“Ok,” I sighed. I would hug him all day, but the thought of jeopardizing what we had? Of not seeing him, of not talking to him? What if I didn’t get little texts saying hi, or just an H? He would do that and then prompt me to respond with extra letters. We’d spelled “hello,” but also “hoisin,” “hussy,” and “hippopotamus.” That had taken a while, going back and forth.
“Ok,” he concurred, and let go. I did too. “Let’s hang out and practice hand-holding.”
“Don’t you need to get home and sleep?” I suggested. He did, since I knew that he’d be back at the stadium tomorrow.
“Yeah, but I’m living on the edge tonight,” he said. “What do you have to eat?”
Not as much as he had at his house, since we usually cooked there. But we gathered enough high-protein snacks to make him more full, and then we sat back on the couch and he insisted on watching baseball. “You’ll like it someday,” he promised. “Someday, if the only other thing on is the yule log.”
“I used to watch the yule log every year, if I could find it on the motel TV. I guess it prepared me for this,” I said, pointing at the guys having a conference on the mound. But it was relaxing to settle in together and honestly, the game was kind of interesting once I learned more about it. I hadn’t understood the generalobsession with football in this area but now it made perfect sense to me. I thought that I might become a baseball fan, too.
I made Ronan go home after a while, though, because he did need rest with the schedule he was supposed to keep. I didn’t want to say it, but he was a little older than the rest of the rookie class and there was no way that the Juniors dealt with this kind of pressure and level of fitness.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, but then shook his head. “No, I have to be at the stadium and we’re having dinner together there.”
“Oh, ok.”
“I’m a little afraid that you’ll starve if I’m not cooking with you,” he told me.
“I do fine in the kitchen.”
He patted my cheek. “Keep telling yourself that.” He didn’t move his hand and looked down at me. “We’re ok, right?”
“Yes,” I promised. “Absolutely.”
“Good.” He pulled me to him again, and I rested my cheek against the Woodsmen logo on his chest. I agreed—this was good. So was our friendship, which I wasn’t going to jeopardize.
I was still worried, though, and that played out in my dreams. There was a cat chasing me, for one thing, and it wasn’t a normal cat, the kind I actually liked. This one was deranged. But the worst part was that my dad was also there. I didn’t think about him very much, but the date of his death was approaching and maybe that was why he had appeared in my nightmare. I heardhim coughing and trying to draw in a deeper breath like at the end when he was sick. Then he grabbed my wrist and he was just as strong as he’d been in his prime. I tried to pull away, and I woke up to find the sheet tangled around my arm.
“Are you all right?” Kiya asked me the next day at lunch. “You’re really pale.”
“She’s not as pale as Taylor,” Victoria noted. “No, Tay looks a little yellowish. Maybe green.”
“Please.” Our other friend didn’t pick up her head from where it rested on her arms. She had gone out the night before and was feeling it today.
“My dad always says a greasy burger…oh, sorry,” Victoria called as Taylor bolted out of her seat. “She’ll feel better to get it all up and out.”
“You have dark circles under your eyes,” Kiya pointed out to me. That was because I hadn’t slept again after waking from that nightmare. “The purple makes them look even lighter blue.”
“They’re cool blue,” Victoria corrected, and they argued over the shade, whether you’d call it icy or Nordic. “Anyway, they’re pretty,” she concluded.
“You were going to come over so that Tay and I could fix your hair,” Kiya said, and we discussed different possibilities for that until Victoria got a text and wanted to go back to her desk.
When we were alone, Kiya leaned forward. “Channing’s been trying to talk to me,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What is he saying?”
“Just that he thinks he screwed up and he wants to see me. He apologizes but then he adds stuff like, ‘I can’t understand why you’re pissed at me.’” She rolled her eyes.
“Tell me again what he’s supposed to be sorry for?”
“You know!”
“I thought that you wanted him to be something he’s not. Is that it?”
She stared at me and her lips tightened. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
“No! I really don’t understand,” I said. “You wanted him to come visit your parents and make your relationship more serious, but he didn’t want to. He was afraid of saying no to you so he hemmed and hawed.” That was the terminology she’d used to describe his behavior.
