Then he choked at the meet. Again. Gio had called to him outside the locker room after he’d exited with his head down, and he was actually surprised to see her standing there. He had blocked her visit out somehow in the mix of fear and sadness and anger. He’d awkwardly hugged her hello, and she hugged back. He hadn’t known what to say.
“That kiss didn’t make us idiots.”
“Then what did it make us?” She glared at him.
“I don’t know—emotional?”
“A momentary delusion, apparently! That night after your meet, I pulled out my phone to look at our messages, because for a minute I thought I imagined them. And I saw you get into that car with those guys and the booze in the back parking lot. I hadn’t even left yet, and you were already partying. My heart was all gas, no brakes, but I trusted you. And I trusted you until I watched you get into that car. Then there I was, alone in a stupid hotel room, until I couldn’t stand it and ended up at Palo Alto Creamery to eat a slice of blueberry pie. By myself! I was crushed. It was hard enough, you know? Do you know what it took me to convince myself that it wasn’t a huge risk to have real feelings for you? But I should have given you time. You were not ready, and I pushed you.”
He closed his eyes, mortified. It was worse than what he had thought. He didn’t know that she’d seen him. He remembered how wrong that night went, the feeling he’d had when his teammate Jacob said they had a handle of bourbon and a thirty-pack of beer waiting in his car. It was like being on the edge of a cliff, feeling the edge give way and doing nothing to stop the fall. He’d been too much of a coward to face anything or anyone, least of all himself.
“Ellie, I swear I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted to not think. And I was afraid, okay? I didn’t trust myself to take care of you, of us. After that, I read your email and figured it was better that you ended things. You were so clear, so resolved. I never thought I would have a single chance to change your mind. I wasn’t even sure if I should. I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am that it happened that way, how sorry I always will be. I never would have let you eat blueberry pie alone. I loved… pie.”
“I thought I was doing you a favor!Myselfa favor. And you knowwhat? You could hate pie. You could love pie. You couldbea pie. What do I know? And now I have to find a way to tell the world nice things about you, and all I have to go on is a couple of walkathons and a cool mom.”
He did make mistakes, all the ones she mentioned and several more she didn’t know about. Anyone who saw him on a daily basis would have known that he was hanging on by a thread after Ale died. No one who knew him would have counted on anything he said or did at that moment. But that was no excuse. He’d run away from her back then. He ran away from his own career by taking that supplement. He was trying to run away from sharing who he was right now. How long was he going to keep hiding from things that were uncomfortable?
His phone rang. It was an American number with a San Francisco area code, and he was pretty sure he knew what it was. This was the absolute worst timing to get the best news. “I have to take this. Please. I’ll explain. I promise. But I have to take this,” he said. He slid his finger across the screen and began to walk toward the older section of thelungomare.
“Sure,” said Ellie, shaking her head as he walked away.
Ellie couldn’t hear what Cris was saying, but the tense shape of his body as he held the phone to his ear and tried to buffer the breeze with his other hand gave her the sense that it was important. Maybe. Maybe he answered just to stall and it was the dentist reminding him he had an appointment for a cleaning next week. Whatever. Was any of this conversation going to change her opinion of what happened? The better question was whether or not she needed it to. She could go on as normal, not thinking that things could have been different,not wondering if she had been the only one lying awake and turning everything over in her head.
She had gone on the trip with her dad because even though his interview was in LA, they were close enough to drive to Cris’s meet in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, she could never admit that she was more excited to see Cris than to spend quality time with her dad. She was crushed when it turned into a disaster and was crushed even worse when she had to hide her feelings so her dad wouldn’t catch on. She told Gio she had cramps to get out of going to dinner with him and the Stanford coach, but the hotel room had been too quiet and her mind had too much space to wander off into.
She kept replaying their conversations in her head, trying to see if she’d missed a crucial detail that led to this disaster. But all she heard was Cris telling her he couldn’t wait to see her. He’d wanted to take her to his favorite place to eat, a diner of all places, and she’d teased him about eating somewhere that didn’t make his beloved focaccia. Finally, she’d decided to walk down Emerson Street in Palo Alto to clear her head.
