03
STEFAN
I peek open an eye, then regret it immediately. Too bright.
I wince as I turn over onto my side, groaning. There’s a lot of pain in my body, but I’m not sure where it’s all at. Each movement I make is rewarded with a new bite of protest somewhere. My arm. Then my upper thigh. Then my lower thigh. Then my cheek. What the hell part of my body can I move that won’t hurt?
Figuring it out, quite frankly, pisses me off.
Not to mention my head, which feels like someone replaced my brain with a bowling ball that’s hit every damned pin in the world. Every thought I have feels like a sledgehammer.
The sound of a snort catches my attention. I peek open an eye again, despite the light from a nearby window blinding me, then realize I’m not home. Where the fuck—?
I bite through the pain and sit up halfway, squinting through the brightness. I’m on a bed. It’s not mine. There’s a dude sitting in a chair across from it, and from the sound of the air pushing out from his lips, he’s dead asleep. No idea who the fuck that is.
I roll back over, racked with discomfort. How much did I drink last night? I try to remember what went down, but the last thing that comes to mind is my kid brother’s let-down face when I told him I wasn’t up for playing catch or backyard bases with him. “Why?” Rudy griped in that whiny voice of his, but I was already heading back inside to fetch another beer.
I feel a pang of regret suddenly. I shouldn’t keep putting him off. Rudy’s a freshman at Morris High now, and he’s likely having a hard enough time without his older bro being a prick on top of it.
Having eleven years between your only other sibling and spending the first half of his formative years on the other end of the state playing baseball isn’t very conducive to having a close and brotherly relationship. We might as well both be an only-child. He’s probably seen more of me on TV than in real life.
That might be an exaggeration. The painful part is that I have to wonder if it is an exaggeration.
Do I have a broken rib, or is it totally normal to feel searing pain every time I take a breath?
I try to sit up again, this time using my hand to prop myself up. The bed is so damned cushy, my hand sinks into it, making the effort that much harder. I blink several times, forcing my eyes to adjust to the brightness, before turning back to give the other dude in the room a second looksee.
He’s still asleep, his legs thrown over one arm of the chair. He is hugging himself with his face turned slightly away, half-buried in the back cushion. He snores softly, every breath that escapes his lips turning into a hiss.
In a delayed flash, recognition gut-punches me.
I blink several more times. My vision clears. I sit up all the way despite the pain and lean forward, staring at him, scrutinizing the side of his face that I can see—just to be sure.
It is him. Ryan fucking Caulfield.
I don’t question how I got here. I don’t ask how the hell he found me—or where, or why. My first and only priority is to get the hell out of here before he wakes up.
As quietly as I can manage, I bring my legs over the edge of the bed. My socked feet land on a blue and white blanket bunched up on the floor for some reason. Slowly, I ease off the bed, then search around for my shoes, which I find on the floor in front of Ryan’s chair. When I bend over to grab them, pain cuts through me like a fucking broadsword, and I double over and let out a groan, falling against the side of the bed again.
I hear him shift in the chair behind me, and then his sleepy, groggy voice fills the room. “S-Stefan?”
I clench my eyes shut, half in pain, half in frustration. I don’t know how I expected to get out of here without making a sound, but clearly I’ve failed, and now I have to endure this awkward confrontation on top of the agony currently racking my body.
“Stefan …?” he tries again.
I get myself to a seated position on the edge of the bed, my shoes at my feet. My back is still half-facing him. “Yeah.”
“You alright?”
I snort. “Do I look alright to you?”
Shit. Why do I gotta go and act like a dick before we’ve even had a chance to greet each other? I’m such a shithead, I can’t even bear to show him my face, apparently.
He hesitates before answering. “No. You … You don’t. And you didn’t last night, either.”
I feel my blood run cold. I turn my head slightly, still keeping my back mostly to him. “What the hell happened to me last night, anyway?”
“You … were at Beebee’s. Well, you were drunk at Beebee’s, to be more accurate. And you got into a fight with a freakin’ beast, and then they all threw you out.”
I blink at the dresser ahead of me. None of that sounds the least bit familiar. I literally consider whether he’s making this all up and dicking with me.
“I … found you by the dumpster,” he adds.
“Dumpster?”
“And then I helped you up and … brought you here.”
I lift my gaze to the wall where a framed picture of our Little League team hangs, which catches me by surprise. What the hell does he have that hanging there for? I’m too far away to pick out our faces, kneeling around the coach as we are in it. Next to that, I see a framed diploma. Just above that, his college diploma. Squinting at it, I realize it’s actually his master’s.
Shit. He went and got a Master of Science in Psychology.
Damn, boy. He did insist that that’s what he wanted to do when we parted ways. I went to the balls while he went to the books.
