When I got the results, Lulu jumped to conclusions, Lamar being the unlucky target of her suspicions. Hilary ran to the health center after getting a text from Lulu, and threatened to call Lamar and let him in on what he’d done. Which I kept trying to explain was nothing.
The one saving grace was that Stacia was too busy to come with us.
When I quit the team shortly afterward and left school, claiming I wasn’t interested in tennis anymore and therefore couldn’t keep my scholarship, Lulu and Hilary were the only ones wise enough to know I was lying. But they were still convinced Lamar was the guilty party.
Thanks to some unofficial sister code I’d never heard of, they promised to never reveal my secret. With kisses and hugs and belly rubs, we said good-bye, promising to stay in touch.
Sadly, I didn’t plan to keep my end of the deal. When it was over, it was over.
Wasn’t that what Drew had shown me?
Jules
As soon as I’d come clean to my mom about my condition, she wrote me off as a great big failure. It was my mission to prove her wrong. Things didn’t exactly work out as planned, but I did my best. I owed it to someone else to be the very best I could be.
On a promise and a prayer, I’d headed toward North Carolina. I found a job teaching tennis at a tennis club, and transferred my credits to a small community college there.
That was seven years and a lifetime ago. College and tennis were both long behind me, but not the memories of King. Leaving those behind was a physical impossibility for me.
Most nights when I lay down, I tried not to dwell on the day it all changed. I forced myself not to think about that day, about turning the key in the ignition or putting the car in drive. I wouldn’t think about King’s devastated face growing smaller and smaller until only his silhouette haunted me in the rearview mirror, a face I still saw sometimes in my dreams, and daily when I looked at her. Except hers was framed with strawberry-blond hair, alight with the exact big blue eyes I dreamed of.
Speaking of, I checked the rearview mirror as I drove along the highway, leaving North Carolina behind. It was time for a new beginning for me ... and for the precious six-year-old girl asleep in the backseat.
Drew
Iran my hand through my hair, which was shorter these days, and swiped the sweat from my brow. Sighing, I tried not to roll my eyes at the overeager girl on the treadmill next to me.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” she purred, but it came out as more of a scream as she spoke over the music piping through her neon-pink earbuds.
Forget it, girl.She was a freaking baby, and I was a grown man immune to silly come-ons.
Most of the time.
“I’m here every morning at six,” I said matter-of-factly, barely breathing heavily even though I was on my third mile. “Except Sundays when I sleep in, and I’m here at seven.”
It was the truth, and everyone at Extreme Fit knew it. If I missed a day, they’d probably send an ambulance to my house. I was a fixture at the gym, every single morning, every damn day.
“Oh, that’s awesome.” She plucked the bud from her ear closest to me, and I couldn’t help but notice her matching neon-pink nails. “I have a new schedule, and I’m trying to come in before my nine a.m. class.” She revealed bright white teeth in a wide smile, her blond ponytail swinging from side to side as she ran.
Most men would have bitten—asked for her number and banged her a few days later.She was young, hot, and obviously willing.
But not me.
I nodded and focused on the TV above me—SportsCenterrepeating the same loop I’d already seen.
If she were a redhead? Maybe.
Look, I wasn’t meant to be celibate, so every now and again, I found a redhead who happened to be pleasing to the eye. They were never as satisfying as I’d hoped, and they always left me wanting more.
Not with them, though. With someone else I’d left in my past.
It had been my own doing, the leaving part. Something I needed to regularly remind myself.
Oblivious to my disinterest, the blonde rattled on. “I’m a pre-med major, so my classes are early. They like to get us used to being up early.”
Of course, after I realized my mistake, I’d tried to look for her—Jules—wanting to keep tabs on her. I had called Coach Hall and asked after the team, how they were doing and shit. I’d even snagged the roster off the Internet, but she wasn’t on it. A few times a week, alone in my office, I would google her name.
Nothing. I never found a damn crumb.
