Those Three Little Words

“Can you stomach a bagel?” Blakely asks while sticking her head through the doorway of my office.

Looking up from my computer screen, I’m relieved this morning’s nausea has subsided, leaving me ready for food.

“Yes, I could really use one right now, actually.”

Bagel bag in hand, she takes a seat across from me in my office, doling out the bagels on the napkins and then setting out the cream cheese and knives. “After your text this morning of suffering over the toilet, I figured I’d grab some food in case you were hungry when you got here.”

“Just dry-heaving again, but I wasn’t able to stomach anything, so this is perfect timing.”

We break apart our bagels, slather them in cream cheese, and then each take a bite. I lean back in my chair. “Thank you so much.”

“You are more than welcome.” She pauses. “So tell me how things are going. Do you miss Hornsby now that the boys are on an away trip?”

No.

Not even in the slightest.

And not because he’s a bad house guest or because he’s messy. He’s none of those things. He’s actually quite tidy, and he doesn’t do anything to ruffle my feathers. He walks around the apartment, trying to go undetected. The first night after the horrible game when the boys took a huge loss, Eli tried to have a conversation about snow, and it fell flat after his comment about liking how white it was.

The second night, he asked me if I liked bread. I said yes. And then he nodded, and that was that. It’s made me wonder if the only language Eli speaks with women is flirt.

I was happy for the reprieve last night, that was until he called me . . .

“I was. I mean, he’s been nice and all, but I can’t tell you how massively uncomfortable this entire arrangement is.”

“Still not the conversationalist he is when trying to hook up with somebody?”

“I can’t necessarily blame it on him because I’m not great either. I don’t know what to say to him, and it’s clear as day he doesn’t know what to say to me as well. Where has all the charm from the bar and his apartment gone, Blakely? We got on so well, laughed, had sex, and now we have no clue how to be around each other? I mean, I shrieked the other night when I saw him with his shirt undone.” I lean in and whisper, “I licked his nipples, Blakely, and now I’m clutching my pearls over seeing a little man-cleave? What is wrong with me?”

She chuckles, and when I give her a not-so-happy glare, she stops. “I’m sorry, I know this hasn’t been easy for you, but you have to admit it’s slightly comical.”

“I find nothing comical about this. It’s so bad, Blakely. Never in my life have I been so clumsy and tongue-tied for words before. When he’s around, my mind just goes blank. And then last night, he, uh . . . he called me.”

“From the hotel?” Blakely’s eyes nearly pop out of their sockets.

“Yup. Said he wanted to check on me and tell me he planned on staying in the entire night. I told him I’m not his nanny so he doesn’t need to check in with me. He then proceeded to tell me in a strange voice that he knew I wasn’t his nanny.”

“Define strange?”

“Uh . . . like he ate a tablespoon of cinnamon and was slowly choking on his own dried-up saliva.”

“That is a very detailed yet odd description, and even more odd, I can hear it in my head. What happened after that?”

“A long pause that felt positively deafening. I was fidgeting, wracking my brain for anything to say. All I could think about was how my nipples have been tingling lately, and to hell if I was going to say that. So instead, he told me about the pack of free pretzels he got in his room. And all he said was they were salty and free.”

Blakely, to my disdain, lets out the loudest laugh while waving her hand in front of her face.

“This is not funny.”

“I’m sorry.” She wipes under her eye. “But oh my God, this is the most dysfunctional yet hilarious coupling I’ve ever seen, and I hate to admit it, because I know you’re going through an ordeal, but I’m kind of living for it.”

I take a large bite of my bagel and chew while staring out the window of my office. “I think I’m going to ask him to move out. We’re not doing each other any favors here. We tried, we failed miserably, so let’s move on.”

“What in particular did you try?”

My phone buzzes with a text.

“Try to be cordial and live with each other, but it’s just an absolute nightmare. We don’t know how to act around each other. We don’t know how to talk. We’re both being far too polite not to bother the other . . . I can’t possibly survive the next eight months like this.”

I lift my phone and see that it’s a text from Eli.

Great.

I swipe my phone open and read it.

Eli: I just ate an apple.

I wait to see if there is more to his text, but when the little texting dots don’t appear, I realize that’s all he had to say. I shouldn’t be surprised. This is to be expected at this point.

“Is that him?” Blakely asks.

I nod. “He just told me he ate an apple.”

“That’s it?” I nod again. “No freaking way. Let me see.” I flash the screen toward her, and she squints while reading, then leans back in her chair. “Wow, you know, I’d expect a text like that from someone like Halsey Holmes. He’s so introverted and quiet that an ‘I ate an apple’ text feels very fitting. But from the outgoing ladies’ man of the team, I never would have guessed. What do you even say to that?”

