IT ALL STARTS WHEN PENELOPE ROSS LEANS IN OVER THE restaurant’s solid wooden table, lifts her index finger, and declares, “Tenth circle of hell: you find the love of your life, but the sex is intensely meh.”
In front of the entirety of Stanford’s diving roster.
At eleven fifteen in the morning.
During my twenty-first birthday brunch.
Four seconds ago we were oversharing about our digestive issues, and the whiplash is disorienting. I’ve been taking advantage of my newly acquired legal rights, but no amount of alcohol can prevent me from blurting out, “What?”
Not my most tactful moment. Thankfully, my incredulity is drowned out by the reactions of the rest of the team: Bree’s spit take, Bella’s scandalized gasp, and Victoria’s skeptical “Isn’t Blomqvist the love of your life?”
“He sure is.” Pen nods.
I fill my mouth with mimosa. The taste is far worse than plain orange juice, but the buzz is very welcome.
“Pen. Honey.” Bree wipes espresso martini off her glasses using the shirt hem of her sister, Bella—who allows it. Twins stuff, I guess.
“How many drinks have you had?”
“Like, half of that pitcher.”
“Ah. Maybe we should—”
“But in mimosa veritas.” Pen leans forward even more. Her voice drops as she makes a sweeping gesture. “I am confiding in you, guys. Being vulnerable. We’re having a moment.”
Victoria sighs. “Pen, I love you, ride or die, would follow you into the very fires of Mordor and all that shit, but we’re not having a moment.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re making shit up.”
“Why?”
“Because Blomqvist fucks.”
I sit back in a semi-zonked state and force myself to think about Lukas Blomqvist—a rare occurrence for me. People assume that I’m fascinated with everything that goes on in a pool, but nope. The only sports I find remotely interesting are diving and land-diving (or, as the normies call it, gymnastics). The rest is out of my purview. There’s just too much stuff going on in aquatics. I can’t keep track of Stanford’s water polo teams, let alone the swimmers.
And yet, Blomqvist is hard to ignore. Because of the truckload of medals, maybe. The world records. Plus, if the captain of my team is part of an athletics power couple, it behooves me to be aware of its other half. And Pen and Blomqvist have been dating since forever. For all I know, they were betrothed at birth to cement US-Sweden diplomatic relations.
I close my eyes to resurface my spotty memories of him. Black Speedos. Tattoos. Short, choppy brown hair. Above-average wingspan. The majestic and yet improbable build of every other DI swimmer who ever lived.