Page 10 of Hard to Score

There’s an easy charm about Drew I didn’t expect and simultaneously appreciate as I follow him out a pair of French doors into his backyard. Like his house, the backyard is grand but welcoming. A covered patio sits apart from the house with what looks like a whole second kitchen, complete with a barbeque, television, sink, and refrigerator. There is a large patch of grass with some elaborate stonework that matches the front of the house, which leads to what appears to be a spa.

“It’s a little slice of heaven out here,” I murmur.

The steaks sizzle as he puts them on the grill. “A lot of the guys laugh at me for not living in the city, but”—he motions to the backyard—“it’s nice to just be away from it all. To feel normal. Even if I feel like I’m never home.”

“Whereas I live in the city and there are so many nights I’d love to be able to walk out my back door and have all of this to relax and enjoy. Rooftops are great for views of the city but there is no peace and quiet like there is here.”

“You never left?” he asks and I turn to find him studying me.

“For college, yes. But my family is here. My job. I travel a lot because of it, but there’s nothing quite like Manhattan.”

He purses his lips. “We moved . . .” He doesn’t finish the sentence as he averts his eyes and turns to check on the meat he just put on. “I was first drafted to Tennessee and was contracted there for the first two years. Did one year down in Florida. Now I’ve been back here for the last four and hopefully will continue to be.”

“So you do like it here then? In New York?”

He eyes me almost warily before he nods. “I do, yes.”

I hold my face up to the late afternoon sun and close my eyes. “Every time I say I’m sick of it, I travel for work and realize how much I can’t wait to get back home to it.”

“Hmm,” he says, and then he falls silent. I watch him for a few moments as he sprays water on the grill to calm the flame and then moves them to the other side of the grill.

I’m not sure exactly how I expected this to go so I have no stick to measure it against, but a part of me feels like it’s failing. The other part of me thinks the fact that we can do comfortable silence well is a good thing.

“Remember that time when—”

“The stingrays!” he says.

“Yes!” I shout as we both laugh. I certainly notice that he completed my thought for me.

“There was that crazy lady screaming every time one came near her even though we were there in—where were we?”

“Grand Cayman.”

“Yes. That’s right. It was Grand Cayman and we took that boat out to that shoal in the ocean where there are tons of them.”

“But that lady,” I say with a quick shake of my head. “Man, she screamed as if a great white shark was eating her any time a ray came within ten feet of her.”

“That was a great trip. So many fun memories. Before everything changed.”

I finish the sip of my beer, trying to figure out what to say, how to say it, but not wanting to ruin the mood. But just when I start to speak, he changes the subject.

“Remember when we rented that place down in the Florida Keys?” he asks.

How could I not?

I was fifteen and when the Bowmans showed up at the house we’d all rented, something had shifted. I hadn’t seen Drew in almost a year but this time when he walked into the house with board shorts hung low on his hips, his skin tanned and chest bared, I realized he wasn’t a little kid anymore.

And I sure as hell wasn’t a clumsy little girl.

I’d spent those whole two weeks hoping he’d notice me. Every time he told his parents he was going to go off and explore, I prayed he’d ask me to come along. And the one time I caught him kissing the local girl he’d met on the beach, I was crushed it wasn’t me.

So those last few nights I maneuvered myself any way I could to be in his path, even if it meant stepping out of my comfort zone and into a situation that left me in tears.

Something had shifted between us that summer—hormones, puberty, life—but it was only one-sided.

Our families parted ways at the end of that trip. I was in love and he didn’t have a clue.

“I do. I seem to remember you having a different girl following you back to the house every night. You’d sit on the porch and do who knows what with them until your mom would make you come inside.”