The Love Playbook

by Suze Winegardner

  Fuck. Why couldn’t he just quit this damn team? “I don’t think—”

  “Hey guys!” LeVonn shouted. “With Greg maybe out, I bet Coach’ll play Lucas here. I mean, if his head’s better.”

  A few people cheered, and a buzz of adrenaline shot through him. No one had cheered him being on a team for a long time. It was like giving an addict a shot.

  No. He couldn’t let it get to him. They had no way of knowing that him being on the team could fuck up their futures.

  But God, did he want to play.

  For the first time, Avery’s gaze settled on his. She looked excited that he might play. Really excited. She smiled at him. Not a regular smile, but a smile that was just between them. Intimate, maybe?

  He took a hard breath and waved the cheers down. “I don’t know if I’ll be cleared to play by then,” he protested against every single part of him that reveled in the attention.

  The cheers turned to good-natured boos. Damn, but he already felt like he was part of this team, and that was the very reason he needed to walk away. If he played on Friday, he’d be letting them down just as hard as if he didn’t play.

  But if there were negative consequences to both decisions, did it really matter which one he chose?

  Ugh. Why was he even allowing himself to think like this?

  His gaze flittered back over to Avery. She was laughing with Claire about something. His blood burned for her to look at him that way again. He had no idea how he would survive the week without kissing her. She was standing on a bench, looking at the top of the lockers. How had he kissed her and not touched her long legs? He ached to run his hands along…

  He felt blood rushing downward and averted his eyes. Fuck. She had him good. He wondered if she knew.

  “Hey, Avery?” Lexi called. She was sitting next to Colin, who had his arm thrown across her shoulders. Avery’s eyes widened when she took them in. “Are we going to Danvers City on Friday? I feel like if you went with your dad, we could stay in a room together like we used to?”

  Avery took a second to answer. She squinted at Lexi and Colin, although from where Lucas was sitting, it looked like Colin’s eyes were closed. Her eyes skittered toward Lucas, and he held his breath, waiting for her to answer. If she said yes, it was the universe telling him he should play this one game. Just this one. He’d get to play and hopefully help get the team to the playoffs and get to spend time with Avery.

  If she said no, then he would tell Coach his head still hurt and stay behind.

  He perked up, painfully aware that he was hanging on her answer. It took everything not to react when she replied, “I guess so,” to Lexi.

  Lexi bit her lip and smiled in gratitude at Avery.

  He tried not to do the same. He wanted to jump up and punch the air. The universe had spoken.

  He had to speak to Coach. Assure him that he’d be fine to play by Friday. His hospital checkup was on Wednesday. If they saw no reason why he couldn’t play, then he was sure he’d be in.

  Chapter Eighteen

  On Sunday and Monday, Avery had tried hard not to think about Lucas. Like super-hard, even though just thinking his name made her jolt. He had barely looked at her the whole rest of Saturday evening, and she had no idea why. It was torture. Sunday—the day that should have been her catch-up day to make up for Saturday night—had been pretty much a washout. All she’d done was stare blankly at her calc work while she’d been thinking about the kiss they’d shared. She’d tried to plan her Spanish homework, too, but the index cards she’d put in her planner for it were still empty.

  And she didn’t see him at school at all on Monday. Not that she really looked.

  Except, yeah, she’d looked.

  He hadn’t called her or texted her or anything-ed her. She didn’t even know if he was coming to the lab. She sprayed the plants in her hydra-garden and settled into her comfortable place. Measuring, taking notes, comparing her plants with the control group.

  Lucas could help her dad keep his job. That was it. She never should have kissed him, even if it was a free day in her planner. Even though she had somehow convinced herself that the day didn’t count. But how was she to have known that Lucas’s kiss would rock her world as hard as it had?

  She thought kissing him would have been the same as kissing Blaine, and Will before him. Nice, intimate, and comfortable. Nothing had prepared her for her total meltdown when he said those things to her and put his lips on hers.

  Shit! She had to stop thinking about him. He was going to drive her nuts.

  Lucas was bad news for everything she had to do. She had to work, get good grades, graduate with as close to a 4.0 as she could, and go into pre-med at college. She basically had less than a year to get her life together. Not to mention trying to save her father’s job.

  There was a knock at the door, and she jumped, even though she was half expecting it. She turned as Lucas came in. “Hi,” she said, relieved that the word had come out evenly and not as a squeak.

  “Hey,” he said.

  He didn’t put down his backpack and stood a little awkwardly in the door. “Uh—is this still okay? I didn’t know…” His voice trailed off, but his eyes caught sight of the plants behind her. “What are you doing? My dad used to have one of these. I’ve never seen them anywhere else…” His voice trailed off again, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the hydra gardens.

  That was not how she’d been expecting the conversation to go, but okay. “They’re propagators. You grow plants in them…”

  “Yeah, I know that bit. What’s your experiment? You have four of them.” Lucas dropped his backpack to the ground and crouched so he could see inside. “What are you growing?”

