Ex-Factor (Diamond Girls) (20 page)

“True dat,” Claire chimed in, and I chuckled despite my crappy mood. I hadn’t told any of them what happened with Bodie after school, and was making a lame attempt to act normal and happy. I wasn’t sure if my performance was believable or not, but I had to try. The last thing I needed was an “I told you so” from Livvie. She hadn’t approved of Bodie from the start.

The room grew suddenly quiet, the normal chatter and laughter that filled the space before practice noticeably absent in the span of two seconds.

A small gasp blew past Livvie’s lips, and my stomach dropped as I turned toward the edge of the mat.

I’d seen zombies who looked livelier than Erin. Her hair looked as though it hadn’t been washed and was pulled back into a messy bun that rode high at the crown of her head. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red and puffy, making it painfully obvious she’d done nothing but cry for the past two days.

She slumped onto the mat and took a seat a good ten feet from where I stood with Claire and Livvie.

The girls and I glanced at one another warily, then quietly crossed over to where she sat and huddled around her.

Claire wrapped her arms around Erin from behind and gave her a good, long squeeze. “Hey, hon. How you holding up?”

Erin let out a sober huff and frowned. “I’m not.”

There wasn’t anything I could say to her that would make her feel better. That much I knew from experience. So, I placed a hand on her upper arm and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “We’re here for you. Whatever you need.”

Erin’s lower lip trembled and she gave a small nod.

“Everybody up!” Coach Shea’s voice echoed throughout the large room, and the brief period of silence we’d been enjoying disappeared, the pounding beat of Flo Rida’s “Good Feeling” blaring from the surrounding speakers. “Ten laps around the mat, please, followed by your normal warm-up. Let’s get through this quickly so we can knock some more numbers off our countdown!”

I peeled myself off the floor and fell in behind Livvie as we jogged around the edge of the mat. A large white sign with the number “10” written in black, bold lettering decorated the center of the mirrored wall, reminding us all our coaches wanted us to hit ten perfect routines before our first competition this weekend. No touchdowns, no dropped stunts, no timing issues. We’d started out at twenty, and fought tooth and nail to get to where we were now. Our routine was no joke. The stunts were crazy hard, the tumbling even more difficult, and the pace was grueling. Two and a half minutes of non-stop running, jumping, tumbling, and stunting.

While it was tough, and I still had days where memories of my mom made it hard to take the mat, I loved every painful freaking minute of it. As did the rest of my team.

We breezed through warm-ups. The next order of business: running through the individual stunts before moving to tumbling. There was a definite order to what we did at each practice, a strict guideline we followed to ensure everything went as it should and no one got hurt. Cheer was a dangerous sport, after all. We tossed girls into the rafters and forced our bodies to do unnatural flips at high velocity. Safety was of utmost importance.

After warming up stunts and tumbling, we’d run through the routine, marking each stunt, making sure we had our counts correct. Barring any glitches, we’d then perform the routine doing the stunts only, and after that, perform full out. None of it was easy, but the more I practiced, the more comfortable I felt. Pushing myself, testing my physical limits again, was a welcome change to the shameful spiral of self-pity I’d been twirling down the past few months.

Elites were up first. These were one of the most difficult stunts in the routine and required a crap-ton of strength and agility from everyone involved. Five groups of three girls comprised the opening “full up” stunt, two bases and a flyer each. The flyers placed their right foot into their bases’s hands and spun a three-sixty “ball up” into the air as their bases lifted them high above their heads. And while this was all happening, the flyers somehow managed to pull their left foot up alongside their faces into a heel stretch.

Because we were on a level five team, the fun didn’t stop at the heel stretch. Nope. My job as a base was to lower my flyer on the same count as the other four groups and launch her back up again, reload her foot into the correct hand position, and stay under her so she could maintain her balance and yank her opposite foot up behind her head like a pretzel. It was all very scary, and technical, and tiring—but wicked cool, nonetheless.

Each of the flyers on the team was talented in her own right, but I felt especially lucky to have Claire. The girl either had to have had some type of elastic in her chemical makeup, or no bones of any kind because she bent and contorted her body in ways that were just not natural. Her balance was great, her form perfect, and she made each trick look as though it was effortless, when in reality they were anything but.

