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I’d even found my eyes closing in imagination as I soaped my body with his bath wash.
    Winding my hair into a towel, I brushed my teeth and slipped into my jeans and Jude’s favorite Syracuse football sweatshirt. It hadn’t been washed, so it still smelled like him. Fortunately, the good kind of his smells‌—‌soap and man‌—‌and not the way he smelled post practice.
    I slipped on my boots before leaving the bathroom because Jude hadn’t exaggerated‌—‌his bedroom was a mess. Like someone might want to consider calling the hazmat team kind of a mess. I’d had to dodge obstacles like beer bottles, cardboard cutouts of bikini clad women laying on the floor sideways, and one pair of crumbled up boxers to get to Jude’s room earlier. The only thing that made his room cleaner than the rest of the house was the lack of girly cardboard cutouts decorating the floor.
    Closing the bathroom door behind me, I stepped back into Jude’s room, stopping in my tracks almost immediately. This was not the same room I’d left thirty minutes ago. I had to double check the photo of the two of us he had decorating his dresser to assure myself this was, indeed, Jude’s room.
    The room was clean, almost sparkly clean. The bed was made; the corners had even been pulled tight and folded over. There wasn’t a single article of clothing decorating the carpet or any flat surface like there was just a while ago. The mess was gone, but it had been exchanged for something almost as offensive in my opinion.
    Orange and white crepe paper twirled from the ceiling fan to the corners of the room. Human sized poster boards gleaming with orange glitter with the number seventeen, Go Ryder, or Syracuse #1 were plastered at least three to a wall. Someone had called the ra-ra police on Jude and he was going to be over the rainbow pissed when he saw.
    Walking tentatively across the room I didn’t recognize, I slid open the top drawer of my dresser and shoved my toiletry bag back inside. Jude and I tried to switch weekends, so I was at his place every other. Instead of just lending me a drawer of his for my stuff, he’d gone out and bought a whole dresser just for my use. The gesture had rendered me a rare speechless.
    Sliding the drawer closed, I took another investigation of the room. The picture of us caught my attention again. Taking a few steps closer, I understood why. A shatter line ran diagonal across it, cutting Jude from me almost perfectly. Lifting the picture, I ran my finger along the line, suppressing the shudder.
    “Sorry about that.”
    I startled, the picture slipping from my hands and cartwheeling into the corner of Jude’s nightstand. The glass fractured one more time, but didn’t shatter.
    Sure I’d cry if I continued to stare at the fractured photo at my feet, I spun around. Only to wish I’d stared an eternity longer at that cracked glass.
    “I accidentally knocked it over earlier when I was cleaning,” the tall, lean girl in an orange and white cheer uniform gliding around Jude’s room said, not looking at me.
    “Who are you?” I asked needlessly, crossing my arms. I already knew.
    “Adriana,” she said, offering nothing else as she carried an overflowing laundry basket of folded clothes over to Jude’s dresser. “You know, no one’s allowed in the player’s room pre game except for their Spirit Sister,” she said, pulling open the top drawer before she began stacking Jude’s underwear inside.
    Two emotions hit me right then, watching Adriana Vix‌—‌a girl who was doubly as tall and pretty as me‌—‌pawing all over my boyfriend’s clean underwear as she layered them away. There was anger‌—‌pure and raw‌—‌likely the kind Jude felt. And there was something that clenched my throat and heart tight, feeling like both might break.
    “I’m his girlfriend,” I replied, trying to let the anger speak. “I’m allowed any time I want. You can run that by”‌—‌I pointed at the