Play With Me (Playing For Keeps Book 2)

JENNIE

It’s colder here. Harsh and biting, a bitter, frigid wind that slaps every inch of exposed skin until you feel like you’re both numb and on fire. It’s a prickly, uncomfortable feeling, and with a sound of distaste, I bring my phone to my face and pull up my Toronto Pros & Cons list, adding cold as fuckballs to the con side.

It’s alarmingly full for someone who’s only been in the city for an hour.

• No Garrett
• No Mom, Carter, Olivia, Hank, Cara
• No baby smooches
• No Dublin
• No dance studio
• Work for someone else & follow rules, ugh
• No karaoke with Carter
• No hot chocolate with Garrett
• No dance battles with Garrett
• No slow dancing in the kitchen with Garrett
• No back tickles with Garrett
• No cuddles with Garrett
• Cold as fuckballs

Not a whole lot of reasons for me to do anything other than stay in Vancouver.

My eyes flit to the pros.

• Nobody knows me here.

But an alluring reason for me to leave, even if a little scary.

A lump grows in the back of my throat at the thought of not being able to drive to my mom’s, snuggle up with her on the couch, and watch a movie whenever I want to.

My phone buzzes, and my heart patters like it hopes it might be Garrett, even though I asked for some space.

Emily: Red or white nonalcoholic wine? Already got some bubbly.

Me: What?

Emily: Girls’ night?

Me: Oh shit. I’m so sorry. I forgot. I’m in Toronto for that interview.

Emily: Ew.

Emily: I mean, cool, follow your heart and all that. But does Toronto have this?

A photo pops up, and Emily’s scrunched nose, folded lips, and crossed eyes fill my screen.

Me: Is that a cheerleading outfit?

Emily: Yeah, about to have some company/get railed *winking emoji*

Snickering, I navigate back to my list.

• No Emily

…

• No Garrett. No Garrett. No. Fucking. Garrett.

A painful burst of air leaves my lips as I clutch my phone to my chest, the weight of what I could lose making me sink deeper into the cushions of the loveseat I’m curled up in.

I peer out the window of my hotel room as if the answer is waiting for me in all the skyscrapers, the busy streets where the city races below. It’s frantic and captivating, like watching a fast-paced dance where everyone moves in sync, despite the panicked way they move, this game of give and take.

Except there’s no answer there, no sign telling me which path to choose. Just a whole lot of chaos, which is exactly reflective of the current state of my brain: chaotic.

I’ve always liked the city, the bright lights, the way everything comes to life at nighttime. But there’s something to be said about a quiet morning overlooking the mountains, the sea of pine trees painting the skyline, the way they dance in the ripple of the water they frame.

Here in Toronto, it’s so loud you can barely think. In the northern end of Vancouver, your mind is yours. I’m just not sure which is worse. When you’re someone who fluctuates between overanalyzing and needing an escape, both have their perks.

With a sigh, I slip out of the chair to get ready for my interview.

I spent three hours trying on outfits for Garrett, only for him to deem that each one was inappropriate and should come off immediately. They all did, which is why it took three hours to choose the outfit. In the end, he picked the first one I’d tried on—little shit—so I slip on my flared pants and my white blouse, tucking it into the high waist, and finish with my favorite pair of black booties. I tug the elastic from my braid and run my fingers through my hair until my waves hang free, and finish with a couple quick swipes of mascara and a pinch of color on my lips. Garrett helped me pick that too.

At least I think he did. I tested each color by pressing a lipstick kiss to his abs. All his responses were garbled, but he choked the most when I placed this particular kiss to his heated skin, so I knew it was the right choice.

It had nothing to do with the placement being so low on his torso, right above the waistband of his underwear, and definitely nothing to do with those lips being wrapped around his cock ten seconds later.

I wish I’d listened to him about my coat, too, because when I step outside, I find myself cursing myself for brushing off his warning. He insisted that I should pack my warm coat, just in case, and yet here I stand in my pretty lilac trench coat, made for west coast springs.

“I’m a doorknob,” I mutter as I climb into my waiting Uber.

It should only take ten minutes to get there, but it takes us thirty. Luckily, I planned for this; Toronto traffic is a shit show.

“Thank you so much, Manny,” I say to my driver as I climb out.

“Good luck on your interview, Jennie!” he shouts through his open window.

The building before me isn’t all that tall, but as I stare up at it, it feels massive, like the decision that’s weighing on me, pulling my future in every direction like a rag doll. Indecision swirls in my stomach, making it ache, and my gaze roams the space for a place to sit, to catch my breath.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I ramble, pacing the walkway. Apprehension claws at my chest and my heartbeat runs rampant. I press my hand there as if I can still the frantic racing. “I can’t do this. What am I doing here?”