I type him back and press send. I show her my screen.

Penny: Was it red?

“Was it red? Oh, my God.” She laughs again. “Okay, I can see what you’re talking about.”

“See?” I groan and slouch in my chair. “It’s like we’re trying to force something that’s not there. I truly believe we had one hot night, and that’s it. There really is nothing between us, friendship-wise. I’m not sure we even have much in common at all. What do you think? Would he be mad if I asked him to leave?”

“He might be relieved.”

“I think he might be too.”

My phone buzzes, and I lift it to read it.

Eli: Green.

I flash my phone to her, and she covers her mouth, cackling. “This has to end.”

**ELI**

“POSEY, I need your goddamn help right now. Emergency,” I say, barging through his hotel room. We just got back from our morning skate, and this is about the time when a lot of the players take a nap, but I’m at DEFCON 1 right now, and I don’t care if Posey needs his beauty sleep. I need him.

“Dude.” He lifts his eye mask up—it’s one of the ones with the googly eyes on it. He saw it on Ellen and thought it was funny as shit, so he got himself one . . . as well as the rest of the team. “You know I need to sleep before the game.”

“I know, but this is important.”

“What could be so important that—”

“I told her I ate an apple.”

His brow creases in confusion. “What?”

“Penny. I was trying to come up with something to say to her, you know, to start a riveting conversation, and all I could think to say was that I ate an apple, and it’s just been disastrous from there.”

He sits up a little taller. “That was your conversation starter? You ate an apple? What happened to googling some questions to ask her?”

“I did that, but they all seemed unnatural like I was interviewing her, so I’ve been trying to come up with some more everyday conversations.”

“So you told her you ate an apple?”

“At least it seemed better than telling her I like snow because it’s white.”

“Jesus Christ,” he grumbles while throwing his blankets off and walking over to me. “Hand me your phone.”

“Why? What are you going to say? Don’t say anything stupid.”

“Any more stupid than I ate an apple?” He quirks one brow at me.

“You know what I mean.”

He shakes his head in annoyance and then starts typing away on my phone. I try to look over his shoulder, but he turns away from me, blocking me from seeing the screen. “What are you writing? Hey, I can’t see. Did you send it? Don’t send it without my approval, and don’t say anything inappropriate like ‘I like your ass.’”

He glances over his shoulder. “Do you like her ass?”

“Of course, it’s hard not to like everything about her body.”

Another raise of an eyebrow, and this time, he fully turns toward me. “Eli Watkins Hornsby—”

“That’s not my middle name.”

“I know you crushed on this girl, but from the way you’ve been acting and your abundance of paranoia, I’d say that you actually care. You’re acting almost like you . . . like her.”

“Enough with that shit. I don’t like her in the way you’re saying. I mean, yeah, is she hot? Of course. You’d be dumb to think otherwise. But I barely know her. And the things I do know about her I wouldn’t say would tip me over the scale to liking her like that.” Even though I do kind of like the rambling. It’s funny. It’s one of the reasons I pressured her to spend my birthday night with me. I had one of those perpetual, stupid smiles on my face from her rambling that night.

“Then why does it matter to you what I say to her?”

“Because she’s still the mother of my baby. I don’t want to come across all clingy and horny.”

“Are you horny?”

Yes.

It’s been seven weeks since I’ve had sex—my longest dry spell ever—and the last person I had sex with is now my awkward counterpart.

“I don’t need sex all the time, you realize that?”

He snorts. “Okay.” Then he goes back to typing on my phone.

I pull at his shoulder. “Seriously, what are you saying?”

“Chill, dude. I’m just asking her how she’s feeling.”

I pause. “Oh . . . that’s probably a good idea.”

“You are such a fucking idiot.” He hands me my phone back and then launches himself on his mattress.

I glance down at my phone to read the text he sent.

Eli: Sorry about that last text. I meant to send it to Posey. How are you feeling today?

I glance up at him, and he’s smiling smugly at me. “Simple,” he says, holding his arms out wide. “You’re overthinking it.”

I take a seat on the edge of his bed and then lie back on the mattress as well. “I fucking hate this. I feel like ever since my birthday, things have not felt the same, and it’s freaking me out.”

“What do you mean?”

Closing my eyes, I say, “I can’t stop thinking about her, and now that we’re living together, I can’t seem to screw my head on right.”

Posey props himself up on his arm. “Dude, I think you like her.”

I shake my head. “No, that can’t possibly be the problem.”

