After I drag the box toward me, I sit on the floor and place it on my lap. I take one last long drink from my wineglass and immediately decide that I need a refill. So I top off my glass and then gather up the courage to open the storage box.
The scent of lavender immediately envelops me, and a smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. My mom used to buy bundles of it to display in my childhood home. The piney, floral, and slightly camphoraceous scent always tickles my nose, reminding me of her and how’d she spend hours arranging them just so.
I gingerly pick up the dried sprigs and place them on the floor beside me, careful not to damage them in any way. Then I start rifling through the box with more determination than I thought I had in me.
When I reach the very bottom of the box, I see it. The letter.
It’s still folded neatly, as if it was never opened. But it was, only once, by the person whose name appears on it in my handwriting: Conner.
As I pull it out from its secure hiding spot underneath all my other treasured memories, I think about a girl who was lovesick and unsure, afraid and thrilled, and completely different from whom I am today. But as I sit here with it in my hands again after all these years, I’m her again: the sixteen-year-old girl who thought Conner hung the moon.
“God, I was so stupid.”
A chuckle escapes me, but it sounds forced to my own ears. Finally, I move the box off of my lap and lay the letter faceup in its place. It stares back at me, egging me on to open it. And I do. And when I read it now, years later, feeling everything the sixteen-year-old me was feeling when she wrote it, I still wish that I never wrote it in the first place.
CHAPTER FIVE
A woman’s voice speaking in an almost hush is the first thing I notice the next morning, but I can’t make out what she says clearly.
Maybe it’s my own? No, that can’t be right since my tongue feels like it’s shellacked to the roof of my mouth, and my head feels as if it will split open at any moment if I move it too swiftly. In hindsight, drinking almost the entire bottle of wine last night was probably not the wisest decision I’ve ever made.
The woman’s voice goes on speaking, distracting me for a moment.
I keep my eyes closed, thinking I’m just hovering in a dreamlike state, that place in between two worlds where you want to continue sleeping but know that it won’t last for very much longer. That’s when the woman’s voice breaks through the veil of sleep again for good.
“I wish when you looked at me that you saw somebody different. Because I want to be so much more to you than a friend, Conner. I have for such a long time.”
My eyes fly open when I recognize the voice and what she’s reading. I knife up in my bed, spotting her sitting casually at the far edge and pointing a finger at me in mock accusation.
“Girl, you’ve been seriously holding out on me. Who the hell is Conner?”
“Mimi!” I yell and instantly regret it when it feels like my head almost explodes off my shoulders.
Spotting the letter in her hand, I lean forward and try to yank it back, but she stands up and it’s out of my grasp. She immediately goes back to reading it aloud.
“I want you to be my first kiss and more.”
Mimi pauses and fans herself with the letter. “Damn, no beating around the bush for you, huh?”
I cover my face with my hands and groan. “Please stop reading that.”
“Are you kidding? This is like the best letter I’ve ever read in my entire life.”
She starts to pace at the foot of my bed and recites the last two sentences, which I’ve already committed to memory.
“Please give me a chance to prove to you that I’m not a little girl anymore. I love you, Conner, I always will.”
I feel the mattress shift, and as I uncover my eyes to sneak a peek at her, she’s sitting at the edge of the bed again with a smug smile on her face.
“Start talking. Now,” she says.
Before I respond, I quickly reach forward and pull the letter out of her hand. Once I’ve folded it back to the way it was before last night, I tuck it underneath my pillow for safe keeping while Mimi’s still in my room. There is no way I could possibly hide it in its normal spot while she’s in here. Because knowing her, she’ll be rummaging through all my things, and I’ll never hear the end of it.
“Well, first of all,” I say as calmly and quietly as possible so as to not further antagonize my headache, “why are you snooping through my things?”
“I wouldn’t call it snooping.”
“Oh really? Then what would you call it, exactly?”
She smacks her lips together, her eyes going as wide as saucers, and then says, “It was on your chest, faceup, and begging for me to read it.”