The streets had been quiet on the chilly November evening, but the lights inside the Palo Alto Creamery were warm and bright. Her heart sank. This was the place—it had to be. As she walked by, everyone inside looked happy, tucking into their banana splits and french fries. She wandered inside, thinking maybe she would get some hot chocolate to go, but she found herself taking a seat at the counter. The plastic-coated menu had just been wiped down and still smelled like sanitizer as she read down the lists of omelets and French toast, reubens and tuna melts.
She hadn’t eaten since breakfast back in LA, and though a real dinner was still unappealing, the twirling pies in a glass case on theside of the counter had caught her attention. She ordered and waited, feeling nervous and more alone than ever. The moment the waitress slid a gigantic slice of blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream in front of her, a sad song she knew all too well came on the speakers. She’d paused with her fork in her hand and closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the stinging heat rise up her face to meet the lilting voice. It was a song they had listened to together and the lyrics about getting swallowed in the sea were torture. At that moment she was grateful she’d chosen to sit at the counter, because at least when she cried into the swirls of melting vanilla, only the waitress in her red-and-white uniform would be able to see. She hadn’t looked at a pie, much less eaten a slice, since then.
“I’m sorry about that,” Cris said now, walking back over to the bench. He stood facing her, looking like he was too antsy to sit. “But, I want to explain one thing to you. I didn’t know how to do anything beyond following the black line in front of me as fast as I could that year. They were going to drop me from the team. I would have been a cautionary tale. ‘Poor Cristiano’ and all that. I admit that my way of handling it was wrong. I threw you into the pile of people who were expecting something from me.”
“I didn’t expect anything from you. I only wanted you to acknowledge me when I was standing next to you—maybe look at me like you did that summer,” Ellie said, feeling a lump in her throat. She did not want to cry. People always thought she was sad when she cried, but it was frustration that made the tears come. He was already looking at her like she was a chipped teacup. “But I wasn’t the one you needed.” She put her face down, remembering the most humiliating part of all.
One month after the trip, while Ellie had been perched on a barstool in her family’s kitchen wearing reindeer pajamas, Cinzia wastalking to her mother on speakerphone about their Christmas plans and mentioned inviting Cris’s new girlfriend for dinner. Ellie had still been hoping he would call her, that he would take back what he wrote in his response, and make plans to see her again. She remembered how it hurt before she even had time to comprehend what she’d just heard. She remembered telling her parents that she’d felt sick from too much eggnog and had spent Christmas day in bed, curled up and weeping. She remembered never wanting to feel that way ever, ever again.
“Maggie. That’s when I first started seeing Maggie.” He shook his head. Ellie squeezed her eyes shut. “You won’t believe me, but she wasn’t more important than you. She was, I don’t know, easier.”
“Oh, well, that certainly makes it better.” Ellie remembered Cinzia saying that Cris was absolutely smitten with a barista he’d met when she made his drink incorrectly at his favorite coffee shop. At least if he had decided to date another athlete, she would figure that he needed someone like him. But this hurt worse. He’d chosen a regular girl—like her, but nother.
“I don’t mean it like that. You know, did you ever stop to think that maybe you were afraid, too?”
“Writing that email was the right thing to do.”
“Yeah, yeah, the right thing for me and for you. I got it. But damn it, Ellie, why didn’t you tell me how you really felt?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” She squinted at him. “Would you have done that if you were me?”
“I should have,” he said, his eyes locking onto hers.
She swallowed, trying to release the tension in her voice. It was time to get back to the present, to be practical—to befactual. “Cris, none of this is going to change the past, and it doesn’t help with our future. It’s not going to fix your reputation or get my show back, so Ibelieve we have to make a choice here. We either move ahead without trying to like each other or drop this whole plan and figure out our own career problems.”
“Both of those options leave us as almost strangers.”
“I don’t see an alternative,” she said. The finality of her words was a head rush. Ellie stepped toward the railing and focused on the boats, trying to ignore the heat of him behind her. It had to be said, even if it crushed whatever they’d started. He was quiet. Maybe he understood, too.
“Wait a minute,” his voice said behind her. “I need to ask you one thing.” Cris placed a hand on the railing in front of her.