**PENNY**

“BLAKELY,” I whisper as I turn into her office.

She glances up from her computer. “What? Why are we whispering?”

I close her office door behind me. “He wrote back.”

“Is this really what’s going to happen? I have to be present for your text messages? You know, I have a job to do, right? These VIP tickets aren’t going to sell themselves.”

“I know, but I don’t think he wrote this text message.”

Blakely’s eyes grow with interest as she reaches her hand out and twiddles her fingers at me, looking for the phone. “Things just got interesting. Hand it over.”

I give her my phone and then round her desk to look over her shoulder.

She reads the text out loud. “Sorry about that last text. I meant to send it to Posey. How are you feeling today?” She looks up at me and smiles. “Yeah, he didn’t write that. Not after what you’ve told me your conversations have been like.”

“Who do you think wrote it?” I take a seat in one of her chairs and cross one leg over the other.

“My guess would be Posey since he used his name in there. Hornsby is probably freaking out because he looks like an utter fool in these text messages and doesn’t know how to handle you.”

“Handle me? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Come on. Out of everyone on the team, who is the most extroverted?”

“Eli,” I say, not even questioning the answer.

“Exactly. He’s the one who should have no problem striking up a conversation, but for some reason, interacting with you is crippling him into a fumbling mess. It’s kind of funny to observe from the outside. But I think it’s safe to assume that he’s probably freaking out like you are and asked Posey to help him, just like you’re asking me to help you.”

“Okay, so then . . . what do I say?”

She rolls her eyes so hard I’m afraid they might fall out of her head. “Tell him how you’re feeling. My God, woman. What is wrong with you?”

“The baby,” I say. “It’s sucking all of the intelligence out of me.”

“I’m not sure that’s how pregnancy works.”

“How would you know? Are you pregnant?” I challenge her with a wave of arrogance.

“No, and I don’t plan on finding out.” She points at my phone. “Now message him back. Tell him how you feel.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

On a deep breath, I text him back. When I’m satisfied with my reply, I press send.

“Done.”

“What did you say?”

I read my text message out loud. “Feeling kind of weird, you know, with everything. So I thought that maybe when you come back from your away trip, you should move out.”

“What?” Blakely’s eyes shoot open. “You sent that?”

Panic ensues. “Wait, what do you mean? You told me to tell him how I felt.”

“Like . . . physically, not mentally. Oh, my God, I can’t believe you told him you want him to move out right before a game.”

My mouth shrivels up into a small pea-sized “o” as my eyes widen in horror. “Oh God, why did I text that?”

“I don’t know!”

“Maybe he didn’t read it, or better yet, maybe he’s relieved . . .”

**ELI**

“HOLY FUCK, Posey, wake up. Wake up.” I shake my friend, who was mid-snore when I charged through his door again.

He whips his mask off his face. “I am going to murder you.”

“This is bad.” I sit on his bed and hold my phone up to him. “She wants me to leave. You texted her, and now she wants me out of the apartment. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

“What?” He rubs his palm over his eye. “What did you say to her?”

“Nothing. I said nothing. I didn’t write anything after your text. Dude, if she wants me to leave, that’s bad. Pacey will not like finding out that I’m not helping her. He already won’t talk to me. Now this?” I pull at my hair. “What the fuck do I do?”

“I’m still trying to figure out how this escalated so quickly. That was a simple question.”

“Do you see what I’m dealing with?” I say, my voice an octave higher than normal. “I should have just kept it simple and told her the apple was juicy. Which is better than saying it was moist. What the hell was I thinking letting you take charge?”

“Give me the phone.” He swipes it from my grasp and reads the text message while scratching the side of his face. “Huh.”

“See. How can I possibly figure out how to talk with her—”

My phone beeps, halting my sentence and freezing me on the spot as the recognizable sound of a FaceTime call rings through the room.

“What the actual fuck are you doing?” I ask Posey as he holds the phone in front of me.

“Getting to the bottom of this.”

“I don’t want to call her. Give me the phone. Give me the goddamn phone . . .”

**PENNY**

“BREATHE, BREATHE,” Blakely says while I breathe into the bagel bag from this morning. “It will be okay.”

I shake my head, the bag crinkling next to my ears.

“Yes, it will. I’m sure he didn’t even read—”

My phone buzzes in front of us, and my eyes meet the image on the screen. I tear the brown bag off my face and, in a panic, scream, “He’s FaceTiming me!”

“Oh, dear God,” Blakely says while reaching for the phone. I quickly swipe it away.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Answering it?”

“What? Why?”

“Because he clearly wants to talk to you after what you wrote.”

