I Hate Football Players 3 | 18+

Chapter 86: Ellie

This is anything but fun.

I sat, completely squished against Logan's tall, muscle-hard frame, on a slightly sticky, cracked black-leather sofa in the living room of the football house. Throbs of party music pounded in my ears and even pulsed into my skin. Like last week, the carpets still weren't the cleanest but now the room was crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with either couples who made out like they were the only ones in the room, held near-screamed conversations, chugged back what smelled like horrendously cheap beer, or, like me and Logan, absently watched the few guys who ignored all the party activities in the room because they were too engrossed in a video game.

Over the thirty minutes we'd been here, Wes, Charlie, and Harper hung out with a small group of guys from the team in the kitchen. Technically, Wes and Charlie stood off to the side and chatted with Kade and Zander, Logan's two centers, while herds of guys flocked into the room and enveloped around Harper.

In the short time between when Logan and I left the kitchen and sat in the living room, Harper turned the kitchen into a revolving door of rejection. Guys walked in, spoke to her, and walked out with downturned mouths, clenched teeth, and averted eyes. The quick shift in their expressions was comical, definitely more entertaining than the 'kill all the aliens' multiplayer game on the TV.

Logan and I weren't anywhere close enough that I caught Harper's conversations but the desperate way the guys looked at her, how their tongues practically laid out on that sticky kitchen floor and they hung on her every word, I wasn't sure I wanted to know what they'd said. By Harper's flirty smiles, I knew she appreciated the shallow, physical-attraction only attention but I still kept one of my eyes on her for any Harper-like developments.

Ironically, the only single guy who largely ignored Harper when he entered the kitchen for a drink was Emmitt. Her eyes, however, shot straight to his tall, muscular frame and, once he turned and left unscathed, he wore a triumphant smirk.

Interesting.

Seth Brooks took a slightly indirect approach. He hovered near Harper, laughed at every one of her exchanges, and eyed her the way Logan had drooled over his steak within our table full of seafood plates at the restaurant. The darker look in Seth's fixated brown eyes and the way his lips randomly parted and he ran his tongue over the seam made his intentions completely obvious but so far Harper had behaved herself.

Logan and I both clutched red plastic cups in our hands, the college party staple, and both of ours were still half-filled with water. I appreciated how Logan insisted that he'd gotten them and how he'd stayed glued to my side from the moment we stepped into the house, even as guys from the team came up, greeted him, and recapped the game.

Right when I zoned out Logan's talk about 'three-four defenses' with Reese Masters, Logan's tight end, my phone buzzed with a message.

Jake: Harper miss me yet?

I snorted down at my phone, then snapped a picture of her surrounded by her adoring fans.

me: Safe to say, no.
me: [ image attached ]

My phone was noticeably silent for a few moments, during which Logan nudged me with his nearest elbow. "Everything okay?"

"Just Jake's way of letting me know he made it back to LA," I assured him and turned off my phone screen.

"I don't know about those two," he muttered so quietly that I only knew what he'd said by how his lips moved around the words.

At that, Reese and Logan started comparing quarterback styles for the upcoming game with Jake. I politely smiled at any and all comments about my brother until Reese left for a drink refill and checked the time on my phone again. Both Logan and I sipped on our water glasses and traded a few small conversations between each other.