The perfect opportunity to quiz her fell onto my lap. The hitch? She busied herself with cleaning. She tested my patience a few minutes later when she knocked over coffee beans so she could sweep the floor she’d swept three times already. Her ’clumsiness’ gave me a chance to study her. A lot of little details stood out. The fact she allowed her hair down was a drastic change from the ponytail she wore at the game, stopping right above her shoulders. She was preppy and girly, the very definition of the word pretty. Her flamingo pink nails matched the color of her uniform. She also wore a silver nose ring, one that hadn’t been there during the game.

She’d always been the type to wear cute accessories, starting when she was a kid and had worn sunflower clips in her hair and different handmade blue bead bracelets with silly silver cat charms she still wore to this day. The ring reminded me of a random morning in first grade when she came to class with her ears freshly pierced and wore these dangling unicorn earrings everyone obsessed over. I hadn’t been able to stop gaping at them, and like right now, I couldn’t stop looking at her nose ring.

“Why are you staring at me?” she asked, pulling me out of my spell.

“I’m not?” I lied.

“Your sunglasses are see-through.” I took the offending shades off. Pitch black. “You wouldn’t have checked if you weren’t looking at me.”

“You got any more baseless accusations to throw around, or can I get a caramel mocha?” I deflected, hanging the glasses on my hoodie’s neckline.

“Nope. That’s pretty much it. I’m still finding my way around and get nervous when people watch me, so look away.” She turned away and tapped the portafilter on the counter, letting the grounds settle before pressing them down firmly. “I mean it. I can feel your eyes on me.”

“I’m making sure you don’t glitter bomb me.”

“Look, about the game…”

“We don’t need a heart to heart. Apology accepted.”

“I wasn’t apologizing.” A dark, rich brew gushed from the machine into a to-go bamboo cup; an obvious hint that she wanted me gone. She added two pumps of caramel sauce and one pump of mocha syrup, then frothed milk with a steam wand before pouring it into the cup. “I was going to say I forgive you.”

“Forgive me?” I asked as she placed the coffee in front of me with a can of whipped cream. “I did nothing to you.”

“You don’t need to be sorry because I’m over it,” she muttered, not over it.

“Well, I’m not. Why do you think Hazel cheated on you with me?” I blurted.

She cleaned an imaginary spillage on the counter. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

I leaned over the counter, trying to make eye contact. “Same, but it’s not every day I get accused of being a cheater.”

“If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

“Deal.”

“There were pictures on her phone,” she admitted.

“I’ve never sent a nude in my life.”

“Not like that. There was a Dragon jersey in the background. It had number seven on the back.” She grabbed her phone from under the counter and showed me the image in question: my jersey hung on the back of an office chair in my bedroom. “You’ve had that same number since our first game together, so…”

That’s why she pranked my locker? It still didn’t make sense, though. “I don’t understand how or why Hazel would have that photo? Unless . . .”

Who had access to my bedroom? Who rolled in the grass with Hazel on the field? Who didn’t want his phone anywhere near me, lately? My heart thumped in my chest. That sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach in Carter’s car Friday might not have been paranoia after all. I headed behind the counter, scanning the shelves where Rosie had grabbed her phone. I skimmed through a box full of chargers, AirPods cases, and a bunch of other knick-knacks. Carter lost his stuff a lot and often; it was in the most obvious place.

“Unless what? What are you doing? You’re not allowed back here,” she said, kneeling beside me.

“Maybe you had the right idea, but the wrong person?”

“Carter? No way. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“You’ve known him for what? A week? I bet you didn’t think Hazel was capable, either.” I shoved my hand farther into the shelf, where a silicone case grazed my fingertips. I pulled his phone out. Bingo. “Do me a favor and watch the door?”

“Wait, you’re snooping through his phone?”

“His life is on this thing,” I explained, attempting to unlock it. “If anything’s happening between them, it’ll be on here.”

“I don’t want any part in this.”

“You do, for the same reason I do.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Not knowing will drive us crazy,” I said.

“She really didn’t cheat on me with you?” A flicker of doubt crossed her face, even as I nodded. She shook herself out of her daze. “No—no. Hazel’s already made me feel crazy enough as it is. I’m not letting her have that power over me anymore.”

“Even if that means not knowing the truth?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she breathed out. “You’re on your own.”

Ending the conversation, she hung her navy apron on the hook. She exited the building, staying visible behind the large glass window, and sprayed down a car. Hopefully, there was no CCTV because it could screw us both: her for not covering the remaining five minutes of Carter’s break, even though the café was a ghost town, and me for searching through employee property.

I grabbed the whipped cream can, grimacing at the glittery Flamingo design in my coffee. How did she whip that up without me noticing? And why did it taste so damn good?

Carter’s phone turned out to be a total bust. There wasn’t anything interesting on there. His notes contained fanfic and D&D campaign ideas, a debt ledger painstakingly tracking every favor his foster mom had done for him since he moved in with her two years ago, and a checklist for our school’s yearbook. The only possibly incriminating things were the pictures and videos he captured at the game, which coincidentally featured Hazel.

I dumped his phone back onto the shelf and joined Rosie outside. The following thirty minutes passed in a wordless rhythm, punctuated only by the occasional ‘your turn’ or ‘you missed a spot.’ Our hose reached only one parking spot, confining us to a small rectangular space shaded by a towering tree. I caught Rosie’s attention fixed on me. She averted her gaze, feigning indifference when I made eye contact, though it was obvious it took everything she had not to ask what I found.

