“Never mind,” I told him, instead of explaining that. It just didn’t seem like the time or place for a sex talk. “Did you see the guy you knew from college?”
“I figured he might swing at me if I walked up on him, so I got his number from a mutual acquaintance and texted an apology after I talked to you last night. I didn’t hear back, so let me know if you see him coming for me.”
“Ok,” I said worriedly, but then he smiled and shook his head.
“I’m not actually thinking that he’ll do it.”
He was calm about it, but he was calm in general. “Did you talk to the coaches again? Did they take back what they’d said?” I asked him.
“No, why?”
“Because you seem a lot happier. No, not exactly happy, more like…”
“Chill,” he supplied. “Yeah, I get like this before a game. I get in a zone.”
“I don’t want to mess that up!” I said immediately. “Go zone somewhere so you don’t lose it.”
Everett smiled again. “I’ll see you later at home?”
“I’ll be at Jannie’s. She’s staying open tonight to try a new promotion of orange beer to honor the Woodsmen.” I shook myhead. “We spent a while trying to get the color right but it’s not. It looks like a stain on the linoleum in our old bathroom where my dad said that my grandma spilled iodine about fifty years ago. It isn’t pretty.”
“That should really draw in the customers. I’ll see you when you’re done there.” He stepped back but then stepped forward again, and just for a moment, I thought it was going to be like my daydream: we were going to kiss.
Oh, geez. I took a steadying breath.
Everett looked at me and nodded. “Thanks for coming, Zoey. It makes a difference that you’re here.” He nodded again and then walked back onto the field, and I slowly let out the air I’d been holding.
What a lucky thing to have a friend like that. But I wished that I had kissed him, too.
Chapter 12
“This reminds me of something. What is it about this color?” Jannie held up the glass and studied the liquid in the dim light of the bar’s overhead bulbs. I thought of old iodine but she had something else in mind. “Oh, I know! It takes me back to when I was hiking in the Grand Canyon in July, about ten years ago. There were signs all over that warned you to carry sufficient water to prevent dehydration, yadda yadda, but I figured that I was ok. After a while, I went behind a bush to pee and, holy shit, when I saw the color of that—”
“Next time, you’ll know to drink more fluids,” I interrupted her. I had heard the story of her oddly colored urine before and I didn’t want to listen to it again. But unfortunately, she was correct. “Our beer really isn’t Woodsmen orange. You’re right, it is more like…”
“At least it’s different,” she said complacently. “And I put out my sign.”
She had hung her sign in the window, but it was only a piece of paper with “Go Woodsmen!” in orange letters outlined in black. Marketing wasn’t her thing but it wasn’t mine, either, so I hadn’t been much help. “Maybe we should make it bigger?” I suggested. My throat hurt due to all the screaming I’d done and I was exhausted like I’d been out on the field myself. My headache was gone and I was glad about that, but I just wanted to go home, to Everett’s house. Instead, here I was at Jannie’s empty bar where neither the sign nor the promise of orange beer had attracted any customers as of yet. I was sorry for her sake but glad that I didn’t have to do anything except sit.
She sipped the orange beer she’d poured for herself, scratched her head under her tricorn hat, and then wiped off her fingers on her shirt. “Tell me all about the game.”
Well, I didn’t know why I had ever thought that football was boring. “It was so exciting that I could hardly stand it. I thought the preseason was intense but the real season is almost overwhelming. But it was so much fun,” I assured her. “I loved it.”
“And your boy played well.”
“He was great.” He’d been calm, accurate, and wonderful. A true leader, and there had been no ambulance balls, so I thought that those naysaying coaches had better apologize. They probably wouldn’t. People didn’t like to, not even when they were very wrong.
After the fourth quarter had ended, I’d stayed to see some of the players mingle and chat, remembering when Willow and Ihad walked out on the frozen grass to talk to Everett when he’d played for the Junior Woodsmen. That wasn’t allowed here. He had spoken to one of the Portland coaches and then one of their players had approached him, too. I’d immediately sat up from where I’d slouched to rest in my orange seat after the cheering had finally stopped. But nothing terrible happened on the field, and I didn’t need to be watching his back. Neither man smiled but they had talked for a few moments and before shaking hands then splitting off to jog to the tunnels toward the locker rooms.
And then I’d had to leave, too. Jannie didn’t care about me being a few minutes late but with all the traffic around the stadium, it was more than a few minutes. It hadn’t mattered, because her promotional ideas hadn’t worked and she’d been the only one here. Now there were two of us.
Until the door opened. “Hi,” Everett said as he came in. “I heard there was orange beer…” He spotted me shaking my head and making an X with my arms. “I’ll take something from a can,” he concluded.
“Come sit down,” Jannie told him, patting one of the barstools. “Zoey, you probably know what he likes to drink.”
Mostly stuff with prebiotics and electrolytes, but there was none of that here so I picked something that I knew was safe. “A can of tonic water it is,” I said, like that was some grand proposition. “I didn’t know you were coming. I’m glad.”
He looked tired but he smiled at me, just like he had before the game. “I got thirsty. I invited some people, too.”
