Page 80 of Try Hard

“Ready?” Eve asked by the door as if she could sense my apprehension. Maybe she could.

I nodded. “Sure.”

She smirked like she knew I wasn’t quite telling the truth and moved to pull the door open.

Just inside were two people in all black who looked at us expectantly.

“Names, please?” one of them asked.

“Pendrick and Archer,” Eve said with a huge grin.

Her hand found my back again and it struck me how natural that was becoming—not just the feeling of her touching me, but the ease of how she did it. She hadn’t even looked away from thetwo checking the guestlist. And, just as automatically, I stepped closer into her. I was pretty sure teenage me died a little.

“Fia?” the bouncer asked, looking between the two of us. They were apparently going in order of which name Eve said first.

I nodded briefly as Eve shot me the biggest grin and told them, “Yes, she is.”

“Archer,” I breathed, not truly exasperated.

“And… oh.” They looked up at Eve with wide eyes, and I tensed, knowing what was coming. “Eve Archer?”

“The one and only,” Eve replied with a laugh, perfectly at ease. Her hand stroked the side of my ribs and I knew she’d felt my stress.

“Wow,” they breathed as the other bouncer shot them a questioning look before eyeing Eve with interest. “Well, um, have a great night!”

“You too,” she said, shooting them a finger gun with her free hand. “I hope it doesn’t get too rowdy for you.”

“Uh-huh,” they breathed as Eve led me away.

“It’s remarkable just how many people know you, Archer,” I said quietly as we headed for the internal doors.

She laughed and shot me a look. “Come now, Ophelia. They were obviously queer. That’s like… my whole audience.”

“Sure,” was all I got out because she chose that exact moment to slide her hand across my back, down my arm, and to take my hand in hers.

As a teenager, I’d pictured that more times than I wanted to admit.

But Eve was tactile. And it wasn’t like she’d interlaced our fingers. I’d pictured that more than I’d like to admit, too. I’d watch the way she gripped the rugby ball, the way she wrapped her arms around people in scrums, and, while I’d never wanted to be in a scrum, I’d desperately wondered what it felt like whenshe touched you. Now, I didn’t have to wonder anymore, but that didn’t mean I understood it.

Knowing I wouldn’t want to walk in first, she pulled the door open with her free hand and led the way through the crowd. I stayed close behind her, clutching her hand tightly.

The place was lit up with neon club lighting and there were even more guests than I’d anticipated, but the benefit of that was the low likelihood of anyone seeing that I was holding Eve’s hand. If they didn’t know, they couldn’t comment on it.

Being led by Eve felt an awful lot like the time I’d followed her down the corridor at school—made all the worse by the number of our former classmates who were at this thing. I felt almost dizzy from the nostalgia and Eve’s hand in mine.

There was no point denying that I was still attracted to her, in every way it was possible to be attracted to someone, but she deserved someone who could give her everything she wanted and I wasn’t sure that was me. You didn’t get to date Eve Archer if you weren’t… whole.

I sucked in a breath, my lungs feeling uncomfortably tight. This wasn’t the place to have a breakdown over all the things I was and wasn’t.

“Alright?” Eve called in greeting over the music as she cut easily through a crowd that parted to reveal Kim and Kieran. It was the most British I’d heard her sound since we were kids. Of course, there were still words she used and ways she communicated that were British, but her decade in the US had left an impression on her accent. Not fully American, not entirely British. Something uniquely hers.

“Archer!” Kieran called, and the laugh Eve let out suggested that felt very different coming from him than it did when I called her that.

“Good to know you remember who I am, you dick,” she said jovially, pulling him into a one-armed hug. Her other arm stayed resolutely between us, our hands locked.

Kieran let out a noise of complaint. “What did I do?”

“Ignored my text all week.”