  “They’re tomato plants. I’ve rigged the pods so that they expose the plants to different cycles of light and dark to see how much you can safely accelerate growth without damaging the plant. The first one is programmed to work on a schedule that effectively doubles its exposure to light and dark—so instead of one day and one night in a twenty-four-hour period, it’s exposed to two cycles.” She pointed at each of the three other pods. “Three cycles, four, and five.”

  “They look like they’re growing much faster the more cycles you put in,” he said, standing upright.

  “That’s the way they look, but I won’t know until they actually produce tomatoes. If they even do. It could be that the spurt in growth affects the plant’s strength or its ability to fight off infections or the size of the fruit.”

  He was silent as he looked at the plants.

  “What does your father grow in his?” she asked.

  He looked at her and blinked, a sad half smile flashing over his face. “My father left when I was seven. But I think he used to grow flowers.” He squinted as if trying to remember. “They used to grow big with huge flowers, and then he’d cut them and he’d start again.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but he continued.

  “You know, I think he gave the flowers to someone else. Not my mom.” He stopped and looked out of the window.

  She didn’t know what to say. “That was a long time ago. Your mom probably doesn’t even think about that anymore,” she said, putting her hand on the top of his arm in comfort.

  He didn’t say anything but put his own hand over hers. Her heart jumped at the touch. He was still gazing out the window, seemingly barely aware that she was there.

  He dropped his hand and looked back at her. “I do, though.”

  Her heart hurt at his words. “We can’t fix our parents. Especially if we didn’t know anything was wrong at the time.” It was something her father and her therapist had been telling her for a year, in various different words. It was true, but it never made her feel any better. “I’m sorry. That’s an easy thing to say, not so easy to accept.”

  His eyes showed awareness that she was talking
about herself as well, and she dropped her gaze from his, hoping to dissuade his inevitable question. She reached for her pruning shears, but he stayed her hand with his.

  “What happened to your mom?” he asked gently.

  Every tight band that she held around her emotions disappeared. Shocked, she tried to rally them, tried to rally the walls, the block that always stopped her from reacting to the death of her mother in public. They simply weren’t there.

  “I don’t know,” she began, understanding the look of bewilderment that flashed across his face. “It was a surprise. A big, horrible surprise. That’s what every doctor she saw told us.” Avery swallowed the weird fizzing in her throat that heralded a fully fledged sob-fest. “She caught a cold. A summer cold. That’s what we thought, anyway.”

  She’d never had to tell anyone what happened to her mom because everyone in Hillside had already heard the news by the time they transferred her body from the hospital to Daniel’s Funeral Home. She’d never had to explain it to anyone. “She coughed so much that we banished her upstairs because we couldn’t hear the TV.”

  Not wanting to see her own pain reflected in his face, she looked away. She couldn’t believe she’d actually said those words. No one in the family had ever talked about that. They’d all just stuffed it deep down, somewhere inside. It’d felt cruel. That they’d sent her away, because they couldn’t hear the judge’s comments on some stupid singing show that they’d never watched again. After that, her illness had become their fault, rather than the cancer’s fault.

  Her heart was sick with a pain and guilt she hadn’t felt in months.

  Lucas put his hand on her forearm and slid it slowly down her wrist to her hand. He wove his fingers between hers and squeezed gently and slowly. Comfort spread through her like thick honey. She dragged her gaze back to his, even though she dreaded what she might see there. An inability to meet her eyes? Discomfort? Regret that he’d asked?

  But he was looking straight at her, his dark eyes as warm as his hand. She swallowed and then blinked slowly, her closed eyes giving her the courage to finish the story. “Two weeks later, they told her she had stage four lung cancer, and a week after that, she was gone.”

  The words came out in a rush, even though that last week with her had seemed to last a month. She closed her eyes and saw the shock that had been on everyone’s face for weeks after it happened. The slight shift away from her, as if her grief was contagious or she herself was some kind of harbinger of doom. “I hate surprises,” she half whispered, trying desperately to laugh in order to break the tension. It came out more as a choked sob.

  She took a step back, already confused at why she’d said anything to Lucas. She usually had a ready reply if anyone mentioned her mom. A casual response so that everyone would know she was “all right.” Something funny to diffuse the tension.

  But her brain hadn’t brought any of her well-used phrases to mind. Instead, she’d blurted out the truth, and now she was prepared for the walk-back. The awkward clearing of the throat. The change of subject.

  But he stepped forward to close the gap she had made between them. “It’s okay. I’m so sorry,” he whispered, pulling her to him and wrapping his arms around her. Confusion shifted in her body again. Her defenses were primed, but unsummonable. He should be trying to get away from her. But he was so, so close. She felt the same comfort she felt when Lexi hugged her, but there was a strength in Lucas’s arms that made her want to cling to him.

  “I’m sorry,” Avery said as she lightly pushed away from him. He let her pull away but kept his hands on her shoulders.

  “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I just wanted…I just wanted…” He couldn’t seem to figure out what he wanted to say. But he brushed his thumbs under her eyes, and as he did, she realized her face was wet, and he was wiping away tears. She looked down so he wouldn’t see. How had she unraveled so completely? She hadn’t cried in front of anyone except Lexi. Not when her mom was in the hospital, not at the funeral, not ever.

