SADIE
What the hell?
Two more notifications come through before I’ve even made sense of the first.
"Why are you making that face?" Lola asks.
I turn the screen toward her. "Some freak just added me to a group called Future WAGs."
Her eyes widen.
"What does WAG even mean?" I ask.
She takes the phone from my hand. "Wives and girlfriends. Wives and girlfriends of athletes." Her attention drops to the screen as she opens the chat. "Wait. This group actually exists? I thought the hockey girls were making it up."
For one, I’ve never heard of this group. For two, I’m neither a wife nor a girlfriend. For three, some stranger having my number is more concerning than Lola seems to think. And for four, if we’re still counting, what could a bunch of future WAGs possibly have enough to discuss about to need their own group chat?
I reach for my phone, but Lola twists away from me and keeps scrolling.
"Sadie, you need to see who’s in here. These aren’t random girls." She starts pointing out names. "Hockey girlfriends, influencers, the girls everybody on campus knows. Dixie is in this group chat." She taps the screen. "Do you have any idea what this means?"
"That someone is giving out my number without permission?" I reach for the phone again. "Should I be worried? Is this cyberstalking?"
She lets out an aggravated breath.
"Your number is not the point. Your social status just changed." She shoves the screen closer to my face. "These girls don’t add random people. You’re literally in with the big guns now."
My brows furrow.
Has Lola forgotten the actual meaning of the acronym she explained thirty seconds ago? I’m nobody’s wife. I’m nobody’s girlfriend. Unless tutoring has recently been added as a secret third category, I have no business being in there. So why add me?
Does this have anything to do with Trey?
Well, it has to be him. He’s the only hockey player I know.
I take my phone back. "So this is because I sat with him? That’s seriously all it takes?"
"With Trey? Kind of." Lola picks up her own phone. "You probably don’t notice because you don’t care about hockey gossip, but he barely hangs around girls. Remember Paige asking about him? Even she didn’t know enough to figure out whether he was seeing someone."
"But there’s nothing to talk about. I’m his—"
"Yup." She cuts in, slowly raises the phone toward me. "You’re going viral."
My eyes narrow at the screen.
There’s a blurry picture of Trey and me sitting together in the athletes’ lounge, taken from far enough away that whoever took it clearly thought being subtle mattered more than picture quality.
Below it is chaos. Messages keep coming in, so many at once that the screen shifts every time I try to read one.
Who is she?
wait are they actually dating??
I know her. She’s in one of my stats classes
Girl send everything you know about her here
I swear I’ve seen her with Ezra before
Ezra Mercer???
I THINK. don’t quote me
saw someone dressed like her earlier holding a hockey jacket
WAIT WHAT
whose jacket??
idk I didn’t see the number
Admin can you verify? I refuse to believe he’s taken just like that
They could literally just be friends
Trey doesn’t have girl friends
I gently push Lola’s hand away, suddenly not needing to see any more.
The reality of what’s happening is starting to settle in. These people genuinely think Trey and I are dating.
Lola pats my leg. "Prepare yourself, girl. You’re the first person Trey Mercer has ever had a dating rumor with."
**************************
Once Lola leaves, the apartment goes quiet again, which gives me time to work on my project, figure out dinner and pretend my phone hasn’t been vibrating every few seconds.
The admin of Future WAGs has already asked me to introduce myself.
Funny. We can start with an introduction from whoever gave her my number.
Until then, Future WAGs can survive without knowing my favorite color and how I supposedly met the boyfriend I don’t have.
I’m also waiting until Trey gets back before doing anything. Considering he’s half of this imaginary relationship, he deserves to know about it too.
Besides, I have no idea how he’ll react. He keeps so much of his life to himself that people are losing their minds over one blurry picture of us sitting together.
I can’t imagine being assigned a girlfriend by campus gossip is going to thrill him.
Trey might still be out by the time I finish cooking, but making enough for him feels like the least I can do after everything today. The problem is I have no idea what he likes, and I’m not spending an hour in the kitchen only for him to come home and tell me he doesn’t eat whatever I made.
I could text him.
My fingers are already reaching for my phone when I reconsider.
What do you want for dinner?
Why does that sound like something people ask after ten years of marriage?
I’m still trying to come up with a version that sounds less domestic when the doorbell rings.
Who is that?
For a second, I wonder if Trey is back, but that makes no sense. He lives here. Unless he’s forgotten the code to his own apartment, there’s no reason for him to ring the bell.
When I check the screen beside the door, Nash is standing on the other side.
I open it. "Hey, Nash."
"Hey."
He steps inside, still looking fresh from practice with damp hair and a dark patch of sweat around the collar of his shirt. When nobody follows him through the door, I glance into the hallway.
"Trey isn’t with you?"
"Nah. Still at Conte." He makes a straight line for the kitchen. "I came to steal some shit from his fridge."
I follow him in and discover that steal wasn’t an exaggeration. Two bottled drinks go into his bag, then some yogurt, followed by several other things too quickly for me to keep track of.
"Is your apartment out of food?" I ask.
"Basically."
"And grocery shopping?"
"Tomorrow’s problem."
Watching him continue to raid Trey’s fridge reminds me that I still haven’t figured out what to make for dinner, and he probably knows Trey’s eating habits better than anyone.
"Do you know what Trey likes to eat?"
He stops rummaging through the fridge and turns to me.
"Nerds."
I blink.
"Petite, cute nerds," he adds. "Can’t get enough of them."
My lips part, but nothing comes out. There are several possible responses to that and somehow my brain rejects every single one.
Let’s try this again.
"I meant food," I finally say. "For dinner."
His face cracks into a grin. "Oh, food. Fried rice, shrimp and grits, mac and cheese. Stuff like that."
He swings the much heavier bag over his shoulder and walks past me.
"Thanks for the groceries," he says.
"They’re not mine."
"Even better."
"Nash—"
"See you, Sadie."
The door closes behind him before I can ask a single follow-up question, leaving me to decide what part of the last five minutes I should be more concerned about.
What on earth was that? More importantly, why was nerds the first answer that came to his mind? Nerds, in plural. How many are we talking about here?
How many nerds has Trey eaten?
Oh, Goddess. I cannot believe that thought just came out of my own brain.
I stand for a few heartbeats before finally heading back toward the kitchen.
And here I was, less than an hour ago, telling Lola how surprisingly different he seems.
What if this is why nobody knows anything about his dating life?
He doesn’t bother with the girls everyone watches. He goes for the quiet ones instead. Girls who keep to themselves, and aren’t running to campus gossip afterward. Easy to keep private. Easier to move on.
Then he finds another one.
Is Trey Mercer a nerd-loving manwhore?