by Wesley Banks
Candy handed the picture back to Casey. “She is just beautiful.”
“She is. But, you understand now?”
“Understand what?”
“Why I don’t think I can go out with him.”
“The only reason you can’t go out with him is because you left it up to Siri to call him back instead of doing it yourself.”
Casey shook her head. “You don’t understand, it’s just not that easy.”
“Girl, don’t you be givin’ me this single mama stuff now. I got two little girls of my own with no daddy, and while I am very protective of who is around them, I don’t let that stop me from finding my soulmate.”
“I just don’t think I can, though.”
“Look at me.” Casey looked up to find Candy’s hard brown eyes drilling into hers. “No one thinks they can, until they do.”
“What if he finds out about Emma and doesn’t like her. Or doesn’t like me because I have her…” Casey said.
“First off, he’s not going to find out about her because you’re going to tell him about her. Secondly, if he doesn’t like you because you have a little girl, then you don’t want him anyways. That is not a man. That is a boy. And you don’t have time for boys.”
She’s right, Casey thought. I can’t go through life thinking like this. “So, what do I do now?”
20
Patience
April 6, 2015
“Any bright ideas?” Ben said.
Parker looked up from several sheets of paper spread out across the table. He was rubbing his hands over his eyes.
“About?”
“Finding Casey…,” Ben said.
“I don’t know, man, but I think my eyeballs are going to actually fall out of my head. This whole school thing makes zero sense. Think about it, if a single teacher can’t teach us every subject, then how can they expect us to learn them all?”
Ben thought about it, and actually, it was a decent point.
“Luckily they got brownies today, man, or I honestly wouldn’t still be here.” Parker scarfed down his third brownie and chased it with a glass of milk.
Ben just watched as more brownie crumbs joined several that were already scattered across the papers and his lap. He couldn’t even drink the milk without several drops running down the glass and onto his shirt.
“What?” Parker said, looking up at Ben staring at him.
Ben just shook his head. “Nothin’, man.”
“You know, if you would have just gotten Nikki’s number like a normal guy then we wouldn’t have this problem,” Ben said
Parker looked at Ben confused.
“Because you could call Nikki and find out why Casey isn’t calling me back…”
“Oh, well some warning before you decked the guy and ran would have been nice.”
“I didn’t run…I got pulled away by Casey.”
“Whatever, man, why are you still even talking about this? I thought we agreed on Mission Benpossible.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you ever listen to the words that come out of my mouth.”
Parker looked over to the pizza bar where the chef had just placed a fresh tray of something. “I’m gonna grab some food, you want anything?”
Ben didn’t bother responding because Parker was already walking away. He just sat there, still staring at the pile of papers that Parker called notes. He thought about going to the hospital again, but that wasn’t exactly a surefire solution. He could sit outside the hospital, perhaps even around lunch time at the same bench, but there were so many problems with that. For starters, he knew it was likely she didn’t get a lunch break at the same time every day. Second, the chance that she was still even at the Children’s Hospital was slim, since she was a first-year resident, and they probably got transferred all over the place. And lastly there would be no guarantee she would even be working whichever day he sat there.
Parker walked back up to the table with a plate full of pizza. “Dude, you need to try some of this.”
It looked absolutely disgusting. “What the heck is that?”
“Breakfast pizza,” Parker said with a mouth full of pizza and a grin. “Eggs, bacon, onions, cheddar cheese, salsa, and pizza.”
“It’s not even breakfast time though.”
“It’s like a fluffy bite of heaven,” Parker said between bites.
“You have problems.”
Parker looked down at the scattered mess of papers in front of him. “Don’t even get me started on problems.” He took another bite of that disgusting pizza and then asked, “So what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t…”
Parker interrupted, “Why don’t you just go to the hospital again?”
“I thought about that. The chances of that working are about as good as you passing this chem test,” he said, pointing back to sheets of paper spilling from a notebook in front of him.
Parker swallowed another bite of pizza and looked at Ben. “Dude, look around you. There are like twenty hot girls in this room alone. I don’t know how many times I can keep saying this. We can go talk to each and every one of them right now and I guarantee you’ll get at least one number.” He paused and then winked, “A real number this time.”
Ben stared blankly at him.
“You know, because she probably gave you a fake number.”
“Yes, I got the joke dumbass. But I also got her voicemail. It’s her number.”
Parker took another bite of pizza. “Seriously, look around you.”