Coach Shea went down the line of stunt groups one at a time, and each trio nailed their elite except for the last, Erin and Callie’s group. Their timing was way off, and their flyer, Alexa, came down each of the three times they put her up.

Nervous silence blanketed the room as Coach Jordan cut the music playing in the background, and all eyes focused on Callie, Erin, and their tiny and very frustrated flyer, Alexa. My stomach bottomed out, and I knew Callie and Erin were about to get a tongue lashing of the worst kind. They’d been hitting this stunt with no problems for the past two weeks. This thing between them and Eli was messing with the team’s mojo, and things were about to get ugly.

Coach Shea stalked forward and stared at the trio of girls, her face a mask of tempered frustration. “Alexa, take a knee.” She beamed both Erin and Callie with a heated stare. “Allowing your flyer to come down at this stage in the game is unacceptable. It tells me one of three things: you’re out of shape and can’t hold your flyer up, you don’t know what you’re doing, or your head’s not in the game.”

Callie glared at Coach Shea and stood with her hands on her hips as if she was bored. Erin, on the other hand, cowered beneath the coach’s deprecating glare with her eyes downcast and her shoulders slumped.

My heart went out to her. Basing was all about teamwork. It involved a lot of eye contact and cooperation. You had to be in sync with one another. Erin, it seemed, was experiencing more than a little difficulty working with the haughty girl who’d got jiggy with her ex just two days before. The situation was more than awkward; it was downright painful to watch.

Coach Shea sat back on her heel and crossed her arms over her chest, eyebrows raised. “I know for a fact you’re both in impeccable shape. And I’ve spent the past seven months drilling you on the counts, timing, and hand placing for each of the stunts. I’m quite confident you know what you’re doing. Which leads me to believe your heads aren’t in the game.”

Callie jabbed a finger toward Erin and proceeded to throw her under the bus. “My head is exactly where it’s supposed to be, Coach. It’s all her,” she said, sneering at Erin. “I don’t know what her problem is, but she needs to pull it together.”

It was as if a switch flipped inside Erin. One moment she was quiet and somber, the next she was in Callie’s face, shouting. “You don’t know what my problem is? My problem, Callie, is you. You had sex with my boyfriend!”

The word “boyfriend” seemed to linger in the air like a bad stink, the sound of Erin’s labored breathing the only noise in the room.

“That’s enough, girls,” Coach Shea said. “You need to keep your personal problems off the mat.”

Both girls ignored her.

Callie stood with her arms crossed over her chest, and her lips pursed. She let out a small huff and rolled her eyes at Erin. “Honey, he was never yours, and the fact he came to me proves it. Eli needs someone with”—she eyed Erin up and down as though she was trash, and let out a haughty laugh—”experience.”

Erin lunged for Callie with a loud “bitch!” but didn’t get very far. Coach Shea stepped in front of her and braced her hands on her shoulders.

“Enough!” Jaw tight, expression livid, she eyed the girls with a heaping amount of anger and disappointment. “I will not tolerate this type of behavior in my gym. Callie! Give me one hundred candlesticks at the corner of the mat. Erin! Start running laps. When Callie finishes, you can switch. I want two rotations. Move!”

Callie glared at Erin as she walked toward the edge of the mat, muttering a low “freaking loser” beneath her breath.

That last jab made my blood boil, and it took everything I had not to run across the mat and pound Callie’s face into tomorrow. The entire mess was her fault. Well, hers and Eli’s, that is. She’d known Erin had deep feelings for Eli and had sex with him anyways the moment the opportunity presented itself. And now she was flaunting it in Erin’s face, kicking her when she was down. I wanted to strangle her.

Coach Shea let out a deep sigh and addressed the rest of the team. “I better never see behavior like what was displayed here ever again. Now, line up!”

I stared at Erin’s profile as she rounded the mat, my heart heavy and full of worry. I knew the pain she was feeling; I’d lived through a similar situation myself. I also knew things would probably get worse before they got better. This did not bode well, considering our first competition was just days away.

