I’m tossing the football up in the air and catching it when Ivy shows up at the doorway of my bedroom. Clenching the ball in my hands, I examine her Bea’s Bakery shirt and tight ripped jeans, both absent of the sugar and coffee stains usually caked on when she gets home. “You’re back early.”
She hesitates for a moment before walking in, eyes going from me to the mess of papers and books I left scattered on the desk and floor out of frustration. “Bets let me leave early because it was slow. Are you having trouble with your project?”
I shake my head, tossing the ball again and staring at the ceiling. “You’ve barely said a word to me in days and you want to talk about school?”
She’s quiet as she walks over and sits on the edge of the bed, picking at the lint on the blanket. “No, not really. I don’t even like school.” Her shoulders droop slightly. “My parents never hit me,” she says quietly, causing me to catch the ball and raise my brows at the random admission I already knew.
Sitting up, I lean against the headboard and remain silent while she stares at her twisted hands that fidget on her lap. “Do you remember that one time I knocked on your window and you had to help me in because I was crying so bad I couldn’t climb in myself?”
The memory hits me hard. Her tear-stained face and shaking hands struggled to grip the windowpane and she was trying to swallow her sobs so my parents wouldn’t hear as I helped her inside. “I remember,” I grit out, jaw ticking over the path of memory lane I still struggle with revisiting. “I asked what happened and you could barely say a word. We—”
“Ended up falling asleep on your bed once I calmed down and never talked about it,” she finishes for me, nodding slowly. “You told me as long as I came to you, I didn’t have to say anything. All that mattered was that we had each other like we promised we would.”
I swallow down the rise of emotion that tries working its way up my throat.
“I’m not asking you give me that out all the time, Aiden, just on the things I already struggle with. I’m sorry for walking away and ignoring you when you were trying to help, but I’m not used to you being so demanding. Before you were a lot…” Cocking my head, I wait for her to finish enlightening me on who I was back then. “Er, softer isn’t the right word but more…patient. And I get that it’s probably because we went from seeing each other every day to being apart for years but—”
“That’s not why,” I cut her off.
Her face scrunches. “It’s not?”
Dropping the ball onto the mattress beside me, I cross my arms over my chest. “I may have been patient back then, but it didn’t mean I wanted to be. Every time you’d come into my room and didn’t tell me what happened, it drove me fucking nuts. But I knew if I asked you’d probably brush it off like it was nothing and that would have made me angrier. I took your silence, but I never accepted it.”
She blinks at me. “Oh.”
My lips flatten into a grim line at her response. “The reason why I want to know things now is because we’re older, we’re away from the place that made you crawl into my bed crying, and we have a chance to fix it. I’m not saying you can talk it out and forget all the reasons that made you want to leave home. I’ll never understand that because I’ve never been in your shoes. I may have heard your parents fight. Hell, the whole neighborhood did.” She winces at the fact. “But pretending like that part of you doesn’t exist means you can’t move on from it. Holding onto the shame you feel for not swallowing your pride and going home when you knew you couldn’t do it by yourself isn’t going to get you anywhere. Trust me, the only way to stop letting shit take over your life is to face it head on. That’s when you can find more than a scrap of the control you need.”
She squirms on the bed, drawing her legs up to cross under her. “Like your game on Friday? People say it’ll be an interesting one. Are you going to face them head on?”
I scoff. “I’m sure people have said that, especially if you’ve been talking to Caleb again. The Raiders had every right to kick me off their team. It’s just a game.” The last bit is a lie, and she sees through it.
“Doesn’t mean it can’t hurt.” Her refute doesn’t soak in, so she tries a new method that has my chest tightening. “You wouldn’t like it if I said the guys had a right to treat me like shit just because I stepped into their homes.”
“Don’t,” I warn.
“So,” she presses, “you can’t say what happened there doesn’t hurt you. I know they’re a good school. Elena babbles about the pro players that have come from there. You used to talk about Wilson Reed when we were younger. Even if you’re making a future right where you are, it’s okay to admit you care about how you got here. I know how much getting into that school would have meant to you and I’m sorry I couldn’t celebrate when you got the acceptance letter or comfort you when everything happened.”
“I couldn’t care less about them,” I insist, trying to drill it into her stubborn head. “Our situations don’t compare. Don’t you get it by now? If they made an exception for me, if I put up a fight like my parents wanted me to, I wouldn’t have come here. We never would have seen each other again.”
Her eyes go back to her lap. “You don’t know that for sure.”
“At risk of you being pissed off and walking out again—” She doesn’t hide the slight flinch from me. “—I know it’s true. How else would we have seen each other? You wouldn’t go back home on your own, you admitted that already. I tried looking you up online but you said you had a fake name so nobody could find you. Tell me how else we would have met up? Because I’ve got nothing.”
“I…” Her voice fades before she clears it and picks her head up to look at me. “I would have found you. It would be hard not to with your name plastered everywhere as a big hot shot football player.”
Her attempt to lighten the mood only sours mine more. “It would have taken me going pro for you to come out of the woodwork?”
Ivy’s eyes round as they snap up to meet mine. “What? No. I mean, yes, but only because it would have been easier to get in touch. You’ve talked about going to the NFL since you first tried out for youth football. It isn’t like whatever this is between us is based on what your future holds.”
I blow out a frustrated breath. “I’ve had people reach out once they heard my chances at going pro and it never gets any easier to deal with. It’s a big reason why I keep to myself. I can’t get in trouble or risk my shot at what I’ve worked so hard for, and nobody can use me.”
She frowns. “I bet that’s difficult.”
All I do is shake my head.
“If it makes you feel any better, I would have still found a way. Even if you weren’t on billboards or in Dorito commercials wearing some famous team’s jersey.”
A small grin cracks on my face. “You remember.”