My phone pings once, then twice, and the world skids to a stop at the tiny bear lighting my screen.

Bear: I know you need space to make this decision on your own, but I couldn’t let you go in there without saying something first.

Bear: You can do this. You deserve this. You’ve earned it. If you want it, all you have to do is reach out and take it. I’m proud of you, Jennie, and no matter what, you’ll always be my best friend, and I’ll always be your safe place to land.

A sneaky tear leaks out of my sneaky tear duct, trailing a sneaky path down my not-so-sneaky cheek. I quickly swipe at it, sniffling as I reread his message once, twice, and then a third time, just for good measure.

With a steadying inhale, I tuck my phone away, march up the front steps, and throw the doors open.

“Jennifer?”

“Hmm?” My gaze falls from space, searching for the person who spoke my name. Monica, Leah’s friend, gives me a soft smile and looks to her right, where Annalise is watching me. “I’m so sorry. Adjusting to the time change.” Also, she keeps calling me Jennifer, even though I’ve requested several times now to be called Jennie.

“You’d think you’d have more energy, since we’re, what? Four hours ahead here?”

“Three.” It’s 6:30 p.m. here, which means it’s 3:30 p.m. at home. Garrett would be picking me up from school and we’d be going home for a quick nap. Nap time is one of my favorite times.

Annalise smiles. There’s a hint of tightness behind it, seen in the firm way she presses her lips together, but then again, I haven’t seen her teeth once all afternoon. She’s in her sixties, and something tells me she hasn’t gotten laid in at least twenty years.

“Nevertheless, we were just saying that we think you’d fit right in with us here.”

I’m not sure about that. Earlier today I watched half of them bark orders at ballerinas who looked on the verge of passing out, or crying, which is exactly why I left ballet in the first place. Still, that they want me is exciting all the same, and my shoulders fall back as I sit taller and beam.

“Really?”

“Of course. We’ve been watching you for years. You’re a beautiful dancer.”

“And Leah always has the most wonderful things to say about you,” Monica adds.

I like Monica. Like Leah, she’s younger and still, I don’t know…full of life? Not beaten down by the dictators of the professional dance world? A nice human being? She’s friendly and personable, and she spent most of the tour whispering in my ear about Annalise every time that woman turned her back. At one point, I had to pretend I was coughing to hide my laughter.

Before I can respond, a young man stops at our table. “Are we ready to order?”

Annalise gestures at me. “Why don’t you start us off?”

“Hmmm…” My eyes sweep the menu. Six-ounce teriyaki sirloin. Sold. My stomach sings with glee, and I tap on the option. “I’ll have the sirloin, medium rare, with a twice-baked potato, fully loaded, and—”

“Oh, Jennifer, sweetheart.” Annalise’s patronizing gaze rises above her frameless glasses. “Wouldn’t you prefer something lighter?”

“Um…” Not fucking really?

“It’s a very rigorous program, so we of course expect our instructors to be as dedicated as our students when it comes to training. That includes nutrition.”

“Of course.” I plaster on a smile, slipping a protective hand over my belly beneath the table, chasing away the ashamed thoughts that try to enter, reminding me I’m not as slim as I was just a handful of months ago. “I’ll have the grilled chicken caprese salad, please.”

“An excellent choice, ma’am,” the waiter replies, but the amusement dancing in his eyes tells me he knows as well as I do that that’s fucking bullshit. At my narrowed gaze, he dips his head to hide his grin as he takes my menu. “And to drink?”

“She’ll have a vodka soda water with a lemon.” Annalise winks. “Sugar-free.”

“Actually, I don’t drink. A root beer would be great.”

I wonder if the horror and disbelief in her expression are due to my self-inflicted sobriety or the sugar-laden soda. Before she can tear me down for either, I tell her, “My dad passed when I was sixteen after his car was struck by a drunk driver. I haven’t had root beer in ages, up until very recently, because it was my dad’s favorite drink. We loved that kind that came in the brown glass bottles, Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer, it was called.” I laugh. “My dad used to tell me that he made it, that’s why it had his name on it. He came home from work every Friday with a six-pack, and we all drank one while we had our family pizza and movie night.”

“That’s…well—”

“I’ll have a root beer, too, please,” Monica interrupts. “Haven’t had one since I was a kid.” She looks to Annalise. “You were bragging about Jennie’s dancing?”

She hesitates before nodding. “Yes, as I was saying, you’d be a lovely addition here.” She sweeps her hands out and then clasps them below her chin, and I finally get a toothy grin from her. It’s oddly reminiscent of Chandler Bing’s famous engagement picture smile from Friends. “So, what do you think? Is it a yes?”

