“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I’ll let you know if I figure it out.”
She cocks her head, studying me, and I’m thankful she doesn’t ask why I got a tattoo I don’t understand. I’ve been staring at the same tattoo on my father my whole life. I know it means something. I know it’s important.
“Why didn’t you think I’d have one?” I ask. “Too much of a mama’s boy?”
“No.” She smiles, and she looks five. Sweet. “It just seemed like you were different.”
Different? When has she observed me? We’ve never met before yesterday.
She draws in a breath and clears her throat. “Weston was looking forward to a rematch with you last fall,” she says. “But you quit the team mid-season. I saw you play once. The year before, actually.”
So that’s when she might’ve seen me. I secure the tape around her arm. “You don’t strike me as person who goes to pep rallies and football games.”
“I was delivering weed to a cheerleader.”
I laugh, despite myself. It’s not funny, but it’s comforting. I’m kind of glad football’s not her thing.
“Ten seconds left in the fourth quarter,” she tells me. “You caught a pass and tumbled right into the end zone, securing the victory.”
Yeah, I remember.
“I didn’t really care until I saw that you weren’t celebrating.” She stares at me, but I don’t look as I tap her out some medicine and pour some water. “That’s when I noticed you. Your teammates crowded around you, the stadium exploded in screams and cheers. You just walked back to the sidelines, even as they tried to hang on and congratulate you. You acted like none of it was there.”
I can’t believe she saw that. Did other people pick up on it? I didn’t mean to be a prick. I just…
I sit there, pulling her short sleeve back down. “I found this place a week before I quit football.” I glance over at the gray brick wall, gesturing as I read the words in white paint. “‘Vivamus, moriendum est.’ It was there when I got here,” I tell her and then translate. “‘Let us live, since we must die.’”
She looks back at the words, and I can’t tell if she’s breathing. I’ve probably stared at those words for hours in total.
“I don’t really like football,” I tell her.
She jerks her eyes back to me, now understanding. I didn’t want to be on that field that day. I hadn’t for a long time.
She rubs her arm, looking down. “I don’t like a lot,” she almost whispers. “Some things you have to put up with.”
“Some things you do.”
I understand what she’s saying. I could quit football, because I don’t need a scholarship. I can quit jobs, because I don’t need the money. I know I’m lucky. I have choices.
“And sometimes you can just quit. Leave. Hide,” I say. “Sometimes that’s okay.”
She raises her eyes to me, and something fills my chest in a way that’s new. I like that she’s here. I’m glad she came back.
When I saw her enter the alley tonight, soaked and hurt and in so much more pain on the inside than she was on the outside, I went up to get her. She really had nowhere else to go. It wasn’t right. How does a kid get to be that alone? What did she do? What could she possibly have done to have no one?
She’ll never need saving. She’ll always get up. I already know that about her.
Let’s see what two loners can do together.
I rise from my seat, grabbing my workout gloves on the counter and pulling them on. “And she’s not my girlfriend anymore. We broke up two weeks ago.” She looks up at me as I look down at her. “We’re not leaving here. No unnecessary risk. I’ll have Dylan bring you something tomorrow. What are you…thirty-four C?”
Her eyes go wide. “I thought you never looked.”
“At my cousin, dumbass.” I pull the strap tight with my teeth. “I can look at you.”
Her eyebrows rise.
“Twenty minutes on the pizza.” I step to the side and head for the gym. “Come and get me when it’s ready.”
Aro
I can look at you.
Does that mean he likes to?
Two days later, and I’m still obsessing about it.
I gaze down at the T-shirt, grinding a thread from one of the holes in the thigh of my jeans between my fingers before I take in my reflection in the fish pond.
He looked at me.
I guess I told him to when I thought he was avoiding acknowledging me that first night, because he thought he was so much better. But maybe that wasn’t why he wouldn’t look. Hawke is complicated.
The debris from the crash has already been cleared, but there are still some shards of glass here and there, and significant damage to the rocks. Koi swim just under the surface of the water, what’s left of the foliage broken and smashed.