  She pulled herself together and took a deep breath. “No. My bad. No one expects a total snot fest in science lab.” She smiled at him, painfully aware that the mascara that she’d put on that morning for who knows what reason was on his T-shirt. She swiped under her eyes. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I wrecked your shirt. And I must look—”

  He tipped her head back with his finger under her chin. “You look beautiful. You always…” He swallowed and dropped his hand. “God. What’s the matter with me?” He turned his back on her and paced away.

  When he stopped, he was at the other side of her tomato plants, almost as if her project served as a barrier between them. He braced his arms on the workbench and dropped his head.

  Her heart sank again. Was he shocked at her story? Repulsed?

  He shook his head, almost to himself, and eventually met her eyes again. “I came here to see you…for help, I mean, and I’ve made you cry. You stop crying, and I just want to…argh. I’m going to stop talking.”

  Don’t stop talking. What was he going to say? You always…what? He wants to…what? Her heart dragged itself up from her stomach and started fluttering in her chest at the possible ends to those sentences. And then she realized that he was saying that he thought he’d made her cry.

  “I’m really sorry—I don’t usually cry about it anymore. I’m not sure where all that came from. But it wasn’t your fault.”

  He picked up his backpack. “I’m sorry,” he said simply.

  Avery didn’t want him to go. She grabbed her phone and shook it. “Do you want to see how you avoid the safety next time? So you don’t get another concussion? And end up in another awkward incest situation at the hospital?”

  His mouth twitched into a smile. “Well, no one wants an awkward incest situation at the hospital, so…”

  She pulled out a chair for him and sat on the one next to it. “Let…me…find…” She quickly searched her phone for the video of Lucas getting creamed. “Here.”

  “Oh God, I have to watch it again?” he groaned.

  Avery played it again and paused it, determined to ignore the fact that his leg was resting against hers. Her insides were on a rollercoaster, but she wasn’t quite ready to step off.

  “Look. You grabbed the ball”—she looked up at him with a raised eyebrow—“eventually and ran at full speed toward the end zone,” she said.

  “Damn right. That’s my job.”

  “The thing is the guy who hit you anticipated your trajectory toward the line. You took off at full speed, so he knew exactly where to intercept you. If you’d started off at half-speed, watched for him to commit to tackling you, and then dialed it up to top-speed, you could have avoided him.”

  Lucas grabbed her phone and swiped the video back and forth to see the action. “Well, of course. That makes perfect sense.” He frowned. “You’re good at this shit.”

  “I’ve watched my dad coach for years,” she said, taking back her phone. “That’s all it is, really.”

  He pushed his chair away from hers, and she immediately felt the loss of heat against her leg.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Avery. You’re so kind to be helping me like this. I really appreciate it.” The base of his throat got a little red as if he were blushing. So, he hadn’t blushed when he was kissing the life out of her or was hugging her, but thanking her for her help embarrassed him?

  Immediately, she felt awful again. God. This lab was a laboratory for every single one of her emotions. Sad, secure, needy, and now just bad. Maybe she should just tell him about her dad, so he didn’t think she was some kind of perfect angel sent here to help him.

  Pro:

  - She’d feel better about herself.

  - He wouldn’t think it was all about him.

  - She wouldn’t keep thinking that he only liked her because she was so “kind.”

 
Con:

  - Knowing about her dad’s job problem might make him choke.

  - It felt weird telling him about her father when her father didn’t even know.

  - He might think less of her for lying to him.

  - He might not want to see her again.

  - He may never kiss her again.

  Maybe she’d tell him after the next game he played. Depending on how Greg’s ankle was, that might just be next Friday. Everyone at school and on Brady’s Balls had wondered if Greg would be playing Friday. Her dad never talked about who would be playing on any given game day. But she did know that he’d play Lucas in a heartbeat if he thought he was fit to play.

  “You’re going for your checkup tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Yup. I’m hoping they’ll give me the all clear to play. I haven’t had a headache since Saturday,” he said, getting up and pushing in his chair.

  The word “Saturday” on his lips made her flinch inside as she viscerally remembered Saturday night. She wished they were alone, somewhere where they could kiss for hours. She wanted to feel that again. To see if it was real. Half of her wanted it to be real. Half of her wanted to get back to her regular routine that in no way was interrupted by her daydreaming about being alone with Lucas.

  She realized that she was staring at him and abruptly cleared her throat and got up, too. “So, Thursday? Here again?” she asked, logging into the computer where she was recording her results and trying to appear breezy.

  “That would be great. I…”

  She looked up, eyebrows raised. Ask to see me some other time. Sometime where I’m not giving you advice.

  “Nothing. It was nothing. See you Thursday.”

  She released the breath she was holding as the door swung shut behind him.

  It was probably for the best.

  …

  Lucas couldn’t believe what a monumental ass he’d been asking Avery about her mother. He’d known that she died, and he’d known that it was just last year, and he’d understood as soon as he’d learned these things that the impact on her family must have been huge.