“And that’s what text messages are for, so you can reply through text, not FaceTime. Who in their right mind FaceTimes someone in the middle of a text conversation? That’s unheard of. That’s . . . that’s breaking social etiquette.”

“Well, he’s probably freaking out because you told him you want him to move out. That warrants a phone call.”

“I’m not answering.” I clutch my phone to my chest, but in some wizardly way, Blakely rips it from my grasp. I then swat it from hers just as I hear the sound of the phone being answered.

I gasp and clasp my hand over my mouth while Blakely stares at me wide-eyed.

Silence falls over the both of us, echoing through her office as a distant voice says, “Hello? Penny. Are you there?”

Nostrils flared, I stare at my friend. Mouthing to her, I say, “Don’t say a thing.”

She gestures harshly at the phone and whispers, “Answer it.”

I shake my head vehemently.

“Penny, is everything okay?” Eli’s voice rings through.

Blakely and I stare at each other. I’m telling her to zip her lips, and she’s drastically trying to convey with her eyes that I need to answer the phone.

Neither of us moves until . . .

She reaches down and grabs the phone and points it at her face. She fluffs her hair and says, “Oh, hey Eli, how’s it going?”

“What are you doing?” I hiss-whisper at her.

“Is everything okay?” he asks, worry clear in his voice.

“Yup, everything is fine. Oh look, here’s Penny.”

“What are you—” She points the phone at me, and I smile. But it’s not a normal smile. It’s as if each side of my mouth has been hooked, and two people are pulling straight back, baring my teeth in a mid-hiss-snarl.

Just know, it’s extremely unattractive, and I don’t blame him when his facial expression turns from concern to an appalled wince.

“Uh . . .”

“Say hi,” Blakely mouths when I look at her for help.

Turning back to the phone, I lift my hand and say, “Hi.”

Seeming just as uncomfortable as me, he lifts his hand as well. “Hi.”

And then . . . silence descends upon us.

I glance at Blakely, and he glances at whoever he’s with, who I’m going to assume is Posey, unless Pacey is there, wielding a hockey skate, ready to slice Eli’s neck.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I hear someone say before they take the phone away from Eli. I let out a sigh of relief just as Posey’s face comes into view. “You two need to get it together. You’re having a baby. Find a way to communicate without telling each other you ate an orange.”

“It was an apple,” Eli corrects in the background.

“Either way, I’ll not be a part of this anymore.” Posey looks at me on the phone and says, “Penny, you know I adore you, but you can’t kick Hornsby out. You and I both know that. Not only does he deserve to help you, but he will be absolutely murdered by your brother if he moves out.”

“I know,” I say as guilt swarms me. “I just . . . everything is just so uncomfortable. Like I know he truly doesn’t want to be there, and the tension is high, and I can’t take it.”

“I want to be there,” Eli says, but it’s still Posey I’m technically talking to. “But you’re weird.”

“I’m weird?” I ask. “You’re the one telling me the only part of a horse you like is its mane.”

Posey turns away and asks, “You said that to her?”

“It was a weak moment for me. I didn’t know what else to say.”

“Jesus.” Posey pinches the bridge of his nose as Blakely comes into view.

“For what it’s worth, she’s not being a helpful conversationalist, either.”

“Thank you,” Eli says, and I can see one of his hands flap in the air.

“How the hell did you two even hook up?” Posey asks.

“Alcohol,” both Eli and I say at the same time.

“Well, that makes sense,” Posey says. “But since we can’t use alcohol this time, we’re going to need a solution that works so Blakely and I are not pulled into these text messages. I don’t care how uncomfortable it might be. You two need to talk. Even if it’s about apples, for fuck’s sake.”

He then tosses the phone at Eli, who catches it in his lap—I can tell from the angle of his jaw—and then he brings the phone up to his face. His eyes connect with mine, and he quietly says, “Uh, do you think we can talk after the game? That’s if you’re still awake.”

Blakely is nodding, encouraging me to say yes.

I roll my teeth over the corner of my lip, and I say, “Yeah, that would be fine.”

“Okay, I’ll text to see if you’re awake.”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay. I should go.”

“Have a good game.”

His lips tilt into a small smile. “Thanks.”

And then we hang up.

I collapse into one of Blakely’s chairs and drop my phone to the floor as I let my tension-filled body relax for the first time since he sent me that text about his apple.

“Wow, that was . . . that was something I never want to experience again,” Blakely says. “I don’t know if I should thank you for including me or demand you grace me with a present after having to deal with that.”

I gently close my eyes. “Maybe a little of both.”