“Agree with me when you don’t agree with me. I hate it.”
“Why?”
Her forehead doesn’t screw up, her eyes don’t tense—maybe it’s that pink neon flashing from outside our window, but I get the feeling this tea kettle’s about to blow. “Fine. Agree with me all you want. It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re not very convincing,” I say. She looks at me, dead-eyed. “What? You told me not to agree with you!”
She closes her eyes and laughs under her breath, like she’s in pain. “You are … impossible.”
“No,thisis impossible,” I say, gesturing between us with the straw and immediately wishing I hadn’t, both because milkshake dribbles between us and because I gave away too much of my hand.
Unfortunately for me, she nods like she agrees. Like she’s run the numbers and knows this is a mathematical impossibility when all I was trying to say is the math is out of my league. She drinks her shake down until there’s maybe an inch left, right before the straw starts making that hollow, desperate sucking sound. “I’m not Little Miss Exit Strategy,” she says, staring ather nearly empty glass. “I’m the one who stays to make sure everyone else has a way out.”
The sincerity in her words hits like a line drive straight to my chest. I’m sure there’s truth there, but it’s not the whole truth.
I wish I could reach across the table and grab her hand. Wish I could peer into her eyes and force the rest of the story out of her. I’ve known since our third conversation that she doesn’t need glasses—staring in her eyes made it obvious there was no magnification. The glasses are for show. A wall quietly separating her from the rest of the world.
“It was a bad joke. I’m sorry I said it.”
She nods, but whatever pressure I stirred up hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just gone quiet. I finish my shake. She pushes hers away, leaving the rest unfinished.
We take the bill to the front, where I ignore Scottie trying to take out her wallet. She drives me home in a silence more fragile than thin ice—one wrong step, and we’re going under.
When she pulls up to my curb, the engine idles softly.
“See you at 0800, Quinn,” I say, trying to bring back a flicker of light. “I’ll bring you a whistle.”
She exhales a laugh that makes my chest ache with how much more I want. “Go to sleep, Fischer.”
I watch from my front door until her taillights turn out of sight. Then I go inside, where the house smells like our leather couch and Logan’s rotisserie chicken … and the scent of black cherry milkshake that’s somehow caught a ride home on my hoodie.
I got a C in my college lit class, so take this for what it’s worth:
This whole night has felt like a study in symbolism: the cold tunnel, the dark road, the milkshake that was as tart as it was sweet.
Tonight I was too tired to be charming. Too wrung out to deflect or joke my way around the edges of things. I just... said stuff. Real stuff. And she stayed for all of it.
I don’t let myself think too hard about what that means.
Instead I think about her wanting me to slow down. Me waiting for her to catch up.
And her leaving the remains of the shake, refusing to take those last desperate sips.
She said she’s the girl who stays. But if that’s the case, I need to figure out why she could stay for a jerk like Jake Rodgers when she slipped away from me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Scottie
The camp starts at nine a.m., so naturally I’m at the stadium at seven.
The service entrance smells like dew, a scent that belongs to the early hours of the day. My badge beeps me in, fluorescent lights flicker overhead, and my boots echo down the concrete corridor as I mentally prep for the conversation to come with the facilities manager, Sam.
I emailed Kayla and Sam last night to make sure the location change can happen after lunch. Kayla won’t care at all, but Sam is going to give me a headache. His crew is already stretched thin replacing the turf. I get it. But these camps are what keep us paid during the offseason.
I unlock my phone as I cut through the tunnel toward the field, breath fogging faintly in front of me. It’s cold in that damp, low-forties way that can chill you to your bones if you’re not wearing enough layers (which I am). Dew darkens the grass under the stadium lights, and somewhere behind the scenes acart rattles past, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the quiet. I scan my inbox as I walk, responding with one hand while my other holds a day’s worth of water in a stainless steel tumbler. I force myself to take a long drink.
Am I trying to finish off my water so I can spend the rest of the day drinking caffeine?