Maybe I just didn’t expect him to actually do it.
Maybe a selfish part of me wanted him to fail, regret his decision, come crawling back to me, and fight to get his spot back on the baseball team.
But he didn’t.
“So you’re a therapist now or something?”
He clears his throat before he answers. “School counselor. I’m a school … a high school counselor, actually. Started this year.”
I nod slowly, still staring at the framed diploma, unsure about how I feel.
“I’m a counselor at Morris High,” he clarifies.
Why is he acting all nervous around me? Am I really doing that to him, or has Ryan lost all the nerve I put into him during our years of baseball? Maybe he’s lived behind a desk all this time, and now the only thing he knows is the touch of keyboard keys and fax paper beneath his softened fingers.
The thought is tragic as fuck, if I’m being honest here.
“Morris.” I let out one dry chuckle. “Do you happen to counsel a snotty little shithead named Rudy?”
“Who? Oh. You mean …”
“My kid brother Rudy. You remember? He would’ve been six the last time you saw him.”
“Oh, wow. I didn’t even think about that.”
“Started high school this year. Yeah. So is he one of your kids or not?”
“I … I don’t think so. Rudy Baker. I would’ve noticed the name, I’m sure. It’s freshmen and sophomores that I have, last names A through F, so … I should have him. Wow. What a … a …”
He can’t seem to complete the sentence.
Can’t fault him for that. I can’t seem to rise off this bed again, crippled as I am by mystery pain and bruises I haven’t seen yet, not to mention the massive hangover.
And whatever else is torturing me.
Maybe it’s the fact that I might have been saved last night by my ex-best friend toward whom I carry a sort of teenage grudge.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
His question kicks me right in the ribs, just like this random anonymous beast who apparently got the best of me last night.
Finally, I turn my eyes onto Ryan Caulfield.
It’s a lot different seeing him head-on instead of curled up and half-snoring in that chair.
His eyes hit me first. They’re the same intense, hazel eyes I connected with every time before I’d pitch to him across our field by his parents’ house. His face has filled out and his shoulders still look firm and broad, which is encouraging somehow. He still has that slender, long build I remember so well, yet he looks healthier. Ryan has certainly aged well.
Maybe eight long years behind a desk hasn’t gotten him all soft after all.
“Well?” I grunt at him. “I’m looking at you. Now what?”
A tiny smile breaks across his face, a smile I haven’t seen since high school. It still has Caulfield’s signature brand of I’m-up-to-no-good. I miss that smile of his.
Then I resent missing it right away. He made his own choices back then and threw away our friendship.
As quickly as it had come, that tiny smile of his vanishes. “I’m sorry, Stefan.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “What for?”
“The way we left things.”
I shake my head and look away, breaking eye contact. “Don’t go digging shit up, now. I’m too hung over to even count my toes.”
He chuckles nervously. “Well, you still have ten.”
“Good to know.”
“Sorry. Um …” He clears his throat. “I can … go make us some coffee or something. You like coffee?”
“I sure do. Black.”
He’s out of the chair at once. “I’ll put on a pot. If you … If you need to, like …” He makes an odd gesture at me, clears his throat, then finishes, “You can take a shower if you want.”
I smirk, then lift my gaze. Something about the look in Ryan’s eyes makes me forget my grudge and remember a hundred things at once. Sleepovers. His laugh. All our hours on the field.
“The bathroom is right across the hall,” he adds with a nod. “Spare towels on a shelf over the toilet. You’re welcome to it.”
I lift an arm and give my pit a sniff. “I’m pretty rank, huh?”
Ryan shrugs. “And probably stained with beer and blood.”
“So a typical Friday night, then?”
That makes Ryan laugh, though it’s short-lived and tight in his throat. “I’ll … I’ll make coffee.”
Then he’s out the door before I can draw my next breath. I watch him go, then feel a tiny pinch of pride. I don’t know what it is about Ryan, but he always seems really quick to want to please me. I hate to think of him like some obsequious, bowing servant of mine, but the image amuses me too much not to think just that. I can already see poor him nervously bumbling around in his own kitchen forgetting where he keeps his coffee filters.
It reminds me so much of the first time he ever came over to my house just to hang out. It was right after his pops made him come by to apologize to me for what he said to me in a bathroom after a Little League game. That following weekend, Ryan came over and we played video games all afternoon, and every time I said I was thirsty, like clockwork Ryan was on his feet and eagerly asking me what I wanted. It was like he was still apologizing to me with every glass of juice, water, or sugary lemonade he brought me from my own kitchen.
My chest tightens at the memory. Or maybe that’s the bruise smarting where the supposed wildebeest mauled me last night.
I should definitely take him up on that shower offer. But as soon as I’m sober, I’m out of here.