The gold specks in his dark eyes. The individual lines on his lips. The little scars from where he must've gotten hurt playing football.

"Practice makes perfect." He chuckled.

That's the big secret?

"Well, that's what this is," I finally said. "An attempt at practice anyway. I feel like such an outsider here. You wouldn't get it." The drinks were starting to creep up on me. My head was a little too warm and fuzzy. I sighed. "I don't know. Maybe all of this has passed. It might be too late for me."

"It's not."

I scrunched up my nose. "I feel old."

"You're twenty-one."

"I don't know if I'm a springy kind of twenty-one." I took the glass from him and took a long drink of Shower Sex. There was absolutely no taste of liquor, just wonderful, fruity goodness. A shiver ran up my spine. "I think I was meant to be one of those monks, off in a tower somewhere."

"A computer programming monk?"

I giggled.

Did I just giggle?

I did. I brought my hand up to stop the giggling and the rest of our drink spilled to the floor. Adam laughed, and I tried to reach down to clean it before I had anything to clean it with.

"I've got napkins." He grabbed some from the bar and stooped down low with me. He wouldn't give me any of them though, not even when I tried to snatch them out of his hands. "You're spilling more, ice princess."

"Let me clean it—"

"Wouldn't dream of it. You're twenty-one years old," Adam said with a smirk. "You're reckless, you're adventurous. Don't worry about stuff spilling on the floor. That's my job."

"Oh. That's why you're here?" I asked and tried to sit down. Adam wrapped a hand around my waist before I could.

"That's the floor, ice princess. You have a nice dress on."

"I forgot."

"Okay, come on, over here." Adam led me over to a few of the barstools. "Sit down."

"We need another drink."

He raised his eyebrows. "I don't think we do."

"How about we get one and figure it out when we have it?"

"Solid plan," Adam complimented me, which was so incredibly nice until I had the sneaking suspicion that he was making fun of me. It was either instinctual or because he was snickering. One or the other. He leaned back against the bar again. "You can bounce back, Piper. Trust me. I did."

A soft laugh escaped me, tapering off when I realized he was serious. "You did what?"

"I bounced back." He ran a hand through his hair. "It's the same thing you're going to do."

"What do you mean, bounce back?"

"I had a…similar thing happen."

Staring intently, I realized Adam was a hundred percent serious. I frowned. "I don't understand."

For a moment, he watched me, and I realized he was just about as sober as I was. Shower Sex didn't just get to me. Adam was tipsy . Slowly, he nodded. "I only saw you at a high school party once, sophomore year, because I wasn't on the football team spring semester."

I didn't laugh anymore. "What do you mean?"

"Simple explanation." Adam smiled without humor. "I got kicked off the team."

Stunned, I blinked, trying to put it together. That didn't make any sense. How could he play in college without the high school credentials? Was he messing with me?

"You?" I blinked. "You got…?"

"The only team I wanted to be on was varsity," he said, dropping his voice low. "And I got that jersey. Every teacher told me I should've tried out for JV. You get more playing time with them unless you can prove yourself." He cocked his head back. "But my high school coach knew I could hack it. I got on varsity with Ryan Cross—this dumbass I'd known since third grade. But with varsity, we weren't just friends anymore. We were brothers. And for the whole semester, we were tough shit. Only sophomores and we were running that school. Our team dominated the playoffs in December."

A hard lump hit my throat. I had a feeling I wasn't going to like this story.

Adam sighed, amused at some joke I didn't understand. "I had a pretty bad accident in January, during an unscheduled practice on the field." He reached down and tapped the side of his leg. "Tore a bunch of stuff, turned my patella so bad, I had to slam it back in place before the ambulance came."

My hand went back to my mouth. "You—you hit your bone back into place?"

"It's easier than looking at it."

Oh my god. I'm going to be sick.

"That's…" I gaped. "That's…"

"I haven't told anybody this in ages," he admitted. "But—ah—my high school coach said if I called the ambulance, I wasn't on the team. That if I wasn't man enough to grit my teeth through it, I couldn't play ball."

"What?" My voice wobbled. "Are you serious?"

"Yep."

"That's the…he…the coach you always…mention…?"

"Same guy." Adam's smile widened. "And I tried, but I couldn't stand up, much less walk it off. When the EMTs came, I lost my jersey. And when I got kicked off the football team, there went being hot shit. There went everybody. The girls, the friends, all of it. The only one who stuck around was Ryan. I owe everything to him." Adam chuckled, turning back to face the rest of the crowd. "We worked all semester. My coach didn't think I could do it, but I got back on the team the next fall."

We were quiet for a moment, the cool bar counter was a contrast to the thoughts racing in my head. There were new layers to Adam every day. He wasn't like flipping a coin, he was like looking into a kaleidoscope. All those different angles. I was too juiced and too dizzy to figure it out. I couldn't even imagine it.

Sophomore Adam in high school meant—what? Sixteen years old? Sitting on the grass, with a busted leg and a high school coach screaming at him to get back on his feet.

I was going to be sick.

"Everything can end so fast." Adam folded his arms over his chest. The smile was gone and in its place was stone. "That's why none of it matters. Just enjoy it while it lasts."

In all of those mixtures of emotions, there was something else I hadn't expected. Relief? It was weird, but Adam had gone through something like I had. One wrong thing and everybody left. He understood how everything can tumble on its axis and fall apart so fast.

Adam shifted to face the bar, and I touched his shoulder. He glanced down, surprised, and I wet my lips, trying to formulate exactly what I wanted to say. "Adam. I—I—"

"What?"

"I—I'm so sorry." I could feel my bottom lip tremble.

"Ah, ice princess, you're babying me," he teased.

"No, I'm being serious," I said, all my words rushing together. "I'm sorry and—"

"I don't want your pity. This is why I don't tell anybody." He laughed—actually with humor—and mussed up my hair. "I just want you to know, I get it. It's fucked. But I understand more than you know."

I ducked away from his hand as best as I could, but that didn't mean much. My reflexes weren't that great, especially after two glasses of Shower Sex, and I found myself gazing more at him.

Gazing at this man who emotionally and mentally flipped me upside down again. I studied the little indents on his face, the little scars, and his dark eyes, speckled with gold, and his signature smirk. And there was his hand too, returning to my hair.

I reached for it and caught his wrist instead. His fingers drew through my hair, whisking it away from my neck, sending a shiver down my spine

Heat pooled below my stomach, and my breathing slowed. This was it - this was the college experience. It was reckless and adventurous and a little heartbreaking, and it tasted like the sweet wash of a good drink and a man's fingers in my hair.

His eyes flickered beyond mine for a moment. He frowned, his breath catching in his throat.

"What is it?" I asked and tried to look back.

Adam grabbed my shoulder and his fingers dug in. "Don't."

"What?"

His breathing came out faster. "Piper, don't do it."

"What is it?"

"Let's just go." He stared into my eyes, hard, pleading. " Please , Piper."

I couldn't remember the last time Adam had asked me to do anything and sounded so sincere about it. There was a note of panic in his voice too. What in the world would make Adam panic? He slammed his own patella back into place. I couldn't imagine what could possibly make his eyes widen like that.

Holding his hand, I shifted to get a look at whatever it was. Half of me expected a joke.

None of me expected to see Xavier, kissing a girl on his lap in a red booth.