My face contorts as I try to remember how it ended up like that. Then I recall the wine from last night and how I’m still wearing my clothes from work yesterday, shoes and all. I must have passed out while I was reading it at some point and . . .
“Wait, why were you in here anyway?”
She sighs and flops down on her back across the foot of my bed. “I was worried about you.”
“Pfft, please,” I mutter and go to rub my temples gingerly.
“No, really,” she says, stretching her arms above her head as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “You hadn’t gotten up to get your morning coffee—you always beat me to the morning coffee.” She rolls over and props herself on her elbows to face me. “Anyway, when I noticed it wasn’t even made yet, I came to your room and knocked. You didn’t answer, and I got worried so I opened the door. I noticed the letter on your chest, grabbed it, and started reading. So there you have it, mystery solved. Now tell me about this Conner fellow and how I’ve never heard of him until now. Oh, and make sure you include the part where you wanted to give him your V card since you told me you gave that away to that poor schlub on prom night who followed you around like a lost puppy dog our entire senior year.”
I throw my legs over the side of the bed and plant my feet on the hardwood floor. “There’s nothing to tell, Mimi. Please just leave it alone. And Neil wasn’t a schlub.”
Neil Martin was a semi-friend of mine who also worked on the high school newspaper. And he was the only boy who asked me to prom. He was my first, and it was as awful and awkward as one could imagine, especially when I didn’t really like him in that way and was only trying to relieve myself of the “affliction,” as Mimi used to call it back then.
He was kind of a schlub, now that I think about it. Poor Neil.
“Ha! Nice try. If you know anything about me, then you must know that there is no way in hell I’m going to forget about that.” She points to the now safely hidden letter underneath my pillow. “Or . . . hmm . . .”
My head snaps to look over my shoulder at her again as she’s tapping an electric blue, perfectly manicured fingernail against her teeth.
“Or what?” I ask.
“Or, I could just ask Simon about Conner. He probably knows about him, right?”
“Why would you ask Simon anything? Don’t you two hate each other?”
She shrugs her shoulder and sits up. “Yeah, but I’d take one for the team just to find out about this Conner you obviously were dying to f—”
“Stop! I wasn’t dying to . . .” I wave my hand frantically in front of me like I’m swatting a fly. “You know, do that. It’s complicated.”
“Let me be the judge of how complicated your torrid affair with Conner was.”
I can’t help it. I laugh. Torrid would be the very last word I would ever choose to describe our relationship. Even using the word “relationship” makes me uneasy. Friends, yes. Definitely friends. But a relationship? And a torrid one at that? I don’t think so.
Mimi scoots over until she’s sitting next to me on the side of the bed. She bumps my shoulder and says, “Katy, you’re kind of freaking me out.”
I sigh and give in to her. I tell her the abbreviated version, ending up at his random phone call yesterday and
my tiny break with reality last night when I decided to drink and read the letter I’d written him again after years of keeping it hidden like a bad secret. Thankfully, she doesn’t interrupt once or add any colorful commentary, even though I know she’s probably dying to. I guess that’s why we’re still best friends after all these years; she knows when I need her to just be there for me and vice versa. Mimi can be a pain in the ass, opinionated, and moody, but she’s also incredibly thoughtful and caring. I try to hang on to that instead of dwelling on the fact that she purposely read the letter that I obviously didn’t want anyone else to ever read in this lifetime or the next.
When I finish, she asks, “Why didn’t you ever tell me about him when we met in high school?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
But that’s not true and she knows it. I met Mimi shortly after my parents died. At the time the school’s counselor recommended to my brothers that I ease my way back into the curriculum instead of just going for broke on my first day back. So they paired me up with another student who would help me by going over class notes and previous assignments and general social reacclimatization. That student was Mimi. And we’ve been inseparable ever since.