My brows fly up my forehead. “Is it a yes? You’re offering me the job?”

“Yes!”

“Oh. Oh my God. Wow. I…really?”

“Of course really! You’re our first choice, so we’ve put all other prospects on hold.”

A strange tightness stretches across my shoulders, and my stomach erupts with butterflies, but they don’t really feel like the good kind. “Do I have to make a decision right now? I wasn’t expecting this. I thought I’d have some time.”

Her smile wavers, and I quickly backtrack.

“My family is in Vancouver. I’m so grateful for this opportunity, really. It’s a dream come true. I’m just not sure I’m ready to—”

“Stand on your own? Have your own life?”

Beneath the table, my fingers dig into my thighs. Stand on my own? Have my own life? Do I really need to move halfway across the country and leave my family behind to do those things?

“I’m not sure I’m ready to be so far away from them,” I finish quietly, and when the rest of the table agrees it’s a big decision, that I can decide before I fly home, I spend the rest of dinner thinking about it, a life without them.

“Fucking…goddamn…eastern Canadian…winter…”

I yank my leather boots off, and the snow that fell this evening and covered them flings into the air, lands on the carpet, and quickly melts.

I want to go home, where spring has already begun to show its spectacular face.

I change out of my clothes and into my warmest pajama pants and Garrett’s hoodie, snuggling into the coziness, the smell, like I’m wrapped in one of his hugs.

When I’m ready for bed, I slip beneath the covers and stare out the window. There isn’t a single star glowing in the sky. The city is wide awake below it, and the skyline is an uncomfortable shade of blue-gray, littered with the pollution all the lights bring.

The longer I lie here, waiting for a revelation, the more scrambled my brain gets. Everything aches. It’s this tension I can’t explain, knotting so tightly in my stomach, creeping up my back. A vast emptiness that tastes like poison, a silence so utterly thunderous. It’s heavy and dark, daunting and heart wrenching, and all I want to do is put it down.

But I don’t know how, and when my eyelids fall shut, like I can close out the fears, tears leak out the corners, stealing away across my temples. I curl onto my side, clutching Princess Bubblegum as my world begs me to help it right itself.

My phone rings, Hank on video call, right on time, as usual. Don’t ask me why he insists on video calling when he can’t see. We mostly let him do what he wants. He’s persistent.

“You look beautiful,” he says, a broad beam covering his face.

I snicker, sitting up and pulling my knees to my chest, grateful he can’t see the tears I’m swatting away. “Do you like my outfit?”

“Oh yes. Just stunning. Did you wear that to your interview?”

“No, I’m not sure they would’ve appreciated me showing up in my pajamas.”

Hank laughs, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “Good thing they’re after your talent, not your fashion sense. So do you wanna talk about your interview first or the reason why you’re crying? Or are the two related?”

A throaty gurgle of laughter bubbles. I run the back of my wrist across my nose, sniffling. “I hate how perceptive you are.” I sigh. “The interview was okay. It was fine. Good, really. I just…I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s where I want to be.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’d be leaving a lot behind. A lot of people I love.”

“Hmm. So why do you want the job?”

It’s not something I even need to contemplate.

“For the first time in my life, I’m confident I’ve been chosen not because of my brother but because of what I bring to the table.”

“And is that enough of a reason to take this job?”

The truth is, I don’t know. Up until a week ago, I had no intention of taking it. I was excited to watch things between Garrett and I continue to grow. I was over the moon to become an auntie, and I was eager, if a little scared, to tell my brother I’d fallen in love.

“I guess I just…don’t know where I belong.”

“You belong wherever you want to belong, Jennie.”

“That’s easy enough to say, but Carter’s been the only person I could rely on my entire life. He’s always been in my corner, and now he’s not, and I don’t know what to do with that, or who to be without him here. So much of me is tied into him.”

Hank’s quiet for a moment as he considers my words. “Well, it may be true that you two are tied together, but it’s simply not true that you don’t know who to be without him. You’re your own person, Jennie. Always have been.”

“Then why is he the catalyst that brings every single person I care about to me? How do I know whether these people genuinely like me for me, or if I’m just a convenience because I’m always there?” The questions escape before I can swallow them back down.

“Have some of the most important people in your life found you through your brother? Yes. But so what? I believe life puts us in the path of those people we need, that we’re going to stumble across each other one way or another. Let’s not put stock in how it happens and just be grateful that it does, that our lives are filled with the love of the people who bring us happiness and comfort, the ones who make us laugh, who can change our entire day with a smile or a hug.”

