“What about you?” I asked. The thought hit me suddenly. “I mean. Does your Mom…?”
“Has she changed her tune?” Keaton laughed quietly. “Clara says yes. She wants to get in contact again. I don’t know. I guess we have to take it slow. She said it’s not safe for me to go back home in case my Dad’s skulking around and he sees me.”
I nodded. I had to try very hard to resist the urge to curl my arms around him and keep him safe. “What about you? What do you want?”
Keaton breathed out shakily. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I guess… I just need something to distract me and keep my mind off it.”
I thought for a moment. “Will you keep tutoring me?” I asked.
Keaton looked at me. He had a surprised expression on his face. “You still want me to?”
I nodded. “If it’s not too much to ask.” The truth was, I needed him to. Not just because I was going to flunk out of college if he didn’t.
Because it was the only way we could stay close. His documentary project would be finished before the end of the semester. If he wasn’t tutoring me, after that, we wouldn’t have any reason to talk. No reason to hang out. Just me at practice alone and him in the library alone. Never sharing the same space except to sleep. That wasn’t enough.
I needed to stay close to him, no matter how painful it might end up being.
“Okay,” Keaton nodded. He sat up decisively. “Well, we’re wasting the whole Sunday. Let’s get started. Where’s your notebook?”
I grinned and shot to my feet, forgetting about my injury and immediately crashing down on the bed again with a groan.
Keaton
I scratched the back of my head. This editing process was taking a lot longer than I thought it would, and I was feeling cramped up and tired. I needed to take a break and stretch my legs or something, but I didn’t want to fall so far behind I would miss the deadline. I sighed.
“What’s up?” Ace asked. He was sitting next to me with his headphones around his neck, and he was definitely not as freaked out about his project as I was.
I gestured towards the screen. “Just worried I won’t get it done in time for the deadline. We’ve only got two weeks left before the end of the semester.” I could barely think enough to edit the scenes. Whenever I tried to work on anything, all I could think about was my family. My Mom and my sister. Whether they were okay. Whether my dad was coming back.
Ace nodded. “Have you shot all of your scenes yet?”
I shook my head. “One left to go. Olly’s got his review coming up tonight with the team physio. It’s when he finds out whether he can play again or not. I wanted to record him finding out, good or bad.”
Ace made a face. “Hope it’s good, then. Otherwise, he might get pissed at you for filming that kind of private moment.”
I thought about it. Was it private? Olly had invited me like it was nothing. I shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Yeah, I wonder why,” Ace said, rolling his eyes.
“What?” I asked. I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes at him. Why was he making that face?
“Well, he’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?”
I was glad I wasn’t drinking. If I had been, I would have spat it into Ace’s face in shock. “What? No! Of course not! He’s my roommate!”
“Do you hear how hard you’re protesting?” Ace asked slyly. “Way, way too much.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I huffed. “And if you believe it, or even if you don’t, you shouldn’t say that kind of thing out loud. He’s a student athlete. If rumors get started, it could affect his future career. You know professional players can’t be out. What makes you even think that, anyway? Just because I chose to film him?”
“No, because I’ve been watching your edits all day and it looks like you shot a love letter,” Ace said smugly. He seemed to be completely unaffected by my comments about not outing school athletes, but that was par for the course with Ace, as far as I’d learned. He had really selective hearing sometimes.
I looked at my screen. “Wh- no. No, I just recorded what he was doing as someone with a football scholarship. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” Ace replied. “Were all the close-ups necessary? And I watched you cut out any parts that could put him in any kind of bad light.”
I shook my head. “Now I know you don’t know what you’re talking about. There weren’t any parts like that.”
“Okay,” Ace said. He shrugged and grinned at me, putting his hands behind his head. “If you say so.”
