I slowly straighten. “Offer stands no matter what. Glad your mom’s doing okay. Glad you are too.”
She looks pointedly at the door, so I go.
Not happy about it, but I go.
I want to see Maisey. I want to know she’s okay. I want to tell her I’m kicking someone off the team so June can play next game.
I want—
I just want.
I want in ways I haven’t in years.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
Chapter 20
Maisey
The day after the soccer game of mortification, I’m up early. My head aches slightly but not so badly that popping an over-the-counter painkiller can’t take care of it. The bruise on my face is fine, so long as I don’t accidentally bump it.
And I have boundless restless energy.
I want todosomething.
Go out andbesomewhere.
Anywhere but here, with Flint right down the driveway and his desires for the ranch looming in my head anytime I look out the window at the sun rising over the bluffs and lighting the clouds with a brilliant pink-and-orange show.
I have my coffee while I research something that’s been niggling the back of my brain but hit stronger after talking to Charlotte at the game yesterday, fix myself pancakes and eggs and a bowl of fruit, and check on Junie seven million times before I finally wake her at eleven o’clock.
Or try, anyway. “Junie-June,” I whisper. “Wake up. Wanna go shopping and get lunch in town?”
She mumbles in her sleep and rolls away from me.
I plop down at the edge of her bed in the bedroom that she’s somehow made filthy despite telling me she feels like she hasn’t settled into it yet.
We’ve hung her favorite pictures and drawings on her wall. We randomly stopped at an antique mall on our way home from an away game a few weeks ago, just to look around since she was so charmed by the old covered wagon sitting out front when we drove past, and we found hidden treasures of a chest of drawers and an old wooden shelf that we brought home and refinished for her room. Her bed has updated gray sheets and a new blue damask comforter. Three of her favorite old stuffies, Mr.Lion, Mr.Turtle, and Ms.Giraffe, are all on the unused pillow in her queen-size bed. Her low antique bookshelf is covered with team photos and trophies from her past eight years of playing soccer.
And her floor is a hazardous-waste site.
“C’mon, sleepyhead. Wakey-wakey,” I sing.
“Ungghh.”
“No plans for us today. We can do whatever you want. Doesn’t have to be lunch and shopping.”
“Mph.”
“Where did you get all these clothes? I feel like I only bought you half this many. And I had no idea you had enough shoes to fill a storage unit.”
“Sleep,” she grunts.
“But we can doanythingtoday.”
“Want sleep.”
I eyeball the phone tucked half-under her spare pillow, and then I stifle a sigh.