“Okay, so you neglected to tell me about him back then. Not a big deal. You’re forgiven.” Mimi’s eyes light up and then she says, “But now—”
“Now what?” I immediately regret saying this out loud. “You know what? Forget I asked.”
“Of course there is a now what.” She stands up and plants both hands on her hips. “Now, you have me at your disposal to help you catch him.”
I laugh as I brush my hair off my face to look up at her. “I’m not going to try and catch him, Mimi. I mean, it’s been years since we’ve seen each other; we’ve both changed a lot since then. Not to mention he’s probably married or has a girlfriend or something. And I’m not even interested in him like that anymore.”
“Sure you aren’t.”
“It’s true.” I slowly stand up, still feeling off-kilter. “I’m not.”
“You do realize you drank an entire bottle of wine last night and—”
I hold my hand up to stop her. “For the record, I did not drink an entire bottle of wine.”
“Fine. You didn’t drink an entire bottle of wine.” Mimi leans against my dresser and smiles. “You drank an almost-full-to-the-brim bottle of wine.”
I don’t even bother to correct her, which she takes as a sign that I want to continue this conversation, when in fact I want nothing more than to pretend yesterday never happened.
“So you’re drunk here. All alone, I might add,” she says as if that was scandalous. “Then you pull this letter out from God knows where and spend the rest of your drunk time pining over this dude, Conner.”
I run my hands through my hair in frustration. Deciding that I must be the one to nip this conversation in the bud, I grab my robe from the back of my closet door and start walking to the bathroom to take a shower.
“I mean, who does that?” Mimi asks as she follows me. “If that’s not a sign that there is some kind of unrequited puppy love bullshit between you two, then I don’t know what is.”
When I reach the bathroom, I turn around swiftly, and she almost runs right into me. “If you don’t mind,” I say quietly, “I’d like to take a shower in peace and quiet.”
She leans against the door frame. “Actually, yeah, I do mind.”
I tilt my head to the side. “You do, huh?”
“We should talk about this, Katy. I want to help.”
Mimi’s smile widens and her eyes dance with excitement at the prospect. So I do the one thing I know without question will douse her desire to keep this conversation going.
“You know what?” I ask innocently, and she gives a quick shake of her head. “I do need your help with something.”
She claps her hands together. “What?!”
“I could use some help tonight at the game. You know, like helping with stats and maybe some pictures and note taking. Kind of like a tag team.”
“I’d rather stick needles in my eyes.”
I smile. “Well, now you know how I feel.”
She steps back long enough for me to close the door and lock it. From behind it, she shouts, “That’s not fair!”
I ignore her and take my shower, standing underneath the hot water for a good twenty minutes. It helps to clear my head tremendously and does wonders for my hangover. Before long, I’m dressed and grabbing my morning cup of coffee from the kitchen.
And that is when the wind is knocked right out of my sails. Because as I’m bringing the coffee mug to my lips, my cell phone rings from inside my messenger bag. The problem is that Mimi hears it too. Her ears prick up like a German shepherd’s at the sound. We then stare at each other over the rim of our respective mugs, waiting to see who’s going to move first. Mimi’s mouth curling up in a devilish grin gives her away, so I casually put my mug down and make my move. She’s quick on my heels and jumps over the back of the couch to beat me to it.
“Don’t you dare,” I say in my most deadly voice.
With a devious smile on her lips, she fishes my cell phone out anyway and quickly answers it.
“Hello,” she says into the phone, her eyes glinting with mischief. “Oh no, this isn’t Katy. This is her amazing and totally awesome best friend and roommate, Mimi, at your service.” She stops herself long enough to stare back at me in defiance before adding as an afterthought, “It’s nice to meet you too, Conner.”
I mute-yell at her and wave my arms to get her to stop as if I’m signaling a jet to a safe landing on a runway. But she just keeps right on going as if I wasn’t even there, as if this is something she does every single day of her life. As if she doesn’t even realize how absolutely nuts she is.
