Rhode Island
Senior Year
“Are you coming down to watch us practice?”
I jumped at the sound of David’s voice. I hadn’t even heard him approach my locker. Then I racked my brain, wondering why he’d asked. He sounded completely casual, like watching the baseball team practice had been on my agenda for ages and he’d merely thrown out a reminder.
“Am I supposed to?” I asked. I couldn’t remember promising Ryan I’d be at any of their practices.
“No, you don’t have to. Candy and Violet said their coach is running late today, and they had time to kill. They’re coming, so I thought you might too.”
“Oh. They didn’t tell me.” Those biatches. “But I can’t, anyway. I have a paper to write.”
“Eh, you’ve got plenty of time. It’s nice out too.”
Even though we were on semi-hospitable terms again, it seemed strange that he’d want me there so badly. It made me wonder if he wanted me to see something specific, if maybe Ryan hadn’t been honest about not playing dirty. I searched David’s face for signs of something beneath the surface, but from what I could tell, he really just wanted me to watch him practice.
He smiled sheepishly, almost like he’d heard my thoughts. “I used to think you brought me luck, you know.”
It was an innocent enough comment, certainly nothing that should’ve made my heart do a spastic little dance, but that’s exactly what happened.
“All right,” I said. “I owe you for the flower anyway.”
His hand went immediately to his hair and he looked at the floor. “What flower?”
I landed a light punch to his ribs. “Nice try. How’d you get my locker combination?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled.
“Fine, have it your way. Anyhow, I can only stay and watch until Candy and Vi leave for practice.”
He flashed another grin at me and we fell into step beside each other. “Hey, why aren’t you a cheerleader?” he asked. “I mean, I know you were never into that stuff before, but now I could totally see you doing it. Especially since they’re your friends.”
I shook my head. “They wanted me to try out, but in the back of my mind I guess I’m still kind of afraid. I think about how they practically had me on house arrest while my blood counts improved, and I still feel like one wrong move could send me back to the hospital.”
He pressed his lips together and gave me a look of mock disapproval. “Now that’s what I call a shame. You let your high school career pass you by without ever wearing a short skirt while shaking pom-poms and demanding football players b-e aggressive? A travesty, Kelse.”
I laughed, bumping against him as I did. “I’d rather get my exercise on the Cliff Walk. You know that.”
“Until you get to the ‘scary’ part.”
“Ha! Wouldn’t want me to break a nail, right?”
David ducked as I faked like I was going to whack him with my textbook.
“How did you meet Candy, anyway? I wouldn’t have pegged her for your kind of people.”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
I smiled to myself as I recounted the first time Candy’s and my paths crossed the summer before junior year. The summer I’d decided to reset my life.
It was at the salon where I had my hair highlighted, and Candy settled into her stylist’s chair a couple of minutes before I vacated mine, hemming and hawing that she wanted to try something new but didn’t know what.
“Maybe bangs?” her stylist suggested.
“Not unless I’m going to wake up eight years old again tomorrow, thank you,” Candy countered. “I think I want to do something with the color.” She gave me a once-over through the corner of her eye. “Now her hair looks awesome. Maybe we should get her opinion.” I beamed, flattered as hell at already receiving my first compliment on my new look as she swiveled her chair to face me head-on.
“I’ll bet red would look great on you,” my mother piped up from the chair on my other side.
I nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
At the beginning of my appointment, they’d handed me a color chart full of faux hair swatches in every rich and vibrant shade imaginable. I’d paused a few times to admire a burgundy red called Black Cherry, but ultimately decided I could never pull it off. That was the one I suggested to her. The girl who did my hair removed my smock, shaking off the remnants of what she’d trimmed. I smiled at Candy. “Hope you like it. I wish I could see how it turns out.”
“You’re leaving?” Her smock rustled and her hand emerged clutching her phone. “Wait, give me your number and I’ll text you a pic when it’s done.” She grinned at me. “And then if I hate it, I can track you down.”
A couple of hours later, I’d received a text: Damn, I look good. We are so gonna party together.
“The rest is history,” I told David.
His face scrunched up. “Candy’s hair isn’t red.”
“She’s changed it a hundred times since then.”
We both laughed and I had to marvel at how the simplest things could bring on the strongest sense of déjà vu. When I’d first started at Clayton, walking through the halls without him felt like I’d lost a limb. With Candy taking me under her wing, I’d made friends pretty quickly, but it wasn’t the same. I missed having David’s long strides fall into sync with my short, quick ones, the way our arms would brush together every so often, the way we didn’t always need to talk.
At that moment, though, heading out the main doors with David, I knew we needed to talk. I needed to know for myself if Ryan had reason to be so paranoid, or if he was simply looking for excuses to torture the last boy who’d kissed his girlfriend.
Starting with: “So have you decided on a college yet?”
David shrugged. “Sort of. I’ve narrowed it down to two, but I haven’t decided. Both offered me scholarships, but each has its pros and cons.”
“Which colleges?”
“Um, I’d rather not say until I pick one.”
I stopped in my tracks, squinting in the afternoon sun. “David! Since when are you superstitious?”
He looked at the ground and scratched his head. “Since my dad got sick, I guess. I need to sit down with him and talk about it.”
