“I spent a lot of time there.” He jumped down onto the sand from the last step, and then turned and held out a hand to me. Due to my workouts, I was ok to jump as well but I took it anyway. I tried to ignore the thrilled feeling I got in my chest as our palms met and, thinking of my sister and her sage adviceabout how you needed to leave boys wanting more, I made sure that I was the first one to let go.
“I was at a beach party today,” I mentioned. “Boyd’s family lives on a lake near here, an inland lake. The sand isn’t anything like this.” The water had been still and murky, too. I hoped that the two women who had been discussing me went into it, and I hoped that they both got swimmer’s itch.
“Was it fun?”
“They had a lot of beer,” I said. “They had a lot of food, too.” It was unfortunate that they hadn’t thought to cover it or put it on ice.
“So, no fun,” he concluded. “You still hate Boyd.”
“I’m trying not to. I am, I really am making an effort. A big one.”
Everett smiled. “Who are you trying to convince, your sister?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “She wants us to be friends. She loves him so much and she doesn’t seem to understand how I could feel any differently. It’s like she blocked out the past.”
“Maybe he apologized to her. Maybe it’s like I told you before, that he was an asshole but he changed.”
“You did,” I said, remembering. “You can convince your coach of that, too.”
“Yeah, I changed.” He stopped at the edge of the water and bent to grab a rock. It didn’t seem like he put in much effort when he threw it, but it went very far. “When I was in Arizona, I went by the house where my friend and I drove up on the roof. It’s hard to believe that I thought it was funny back then.” He paused. “Itwas a little funny,” he told me. “The guy’s face when he saw…but no, it wasn’t funny. My grandma was furious and she made me work the whole summer to pay for the damage we’d done. She said we were lucky that we weren’t arrested over it.”
That was probably true, but I’d been struck by another part of the story. “You were sixteen?” I clarified, and he nodded. “You weren’t going to get a job until she made you?”
“No. My parents gave me a credit card and I used that for whatever I needed. I was all football, all the time. I never did jack for school, either. I paid a kid to do my work so that I could keep a decent average for college.” He looked down at me. “You seem stunned. Didn’t you know kids like me?”
“My sister never cared about grades or studying,” I said slowly. “I knew a guy in our band, the oboe player, who went behind the bleachers to smoke weed rather than going to class. I never heard of paying someone to do homework, though. And I was mostly thinking about you not having a job. I started babysitting for the people across the street when I was twelve, and then I had to forge my mom’s signature on the forms so that I could get a real job when I turned fourteen.”
“I think my brother and sister did stuff at my parents’ company.” He threw another rock, even farther this time. “I just never did.”
“Well, you’re making up for any lost income now,” I said. “You must be. Don’t you get paid a lot?”
“This year it will be the league minimum.”
On this beach, there was a faint cell signal from across the water in far-away Wisconsin, so I typed in my question and held up myphone, hoping to catch it. Eventually, the answer came back and I saw the number on my screen. “That’s the league minimum?” I asked. “Theminimum?”
“If I get the starting job, it will be a huge joke,” Everett said. “Other starting QBs earn a lot more. A lot, like the minimum salary times fifty, and then there’s all the money you can make in endorsements. Hey.” He grabbed my arm. “Are you going to faint?”
“No,” I answered, but my voice was weak. Fifty times that number? I’d known that they earned a lot, but geez. Geez!
I had caught something else, too. He’d said “if” he got the starting job. There had been no question of “if” before today.
“Do you want me to get you a glass of water?” he suggested. “You look like you need something.”
“I would like to go in the water instead,” I said. I had on my bathing suit, after all, and it might have been embarrassing to strip off my clothes and wear it in front of him, except that was what friends did. I’d heard all about people swimming and boating together, going out as groups. So it wouldn’t be embarrassing to be in my bathing suit with nothing over it, especially if I never looked at his face or met his eyes. And I really did want to go swimming.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” he agreed, and without any hesitation, his T-shirt came off. He threw his sunglasses on top of it and went right in.
Now, I had seen his social media, all those shirtless workout sessions that he’d done in Arizona. I had also seen him toplesson the floor of the storage room closet in Woodsmen Stadium last fall. It shouldn’t have affected me now to see him dive into the waves, come up, give his head a brisk toss to sweep back his hair, and then smile at me.
“What’s the matter, Zoey? Are you thinking about the league minimum salary again?”
I shook my head—the liquification of my brain made it impossible to speak. I walked semi-normally into Lake Michigan, and the chilly water snapped me out of it. “I’m not a great swimmer,” I announced. “Don’t worry if you think I’m drowning.”
“I going to worry if I think you’re drowning,” he said.
“Just because I look terrible and am totally unathletic, it doesn’t mean that I’m pathetic,” I told him. “I’m not.”
“Did I say that?”