Damn you, Eli. Damn you to hell.

Chapter Fourteen

Status update:
Showin’ my cards…

I wasn’t sure how long I sat parked in Bodie’s driveway. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Twenty? A heady cocktail of indecision, self-doubt, and a strong dislike for humiliation of any kind kept my butt glued to the driver’s seat of my Mustang. Bodie’s text, asking me to come over so we could finish our assignment, then talk, had been a huge shock. I’d convinced myself this thing between Bodie and me was over, and had grudgingly finished the joint homework myself as soon as I got home from school.

What did Bodie want to talk about? Should I have told him I already finished our paper? Save myself from the heartache and humiliation I was sure to receive the moment I walked through his door? If he didn’t want to be my friend after he found out Eli had been pursuing me, he would for sure bolt when he found out what happened the night my dad died. I didn’t stand a flippin’ chance.

The memory of Dr. Frank’s voice rang in my ear.

Your fear of getting hurt is what hinders your healing progress, Nev. You won’t reap rewards without taking risks. Open up. If you give people a chance, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

According to the Good Doctor, I sabotaged myself and my relationships. Probably a result of the loss I felt over my parents and the hurt I’d suffered after my disastrous relationship with Nate. Gun-shy, my new method of survival involved questioning everything and assuming the worst. Two things I was doing at that very moment.

Disgusted with myself and the ease with which I’d backpedaled—yet again—I yanked my book bag out of the passenger seat and slid out of the car. I’d come a long way in the past few weeks. I no longer felt sick when I tumbled, I didn’t feel guilty for smiling and having fun, and I’d opened up about my past to Bodie. I owed it to myself to keep moving forward, a goal I couldn’t achieve while hiding out in my car.

Bodie’s mom greeted me at the door again, her gentle smile easing some of the tension I carried in my neck and shoulders. Dressed in a dark pantsuit that looked like it came straight out of the pages of
Vogue
, she slid an equally impressive looking clutch under her arm and gestured toward the door. “Go on ahead into the kitchen, sweetie. Bodie will be down in just a minute. I’m sorry I can’t stay and chat with you while you wait. I’ve got a meeting at the local Chamber Of Commerce I can’t miss.”

With a small wave, she breezed through the entryway, shouting a quick “make yourself at home” as she disappeared.

Every molecule in my body screamed for me to turn around and get the heck outta Dodge. Which meant I needed to put on my Big Girl panties and march my sorry self straight into the kitchen. No running. No hiding. No avoiding.

A large vase filled with tulips sat in the center of the kitchen table, flanked by an equally large plate of chocolate chip cookies. I slid into one of the cushioned seats and pulled my assignment out of my bag. No point in pretending like it wasn’t done. Bodie could copy the damn thing as soon as he came down, and then I’d leave. Being strong was a good thing. Subjecting myself to the heady effects of Bodie’s delicious smell and divinely chiseled body, knowing we didn’t have any sort of future, was plain torture. Masochism was so not my thing.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Bodie’s rapid footfalls sounded from overhead.

Ah!
Mouth dry, I pulled out my textbook and pretended to be engrossed. I had no clue what I was looking at, but he didn’t need to know that.

I sensed him before he even stepped into the room. My skin came alive, and it felt like every last molecule in my body had a pair of eyes that couldn’t wait to see him. My stomach lurched, that nervous, whirling sensation I always got whenever Bodie was near at an all-time high. He hadn’t been at school today, and I’d missed him terribly.

I felt him standing behind me, but kept my head down, my eyes on my book.

“Skipping ahead to the Ford administration, huh?”

Huh? Ford administration?
I tore my eyes from the top of the page and skimmed the first paragraph.
Crap. What the hell am I reading?
“Um, yeah. Never hurts to be prepared.”
God! Shoot me now. Lame!

Face flushed, hands sweaty, my eyes grew wide when, instead of taking a seat across from me, he pulled out the chair beside me and sat down.

I shifted in my seat and fiddled with the edge of my textbook. He smelled incredible, and I fought the urge to jump into his lap and bury my nose in the crook of his neck.

“You plannin’ on lifting your head out of that book and lookin’ at me any time soon?”