Page 29 of Play Fake

Mac Truck:Missing movie night?

ELEVEN

Mackenzie

“Arewe really volunteering to do this?” Wren pops her head into my room, her nose wrinkled with a handful of shirts in her hand.

“It was your idea!” I counter.

“What if I’m having second thoughts?”

“You are going to break Olivia’s heart. She was going on and on about how excited she is for us to go to the guy’s place for once.”

Several members of the football team live in a house a couple of blocks from here. It’s a veritable mansion, gorgeously kept, and the rent there, well, I’m sure it’s outrageous, but somehow, they afford it. Or at least, the athletic department does. It makes our little Victorian look like a hovel in comparison, and although it’s so close, I’ve never been.

Not because I couldn’t. Being friends with Olivia and therefore Liam means we have open invitations to football parties any time we want, but because my interest in being wildly out of place with no upstairs retreat never appealed to me.

“Fine. But what does one wear to these things?”

“Whatever you want?”

Wren’s brow quirks up with doubt.

“Ask Olivia?”

“Ask me what?” Olivia slides past Wren with three shot glasses, which she disperses before she pops on to my bed next to me, amid a pile of clothing I have tried and rejected.

“We’re trying to figure out what to wear.”

“Something sexy. And here—drink up. Pregame shots.”

I eye her and the contents of the extra-large shot glass warily.

“Pineapple and whipped cream vodka. Matches the tropical theme,” she winks.

I groan, but Wren and I both toast with her and drink it down.

“We have to fit a theme now too? Ugh. I feel a sudden severe headache coming on. It’s probably going to mean I need to stay home.”

“Ha. Very funny. You’re going! The whole football team and a lot of the hockey team are going to be there. They’re even having it catered. We’re not missing it!”

“Catered by who? Hooters?” Wren snarks.

Olivia slides Wren a withering glare.

“Oh god. You’re probably right,” I groan. “Knowing them, they probably hired some local strip joint that serves food and called it catering.”

We both explode into giggles.

“Stop! It is way classier than that.”

“Because they asked your opinion as football mom?” Wren pipes in.

Olivia, as Liam’s bestie, and the only woman the football team is categorically not allowed to touch, is the designated football mom. She helps them pick out clothes, talks them through relationship advice, and one particularly sad morning she had to teach a 20-year-old linebacker how to do his own laundry when his girlfriend told him she was not his mom, and he could do it himself.

“Maybe.”

“Well, at least we know the food will be good.” Wren half-heartedly shrugs her shoulders.