“This whole moral high ground you’ve got going on has got to be killing you,” I said, shedding my hoodie and tying its sleeves around my waist. “Come on, you’re not going to ask me what I found?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“Too bad,” I said. “It was very, very interesting.”

“Why are you saying it like that?”

“Ask me what I found.”

Her shoe tapped the ground repeatedly. “Fine. What did you find?”

“Nothing,” I revealed.

Her eyebrows pinched together. “You said⁠⁠⁠—”

“—If you were sure that Hazel cheated on you with me, you wouldn’t have asked. You don’t know if she cheated, and that must be eating you up inside.”

“Stop it.”

“Maybe you broke up for no reason,” I said, flashes of Carter’s betrayed face appearing in my mind. I sure as hell checked his phone for no reason.

“I said—” she whipped the hose in my direction, dousing me with a spurt of water, “—stop talking.”

An impossible hotness spread across my face. How rich. She caused this mess by babbling about conspiracy cheating theories in the first place. I grabbed the other end of the hose before she could spray me again. We played tug of war. I took advantage of one of her hands slipping, ripped the hose away, and sprayed her from head to toe. The sharp inhale. The wayward hands. The wide eyes. It all accumulated into a frozen moment that made me bark out a laugh.

“You didn’t,” she said, clutching her chest like she couldn’t believe I had the gall to do that to her.

I muffled my mouth, but it did nothing to stop the laughter from spilling out. She advanced toward me. I jerked my hands up to shield myself and said, “You started it.”

She wiped her shirt. “What’s wrong with you? I’m not your punching bag, okay? It’s not my fault you didn’t trust your boyfriend and now feel guilty about invading his privacy. Suck it up.”

An ugly, uncontrollable tightness took control of my stomach. “Punching bag? What do you call pranking me? Face it. You set your sights on me during the game and projected all your rage onto me instead of focusing on the person who might have cheated on you.” We stood inches apart, in each other’s space, both unwilling to back down. There had to be more to the story. She defended Carter quick earlier. Suspiciously quick. As if she liked him. “Or was there another reason you pulled those antics? Are you projecting your guilt onto me? Is Carter seeing you behind my back?”

“I am a lesbian!”

Well, who could argue against that defense?

A sharp whistle put an end to our fight. Coach Connelly hobbled over from the park across the street, a whistle clamped between his lips. He looked like a grumpy Santa Claus in his dark green shawl-neck cardigan, with his grizzly beard whipping in the breeze and a blotchy red flush coloring his cheeks.

He motioned between us. “What’s going on here? This is the exact opposite of building bridges. I’m not having you both ruin what progress we’ve made between the teams. Neither of you are leaving until you both hug it out and that’s final.”

The man was chill most of the time, even quoting Winnie the Pooh before each practice. Don’t get me started on when he put on his school counselor hat to follow up on my senior project, which was three months late. He handed me pamphlets at each meeting with titles like Help! My Muse Quit and Left No Forwarding Address, as if a cartoon of the Nine Greek Muses screwing over an artist could magically solve my creative block. Right now? There was no trace of his usual easy-going smile. When he got serious, he didn’t do it halfway. He wouldn’t relent until we did what we were told. Not only that, until it was done with the maximum effort.

The stubborn glint in Rosie’s eyes faded by the second. She obviously realized the same thing. We approached each other, and the shock of it made us both rear back.

“Air-hug?” Rosie suggested, mock patting the air.

“Or an air-slap?” I muttered under my breath.

“Hmm. I could set up an official conflict resolution meeting?” Coach muttered. “Sock puppet therapy always worked with you and your sister?”

Without warning, Rosie yanked me into a bone-crushing hug. My sharp inhale at the water pressing into my chest only spurred her on. She patted my head, like I was some kind of overgrown puppy, each tap more awkward than the last. 

Coach broke us up before I could smother her to death and ordered, “Now, Wilson, lend my daughter your hoodie and we’ll pretend like this never happened.”

I reached for the sleeves tied to my waist. “Coach, this is my…My favorite hoodie. I can’t just give it away to a stranger.”

“You should have thought of that before you started a screaming match in the middle of the street.”

He waited until I untied the hoodie from around my waist and handed it over to his daughter before he went inside the café. She held the hoodie out in front of her and sized it up.

“I want it back in the same condition. Make sure it’s washed too. I don’t want any trace of you left on it,” I said.

“It’s already covered with stains. Who cares?”

“It’s paint.”

“Does it really matter?”

“Yes.”

My serious tone shut her up. This time when she looked at it, she didn’t seem to want to light it on fire, which was the only reassurance I got. She brought her Flamingos’ work tee over her head and used the shirt to capture all the drops before sending it sailing in my direction. It landed against my face, of all places. I ripped it away and dropped it to the ground.

She pulled the black hoodie on and asked, “What do you think?”

It wasn’t a serious question, but I took my time in answering, anyway. Was it the most flattering thing to wear? Not really. It had old yellow paint slathered along the sleeves. It looked good somehow, despite her being too small to fit the hoodie. Maybe it was the way she brought her hair to one side or the fact that her fingers were barely visible under the cuffs. In fact, the icy tingling that had taken over my chest since we hugged fell away into a strange pool of warmth. She shifted her hair again, moving so she was looking at me. I dropped my gaze to the ground, betrayed by my body’s reaction.

“Like it’s too big for you,” I said, cursing myself for saying anything because my voice came out all weirdly-gruff. I trudged back into Flamingos before I could embarrass myself anymore.

Screw the cats at the shelter. I was allergic to them, anyway.