I felt a bubble of panic expand in my chest. “He’s not . . . ?”
“No, no. His scans have been good, his blood work is perfect. But he had stomach cancer, Kelse. You didn’t see how bad it was. There were nights when he’d sleep on the bathroom floor because he’d get so sick and then he’d be too weak to make it back to bed. And you know how stubborn he is. I had to learn parts of his job because he didn’t want them knowing he didn’t even feel well enough to work from home. If anything ever happens to him, I need to be close by.”
Not out of touch and out of reach like I’d been the first time.
“David,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for that. I wish I’d known. I would’ve . . .” I didn’t finish, because I honestly didn’t know what I would’ve done. I definitely wouldn’t have continued to cut him off like a stubborn, slighted brat. I would’ve been there for my friend, regardless of whatever had happened between us.
Now was my chance to do better than sort of.
“I would’ve—”
“There wasn’t much you could’ve done from here, anyway.” A half smile curled David’s lips.
He was letting me off the hook.
I must’ve looked as lost as I felt, because David put his hand on my shoulder and guided me in the direction of the path that led down the hill to the baseball field. “It’s okay,” he said. “So what about you? Have you picked a school?”
“I’m going to URI.”
He stopped again. “What happened to the University of Arizona? The rest of the apple pie?”
“I wanted to stay close to home too. I’ve always loved it here, so there’s no sense in leaving.” I fiddled with my sleeve. “Apple pie is overrated.”
I couldn’t tell if David grimaced or if the sun was in his eyes. “Speaking of home,” he said. “Why don’t you come back with me one weekend—to Norwood?”
“I don’t know, David.”
“I saw Maddie the last time I was there. She asked about you. Lots of people ask about you. We could all go out to dinner or something.”
“I’m not really interested in being in the same room with—” I clamped my mouth shut before I could say it.
David stepped in my path, making me stop short. “With who?”
Maddie, or any of her college freshman friends who might be home for the weekend.
I looked up at him. Neither of us spoke, but neither of us dropped our gaze.
“Kerrigan!” David and I both turned at the sound of Steve Koenig’s voice. He stood in the distance, waving his baseball glove at us. “We were ready to send out a search party. Get your ass down here!”
David glanced back at me. “Go,” I said. “Run.”
Phew, I thought as he turned and sprinted off. I strolled down the hill in his wake, gripping the straps of my book bag as all the things he’d told me swirled around in my head.
I felt relieved that he had his act together concerning college, unlike my boyfriend. But at least now Ryan could stop acting like a sore loser and concentrate on taking the next step.
“Hey! Look who decided to grace us with her presence,” Candy shouted as I approached the bleachers where she and Violet sat huddled together in their skimpy cheerleading practice shorts. Spring had definitely sprung early, but it was still only March and not warm enough to be bare-assed on a metal bleacher.
“Sorry, I forgot to use my mind-reading abilities to know I’d find you here. What did I miss?”
“We were just saying how cute Crowley’s butt looks in those pants.”
Violet looked Candy up and down. “You were just saying. Like, repeatedly.”
I raised an eyebrow. “For someone who claims not to like him . . .”
Candy rolled her eyes. “I never said I don’t like him. I’m playing hard to get. But let’s be serious, ladies. What could possibly be cuter than that butt in those pants?”
Violet sighed. “My boyfriend, that’s what. I swear, his biceps, like, haunt me.”
I looked over at the diamond and spotted Ryan out in left field, and then David on the pitcher’s mound. He rolled his shoulders back, wound up, and sent a fastball hurtling at Steve Koenig. Steve caught it, then took off his glove and shook his hand, like catching it had hurt. It probably had; David threw a mean fastball.
And he did look pretty frigging amazing while doing it.
I must’ve stayed quiet a beat too long, because I felt Violet’s and Candy’s expectant eyes on me.
“What?” I said defensively.
“Um, insert moony comment about Smurf-Man here?” Candy prompted.
Again, oops. “I didn’t realize it was a contest.”
“If I catch you checking out my boyfriend again, I’ll cut you,” Violet said, only half joking.
“Sheesh, chill,” I mumbled.
Though, from that point on, I made a concerted effort to keep my eyes on my own boyfriend. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. While Ryan looked delicious trotting through the field and stretching his arm to catch fly balls and adjusting his cap over his blond curls, David drove me to distraction. I thought I saw him turn once and wink at me—well, probably at Violet—the way he used to before his best pitches. Like a silent code for Watch this. More often than not, the crowd used to erupt into cheers after one of those pitches.
I wanted to see if he’d do it again, and whether he’d look at Violet or at me. But he didn’t. Every now and then he’d glance back and smile, to which Violet would wave frantically, but that was it. After a while I convinced myself I’d imagined it.
When the girls took off for cheerleading practice, I stood up too, wanting to get home and make a dent in my history assignment. I tried to catch Ryan’s eye to let him know I was leaving. He didn’t see me, so I hopped down from the bleachers and waited a second to try again. That’s when, through the corner of his eye, David spotted me on the sidelines. He rolled his shoulders, prepping for another pitch. As he turned his head to wind up, he looked over at where I stood.
And winked right at me.