The lowing of multiple cattle greets us through May’s open window when she pulls the truck up the narrow driveway and parks it. May’s Birkenstock sandals smack the asphalt, and she yawns with a stretch. ‘Might need a nap after this, but hey, best get it over with.’
I remove my cap, unfortunately allowing the setting sun to beat down on the top of my head. By Boston standards, it’s way too early in the year for it to be hot like this. ‘Is this us finally making good on your mom’s dinner invitation? Why are we here, exactly?’
‘We’re more making good on my dad’s invitation. They’re out for the market, so …’ May scratches her shoulder, squinting at the sun and towards her house. ‘Maybe not so much the dinner as the “back to where it all started”.’
‘Back to where what started?’
‘Us.’
If it weren’t for the way she fidgets nervously, toeing the dirt driveway as she inspects my face for a response, I would have thought the word was easy as pie for her to let slip: ‘us’. The thought entertains my delusions, the fact that maybe she feels just afractionof what I do. That would be enough hope. Because I’ve had girlfriends, but I’ve never, ever known a girl like her.
‘And sure, my parents aren’t home,’ she says to me, ‘but some of the ranch hands are. We have a bit of a walk.’ Under her breath, she mumbles, ‘Take my hand.’
I freeze in my tracks at the notion. Take her hand? She’d probably take off myheadif I so much as tried. But she takes a step forward, glowering back at me with an insistent raise of her eyebrows. We’ve already had to kiss in public, right? What could this hurt?
I reach out, and gingerly, my palm meets hers, our fingers effortlessly weaving their way around one another. The hesitation I feel at first touch becomes more comfortable as we walk, side by side, around her house and down the dirt path towards the ranch. Hand in hand.
‘Nowayyou guys kept this.’
‘Well, where do you think the Eagle Rock kids play pickup on the weekends?’
‘Good point.’
My sneakers stir up dust as we approach the half-size lacrosse field mowed into the back of the ranch. A fixture of Eagle Rock itself, ever since the Velascos decided the local lax and stickball kids needed somewhere closer to home to practise, the field is quite literally the lacrosse analogue ofField of Dreams, except – instead of mid-cornfield – it’s just fences that divide us from the cows. You can hear the cattle even more clearly here. The sound brings me right back. Way, way back.
‘I was ready to call you a liar when you first told me you had a lacrosse field in your backyard, back in, what? Elementary?’ I remark with a laugh.
We cross onto the short-grass field, with its dull white markings, and May smiles wryly. ‘For once, I can’t blame you. This is the most ridiculous small-town shit ever. I told Papa it would be weird. He did it anyway.’
‘Do you still think it’s weird?’
‘Not a bit.’ May jabs a thumb back towards the house. ‘I’m gonna grab some sticks and balls.’
‘Sticks?’ I stop in my tracks where I’m walking around the goal, one foot in the crease.
‘Uh. Yeah.’ She raises a sceptical eyebrow. ‘We’re on a lacrosse field. It’s not a school trip. We’re not just here to grab concessions, take photos, and hit the road.’
Without any further explanation, she heads off to the garage, leaving me outside with just the field,somany questions, and a singular memory.
May came around the ranch house from where they kept the horses. She had on worn jeans and a pink equestrian jacket. Stomping over wearing the chunkiest boots, she eyed all five ofus, myself and four friends from Prosperity and Eagle Rock, with exasperation. Even at ten years old, she had an attitude like a barbed whip, an attitude that I felt the full force of when her analytical gaze fell on me, and the corner of her mouth twitched sassily.
I shifted my stick from hand to hand. ‘We were gonna play, if you are.’
May’s brow furrowed. She tightened her ponytail, which, back then, had been a big poof of curls that she hadn’t yet managed to tame, and grabbed her matching hot pink lacrosse stick from where it leaned against the fence. An insistent snap of her fingers in Michael’s direction got her the ball. She tossed it up in the air and caught it and, in her boots, marched towards the face-off circle her parents had drawn in the field.
‘I’ll play.’ She pointed to the spot across from her. ‘Draw, Colt.’
I was doubtful. May was a whole foot shorter than me, and definitely more than a couple pounds lighter. I thought I’d tip her over, but what I didn’t realize at the time was that May Velasco didn’t just have the uncanny ability to lead a team. She had the ability to lead herself, and that allowed her to push the limits of what everyone else thought was possible. Including me, I learned when she planted her booted feet across from my sneakered ones, met my eyes, and propped the back of her stick’s head against mine. That was the first time I ever played her in lacrosse, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
‘Colt!’
May’s voice, from the centre of the field, snaps my wandering mind to attention. She waves my way. ‘Well? Right into it!’
This is a different time. I don’t know why she’s trying to starta one-on-one, I don’t know what she thinks I’ll do, but we’re not young any more; and for my part, I can barely figure out how to cradle the ball. I jog towards her, and when my fingers close around the stick she holds out to me, it’s a grip of uncertainty. Embarrassment. I try my best to mirror her draw position, but the second I get low, bend my knees, my injury flashes before my eyes, the pain scorching my entire leg. I feel the scratch of the grass against my arms, the sting in my throat when I hold back tears, even as I yell in agony.
‘Colt!’ May calls again. I think she’s going to whack me upside the head with her stick for a moment, but instead, she lowers it. She removes a hand from her stick, then the other, letting it fall to the ground next to her. And she does something that makes me forget all about the pain.
She presses her hands to either side of my head, her thumbs at my temples, and she looks me dead on. ‘I will not hurt you, Colt. I promise. There isnostake in this game. You are not being held to anything.’