Damnit. There go those sneaky, leaky tear ducts again.

“Are you crying again?”

“No,” I cry, drying my face with the neck of Garrett’s hoodie. “I don’t cry. Ever.”

“Right. You Becketts are all very stoic, emotionless people. It’s what makes you all so cold and detached.” Hank hesitates. “Let me ask you something, Jennie. How did you and Garrett fall in love? It surely wasn’t love at first sight; you met him years ago.”

I smile as I think back on the last few months. The countless awkward encounters, the shameless flirting, the first kiss I was never expecting. The quiet nights spent on the couch, wrapped in each other. The hot chocolate, the dancing, the handprint ornaments. The hushed conversations late at night beneath the covers, the envy I’d never felt before, the desire to make something mine. The struggles and the tears, mixed in with all the laughter and the smiles. Crossing boundaries and pushing limits one step at a time. Two strangers who became best friends and then more, so much more.

Slowly, and yet suddenly, there he was.

One day Garrett was a stranger, a man who blushed every time I spoke to him, who couldn’t string a handful of words together to form a response. And then suddenly, he was everywhere, everything, opening up to me, showing me the man beneath the shy exterior, the incredible friend, the compassionate brother and son. He drew me in, and with each bit he gave me, he showed me a place he had to hold parts of me too.

So I tell Hank exactly that.

“Sounds like Garrett being in your life has everything to do with all the pieces of you that made him want to stay, Jennie. Not the person who brought him to you.”

Hank is right. Garrett didn’t fall in love with me because of Carter. He didn’t choose me out of convenience. Carter put him in my life, and Garrett embraced me.

“You are worthy of every single thing you desire, Jennie. Don’t you ever, ever give up your dream, whatever that dream may be.”

My dream? I don’t think this is it, not here.

My dream is at home. It’s letting myself be loved by the people who want to love me, the ones who make me feel so full and beautiful and spectacular that I feel like I’m bursting.

I once read that there are different types of love. The ones where you learn, where you grow, realize what you need. That you’ll fall in love over and over, until finally, you arrive at your destination. You find the one you’ve been searching for and everything just…fits.

But I can’t imagine a better love than Garrett. Together, we’ve done it all. We’ve learned, grown, realized our needs and expressed them. He gives me everything I could have ever imagined needing, and I think I do the same for him too.

And a better fit? How could I possibly find someone whose edges so perfectly melt into mine, taking all our small, shattered pieces and making us one?

I’ve spent my time looking for my place in this world, but the more I see, the more I realize everything has been right under my nose this entire time.

Why would I keep looking? All I’d be doing is wandering farther away from the very people, the place that fills me with happiness.

I’ve given too much of myself to feeling stuck. Wedged between the desire to fulfill my craving for acceptance, for genuine connection, and the desire to hide. To hold onto all my special pieces, afraid that if I gave them to the wrong people, they’d take them, crush them so effortlessly in their fists, and I’d be left a shell of who I am, insignificant and unrecognizable. But if I keep them all to myself, I’m still me when they leave.

And now I’m standing here wondering about the only question I should have ever cared to ask myself: Why is loving myself less important than the idea of other people loving me?

Garrett once told me I wasn’t made to fit in, that it wasn’t possible for me to hide in the shadows. So why was I constantly trying? Why had I become an impostor in my own life? I never doubted my talents. I had all the confidence in the world when it came to dance, my ability to wow. And yet, so often I’ve been ready to fold myself in half to fit somebody else’s idea of who I should be, to be someone that everybody else deemed worthy.

Just to be somebody that I deemed worthy. Worthy of love, acceptance.

I’ve lived too much of my life under pressure. But maybe all that pressure was coming from…me. The people who mattered never asked me for more, or different. They saw all of me, and they opened their arms and embraced all the pieces, the stories, the fears, the nuances that made me who I was.

Maybe I’d grown accustomed to being alone. To the thought that I wasn’t just right for anyone, any relationship, friendship or otherwise. Maybe I convinced myself I was okay with that. The solitude had become a peaceful reprieve for me. It was my quiet place to rest, to take off all my masks, and let myself be without fear of rejection.

But what if falling in love is when being with that person is better than the comfort of the solitude? What if love is when you embrace it together, the chaos of your mind, and make it better than you ever thought it could be?

Because in the middle of my storm, the center of all my chaos, Garrett waits with open arms, ready to shatter me with a love so unconditional, one I didn’t know existed before him.

And suddenly it clicks.

I can stand on my own, but I don’t have to. I’m allowed to be one part of a whole.

I’m allowed to choose love.