“Actually, she’s kind of tied up at the moment and probably will be most of the day. But she will be stopping by my job later tonight.”
I inch up closer to her as my face flames red in anger, and she immediately puts a hand up to stop me. “It’s called Canyon Café.”
“Oh my God, please hang up,” I whisper in between clenched teeth.
“Well, I’m a fashion designer by day and bartender by night. You know how it is . . . a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to make the rent.” She tosses her head back and laughs at whatever he says, then blurts out, “So, are you single?”
That’s it. I’m going to kill her.
She peers up at me and must see that I’ve reached my limit, because all of a sudden she looks panicked.
“Yeah, she’s just really busy right now, Conner,” Mimi says.
My hands lunge forward. Whether it’s to choke Mimi or bat the phone away from her ear, I’m not sure. She starts walking backward toward the kitchen again, talking a mile a minute on the phone. “Yes, that’s right. It’s called the Canyon Café, and she’ll be there at nine thirty tonight.”
The blood drains from my face and my stomach lurches as she gives me a quick thumbs-up and finally says good-bye to Conner. She presses a button on my phone and then hands it back to me.
When I stand there frozen for a second or two, she says, “He’s single.”
“I can’t believe you just did that to me.” I cover my face with my hands and then mumble, “And I can’t believe you asked him if he was single.”
Mimi appears unfazed and undeterred. If anything, she looks as if she thinks she just did me the world’s biggest favor. She proves me right by saying with a huge smile and a wink, “You’re welcome.”
CHAPTER SIX
Usually, I’m extremely focused while I’m working. For example, tonight, the opening game of the Barracudas’ season, I should be attuned to every play on the field from the moment the referee’s whistle blows in the first quarter until the very end.
But I’m not.
My thoughts are all over the place. I can barely concentrate on the game as I try to push out of my head the idea of seeing Conner in . . . ? I glan
ce at my watch to confirm how much time I have. Christ! I have less than three hours.
All right, I need to get my butt in gear and actually try to get some work done. I’ve never ever missed a deadline and I’m not about to let this keep me from making one. I start by taking my camera out of my bag and snapping a few pictures, which seems to help to get me back on track, so I decide to continue taking pictures by walking to the far side of the field and closer to the goal line, where the Barracudas are in the red zone again.
Once I’m stationed there and the play is called dead by the referee, I hear a familiar voice standing right next to me.
“They look really good. Just like you said they would.”
I smile behind the lens and say, “I told you they’d be amazing this year.”
I pull the camera away from my face to look at Jonathan, who’s dressed casually and looks more relaxed than I’ve seen him in a very long time. Too long.
“Do you need help with anything?”
“No.” I put the camera back in my bag for the moment. “Just wanted to take some shots before they scored.”
He nods and folds his arms across his chest. And the look of pure bliss on his face as he watches the action play out on the field helps me to regain the focus I was severely lacking.
See, when you get down to it, football is like a well-choreographed ballet. Albeit with violent hits, grunts and groans, and cheers from the sea of people on the aluminum benches on either side. Because a player can run with the grace and speed of a gazelle down the field while the ball sails in the air in a tight spiral to his awaiting, outstretched arms. And then the chase ensues with finesse and strength displayed by both teams. No matter the outcome, one team chants victory as the other hangs their heads in disappointment. It’s beautiful and at times tragic, and I love every single second of it.
Before long, the game is over and the Barracudas, as I predicted, win handily with a final score of 45–14. As I’m finishing up my notes, Jonathan says a quick good-bye and lets me know that he’ll catch up with me later in the week. I head on over to the Barracudas’ new head coach for a quick interview. I also want a few words with their star wide receiver, who I’m sure is going to be famous one day if he stays healthy. He’s got the work ethic, the grades, and the support system all in place to make it to the big time. But more than anything, he has a raw talent and hunger for the game unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. He is a true force to be reckoned with on the field, and to witness talent like that blossom over the last three years is a privilege, as far as I’m concerned.
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