Page 72 of Try Hard

We weren’t carefree kids with no responsibilities anymore. We were adults with lives and personalities and this was real, something I couldn’t fix for her no matter how much I wanted to. She nodded slowly.

“You can stay away from future games,” I offered. “I—”

She breathed a light snort. “And miss you playing your mortal enemies? No way, Archer.”

I laughed around the lump in my throat, relief flooding through me. We still needed to figure this whole thing out, but she was coming to the game next week, and that felt more promising than anything.

I flung our bags over my shoulders and nodded towards the car. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

She nodded, a soft smile playing on her lips, and didn’t say anything further until we were back at my car where she glanced around to check we were alone. “I have a surprise for you.”

My eyebrows shot up my head and I froze, watching her excitedly.

For the first time all night, she unzipped her jacket. It only took a second for the surprise to register as she stripped the thing off.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, elated.

She frowned. “Your website, obviously.”

“This thing hasn’t been on sale for about… six years. And you got it shipped from the US?”

“You’ve forgotten you offered international shipping? I understand it wasn’t just you, in a basement, shipping every order that came in, but come on.”

I bit my lip and stepped closer to her, reaching out to touch the soft sweatshirt that had a quote I’d said in an interview once emblazoned across the chest: Never tone yourself down. It had become something of a mantra for so many of my fans, something that encapsulated not letting other people’s ideas of what it meant to be a woman limit you. I loved that it had resonated with her, too. She should never tone down a single thing about herself.

Ophelia turned willingly when I tried to twirl her. And there it was. Archer and the number three written across her back, like she was wearing my shirt.

“I cannot believe you bought this,” I said, awed.

She couldn’t quite meet my eye when I turned her back to me. “Just… supporting the cause.”

I breathed a laugh and pulled her in for a hug, her arms wrapping around both our bags and me. “Sure you were.”

She hummed and stepped back, looking at the car. “Come on. Mum will be annoyed if I don’t feed you that soup.”

“Can’t wait,” I said, taking her jacket from her and putting it in the backseat with my bag.

My eyes followed her around the car. My name was easy to read with her hair up in a bun, like she’d done it on purpose just to show my name and number off.

Chapter Twenty-One

Fia

Iwas wrapped in a blanket, curled up on the couch with tea and a hot water bottle pressed tightly against my lower abdomen when Mum and Dad appeared.

Dad took one look at me, smiled, and said, “Chocolate chip waffles?”

I breathed a laugh. “You don’t need to do that. You’ve got to get to work.”

He shot me a look. “Got to eat breakfast first.”

Mum came over to press the back of her hand against my forehead as if I’d caught the flu. “Nothing like a family waffle breakfast to kickstart hump day.” She whooshed her hand through the air like a roller coaster. “Straight on into the weekend from here.”

She’d done that a lot when I was a kid. It was comforting to see it again.

The period cramps weren’t actually all that bad. Uncomfortable, sure, but not the thing that caused me the most frustration and pain each month. It was the reminder of theyears of torment my body went through, how I should still have been able to go swimming but couldn’t because my whole body froze and set off burning, aching pain if I tried to use a tampon.

I shook my head, unwilling to go there, even mentally, no matter how much the throbbing cramps called my attention. I’d never talked to my parents about it and I had no interest in doing so now.