Hooped #3 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series, Book #3) Read Free Page A

him instead of me. I can’t believe you, Jenn, I thought you had more sense than that.” Kelly shook her head and picked
up her to-go box again, picking at her food. She took a deep breath, sighing.
    “Just come clean, Kelly,” I said, suddenly feeling
exhausted. “I can forgive you for not wanting to tell me about it because
you’re hurting still. I can get that. I was hurt too. But come clean about what
it is with you and him, because we’ve
been friends for way too long for you to lie to me.” Kelly closed her to-go box
and threw it in the trash, shaking her head again.
    “You’re going to have to choose who you’re going to
believe and who you’re going to side with,” she said, holding my gaze for a
long moment. “Because you’re right; we’ve been friends for way too long for you
to believe what some guy tells you instead of trusting me. If I’m not even a
good enough friend for you to believe me, we shouldn’t be friends at all.” I
sighed.
    “Kelly, come on,” I said, watching her as she grabbed
her book bag from off of the floor. “You’re really going to make me choose
between him and you?”
    “I have to go to class,” she said flatly, walking past
me without even looking in my direction. She slammed the door shut behind her
as she left the room, and I sat in the common area for a long time after she
left, just staring at the TV she’d left on. I couldn’t believe that she’d keep
the lie up even after confronted with the facts; I couldn’t believe that Kelly
would care so little about our friendship to just keep to the same story.
    I knew that she had to still be hurting over Devon to
have done the things she had, but to completely and totally deny that she’d had
anything to do with him made no sense. I shook my head, full of disbelief.
There had been absolutely no reason for Devon to drop her name if he hadn’t
actually been with her; he could have picked any name at all and I would have
been none the wiser. Especially since when I had asked him about the name of
the girl in question, it was easily an hour or more after he had explained what
the situation had been—if he wanted to deflect my attention, he could have
picked a girl from one of the sororities, anything. It didn’t make any sense,
and I couldn’t help thinking that it was a damned shame that Kelly was willing
to throw away years of friendship all because she was bitter about Devon.

 
    Chapter
Three
    I decided to check my email since I had lost any appetite I had for breakfast. I forced myself to eat dry
cereal from my closet stash while I opened up my school account and logged in;
the first thing that popped up was a notification that my professor for my only
morning class that day had canceled the class meeting, adding a note that she
was sick and didn’t want to spread it to the rest of us. I sat back in my chair
at my desk, trying to decide what to do with myself in all my freedom for the
day. My next class for the day wouldn’t be until the afternoon; I had all
morning and lunchtime to stew about the situation with Kelly. Great, I thought. I’m just going to sit here pretending to watch TV and pretending not to
think about the fact that I might be losing my best friend.
    Kelly came back from her short morning class while I
was still ruminating on the situation,
sitting in my room and pretending to myself that I was actually making any
headway in studying for one of my classes. I heard the door close behind her,
heard her go into her room—and ignored her completely. I still couldn’t believe
that she had not only lied to me, but also lied about lying to me.
    In spite of how confused and hurt I felt, I might have
made an effort to at least talk to her again about the situation if my phone
buzzing hadn’t interrupted my thoughts. I unlocked my screen; Devon had texted
me, and I couldn’t help but smile. Got
your note, babe. Hope everything’s all right with your friend crisis! I was
just wondering if