“I need to talk to Coach.” I rubbed my chest over my twinging heart. My stomach twisted at the thought of how I’d spoken to him in his office, at how furious I’d been. “Find out what I need to do to prove I’m ready to be back on the team.” I leaned my head against Ren’s and sighed. “And take that appointment with Doctor Griffin today. Talk about what happened and work on his strategies. Idowant to get better. I hate not being able to eat normally. I hate the thoughts in my head getting bigger. I wish I could silence them.”
“The brain’s a liar.” Oli stepped forward into me and Ren, and we wrapped ourselves around him. “But you can train it, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can. And I will.”
Pa sighed. “I don’t agree with it because I hate what football has done to you. But I love you. If that’s what you want, then I’ll help you make it happen. We’ll take you to the best nutritionists in the state if we have to, ones with experience with eating issues. We’ll figure this out.”
I smiled, warmth spreading and pushing out the pain. “Thanks, Pa. You’re the best dad anyone could ask for.”
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.” I let him kiss my temple even though I was still in the cuddle pile of my two boyfriends. Anger and resentment lingered deep in my soul, along with thedisappointment and grief, but I could win against it. I knew I could. And I had the support to do it, too.
21
OLI
The pale afternoon sunshine gave everything outside a milky glow as I snuggled into my winter coat in the back seat of KC’s Jeep. I kept my gloves on because even though heat was blasting from the vents, there was still a harsh chill in the air. Perry Como’s “Home for the Holidays” played softly through the speakers. The song wasn’t on a playlist, though. It was part of the end-of-the-year holiday blowout on the classic rock radio station, something I listened to each year with Mom.
Nostalgia tugged at my heart.
When I was little, we were too poor to afford devices that could play music. She didn’t even have a smartphone. But one of the old apartments we’d lived in had a radio on the underside of the kitchen cabinets and it was always on, filling our space with music and life when she was too tired to do it herself. The radio had been the soundtrack of our lives for years.
“So.” Ren glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Is your mom going to have her house stuffed with pies and cakes and candies and ham and stuff?” I couldn’t tell if he was hopefulor apprehensive. When he cut a quick glance at KC, I thought maybe it was both.
“Uh, usually yes? But I’m not sure. We spent so many years being busted broke that it’s a possibility that she went overboard. She sometimes gets lost in the idea of making things up to me.” Anxiety twisted inside me as I studied KC’s profile. He was cute in a beanie with a white pompom on top. His cheeks flushed pink as he caught Ren looking at him. I glanced out the window, but I was pretty sure he’d noticed me, too.
KC groaned and rested his head against the window, his pompom flopping sadly to the left. “I don’t care what you guys eat, you know? I just don’t want anyone to be upset if I don’t want a pile of cookies or Buckeye balls.”
Ren snickered and it turned into a snort. “What are Buckeye balls?” He leered at KC. “Balls. I have some balls for you if you want to eat them.”
I rolled my eyes, but he was busy being a jackass, so he didn’t say anything about it. “Homemade peanut butter fudge dipped in chocolate. I’m not sure why they call them that, though. You don’t have them in LA?”
He slowly shook his head, then gave me a broken puppy head tilt. “I’m pretty sure you would be arrested for eating something like that in my mother’s house. Not even the German nanny I had when I was four cooked anything like that. And our regular cook must’ve hadfatfreetattooed on the inside of her eyelids. If parties were catered, they were busy serving Parisian pastries and other crap that was too tiny to be a mouthful. My mom thought Paris was the end all, be all of food.”
KC turned to gape at him, and I was probably doing something similar because I snapped my mouth closed when pink brushed the tips of Ren’s ears.
“So, you were, like,actuallyrich?” I asked, leaning forward.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Nowereabout it. I’m a trust fund baby.”
“You’re like,richrich? How did I not know this?” My body felt weird and floaty.
KC grunted in agreement, but I guess his dad had cash, too, in order to afford their nice place.
“Barber doesn’t exactly know the good table manners,” I said, scowling. “You’re not messing with me, are you?”
“Luke chose not to be a part of all that,” Ren said, dead serious. “If you backed him into a corner and his life depended on it, he could probably remember which fork to use for which food. Mom wouldn’t have it any other way.”
KC and I shared a long look. Was the holiday bullshit cracking his brain?
“Um,” I said.
Awkwardness loomed over us as Ren’s mouth settled into a firm line. Did he share more than he was comfortable with?
“That’s cool. Oh yeah. Food. That’s what we were talking about. Well, Mom usually has a veggie tray and healthy stuff, too, if we’re munching. Sheisa mom.”
KC settled back against his seat and sank low. “I don’t want to think about it too much today.”
