I’ll never understand why girls have to go to the bathroom in packs. It doesn’t make sense. And it’s messing with my ability to get back inside Lily. Whatever. I can wait until after dessert. Post-food there’ll definitely be an opportunity to disappear again.

Sadly, by the time dinner’s over, the girls have all vanished over some Violet-related emergency. Miller, Lance, and I are standing around, drinking beers while we wait for them to figure out what the problem is. Miller keeps getting texts from Sunny and passing his phone to me. Despite the fact that they’ve been dating nearly six months, Sunny still uses a lot of text slang, and that doesn’t work for Miller.

The short forms combined with numbers and missing vowels make the messages difficult for him to read. Most of the time I send him voice memos. It’s way easier. He’s got a memory like a steel trap if he’s told the information rather than having to read it.

“Says something about the moops.” I pass the phone back.

“What are moops?” Lance asks.

“Violet can’t handle dairy; it gives her problems.” Miller hands me his phone again. There are more messages from Sunny.

“Problems?”

“It goes right through her,” Miller says.

Lance pulls a face. “That’s nasty. Why would she eat dairy if it makes her sick?”

“She does it to punish herself or something. Girls are messed. I don’t get it. I also don’t understand why she’d eat dairy today of all days. Maybe it wasn’t intentional.” He rubs his head as I scan the new texts. They keep coming in. The last one is personal, and pertains to activities later in the night, so I message her back and let her know it’s me reading because of all the slang. She sends back an oops and a blushy face.

“Violet’s broken out in hives. Also, Sunny’s looking forward to cookie-eating later.”

Miller snatches back his phone. “That’s not gonna happen if we can’t get Violet under control. I wanna know who gave her dairy.” Miller looks worried, which has been his expression most of the night. “I think I need to talk to Waters. He’s gotta stop pushing the wedding crap on her. They’re living together. He needs to back off a little and give her some damn breathing room. She’s obviously not ready for this shit.” He drains his beer and sets it on the closest table. “I’mma go find him.”

“I’ll come with you.” It’s more to keep those two off each other than anything else. Miller’s protective of Violet, even though they’re not related by blood. He’s like that, though, super loyal. He doesn’t let anyone mess around with the people who’re important to him.

“You coming or staying?” I ask Lance.

He shrugs. “Might as well see what’s going on.”

Miller gives him a look. “How long’s this shit with Tash been going on, anyway?”

“What’re you talking about?” Lance gets real busy staring into his beer.

“Romero, come on,” Miller says.

“A while.”

“You better watch it. Coach finds out he’s gonna be pissed,” I say, following Miller through the house.

“He won’t. Tash is looking for a ride more than anything.” He drains the rest of his beer. “She just wants to see what all the hype is about.”

He sounds bitter, which is odd, because Lance is probably the biggest player in the league. After Miller got serious about Sunny and we’d go out, he constantly pawned the chicks off on one of us. Lance was always good with taking on more than one. I don’t like having my attention divided.

We find Lily, Tash, and Alex standing outside a door at the top of the stairs. Sunny must be in the room. Alex keeps trying the knob, but it’s clearly locked.

“What’s going on?” Miller asks.

Lily turns; her gaze stops at me for a second, and her hand flutters to her throat. “Violet’s not feeling well.”

“I know. Sunny’s been messaging me.” Miller holds up his phone.

“She won’t let me in,” Alex looks wrecked. His tie is half-hanging off.

“I keep telling you, Waters, you’re pushing her too hard. She hates this kind of thing, and you let my mom and yours run with this. Now they’re gonna expect something even bigger when it comes to the damn wedding.”

“She said it was okay,” he snaps.

Miller scoffs. “Do you even know who you’re marrying? Do you remember the first time you met her and she flashed every member of the team her bra?”

“She didn’t do that on purpose.”

I’ve only heard this story secondhand, but apparently it was epic.

Miller throws his hands up in the air. “Exactly! That’s the point. Embarrassing crap happens to her all the time. She doesn’t want to be humiliated. She probably thinks this is gonna be exactly like her mom’s wedding.”

“You mean another wardrobe malfunction?” Lily asks.

“Wardrobe malfunction? What are you talking about?” Alex asks.

I’m wondering the same thing.

Miller’s eyebrows rise. “She hasn’t even told you?”

“Told me what?” Alex looks somewhere between confused and angry.

Miller lets out a long breath and shakes his head. “I wish she’d damn well learn how to talk about shit.” Miller knocks on the door. “Vi, open up. We need to have a discussion about you not telling your fiancé highly important information.”