Ben did look around him. There were two unbelievable blondes sitting in a booth together. Both of them wearing teal shirts with the sorority insignia for Delta Gamma, or “dirty girls” as Parker referred to them. A few tables away from them was a beautiful brunette sitting with two guys. Ben turned back the other way, and across from them was a cute red head sitting alone, doing what looked like a crossword puzzle.
The truth was Parker was right. Ben pulled his backpack on and pushed his stool in at the high-top table.
“Where are you going?” Parker asked.
Ben stood up from the table, “I don’t know man. Need to clear my head.”
“And what about the girl?”
Ben looked back at Parker, but didn’t say anything. Instead he walked out of the cafeteria with more than one girl on his mind.
* * *
Ben tried to focus on his breathing pattern as he moved across the empty track. He inhaled through his nose for three steps. Nnihhhhh. And exhaled through his mouth for two steps. Sshhhhhoooo. He picked up the pace changing his pattern to a two-one: breathing in for two steps, and out for one. His body temperature rising with each stride until he could feel the sweat on his skin evaporate trying to cool him down.
But no matter how hard he tried to focus, the silence of the vacant track began to crowd in on his thoughts. Parker’s words resonated within him. What about the girl?
He stopped running in front of the east bleachers, bent over and rested his hands on his knees. His chest and back rose and fell as his lungs expanded and contracted to pull in more oxygen.
The fence across from him rattled from the wind and Ben looked up. The wind pushed the gate open until it clanged against the fence, and for a moment he saw her just as he first saw her six years ago…
Ben was a senior in high school and she was a new transfer whose name he didn’t even know. She was tall and slender with long brunette hair that curled just slightly at the ends. Her lips were full and there were subtle dimple like creases at the edges of her mouth when she smiled.
It was only by pure chance that she was meeting a friend at the track that day. Ben didn’t believe in love at first sight, but he could still remember the moment when their eyes met. It was in that moment he knew this girl mattered to him. And he hadn’t had another moment like that until he met Casey Taylor.
He closed his eyes and she was gone once again. It had been five years since he lost Amanda. He could be patient.
&nbs
p; 21
Risk Everything
April 9, 2015
A few days later, Casey made her way through campus for the first time since her orientation at the beginning of the year. As a resident, there weren’t many reasons for her to be on campus outside of the hospital.
It was unbelievably crowded for a Thursday afternoon. But she’d been the type of student who scheduled her classes at seven or eight in the morning, so what did she know? Maybe this was a typical Thursday afternoon.
She could have taken the bus. It went literally everywhere on campus, even a stop just in front of the track. But for some reason she’d convinced herself walking would give her more time to think.
She took a left off the crowded sidewalk and cut across the north lawn just in front of Reitz Union.
Most of the campus was to the east of her, and she was now walking west. So, the farther she walked, the less crowded it got, until she was finally walking by herself.
She passed by Ben Hill Griffith Stadium on her right, where the football team played. Then the O’Connell Center, where the basketball team played. A few minutes later she walked by the blue-screened outfield fence of McKethan Stadium, where the baseball team played. Nikki had dragged her to all these places the second she arrived at UF. All the games were fun the first time, but it wasn’t the same as undergrad at California.
Casey stopped in front of a huge stadium sign that read “James G. Pressly Stadium.” The name reminded her of that one actress, Jamie Pressly. She took a step forward to read the smaller print and a guy jogged past her, clipping her purse, the contents of which spilled all over the sidewalk.
“Sorry!” the guy yelled over his shoulder. She bent down to pick everything up. She grabbed the keys attached to her UF ID, wiping the latter against her pants, the same way Ben had the first time they met.
The wind gusted and a rectangular aluminum sign rattled against the fence, stealing her from her thoughts. “Entrance,” the sign read. She dropped her keys and few other items back in her purse and then pushed the gate open.
The sign should have read “Enter here and risk everything,” Casey thought, because as she walked into the stadium that’s exactly how she felt.
22
Shirtless
April 9, 2015
For some reason the blue-colored track surprised her even though she had seen it before. Casey didn’t know if the track was blue because it was the natural color of the material they used or just because this is the University of Florida and everything is either orange or blue. Either way, she kept walking towards the bleachers that were just past the athletic facility.
Casey’s shift had ended at six and it took just over thirty minutes to get from Shands Hospital all the way across campus. By the time she sat down on the bleachers, it was already 6:41.
Her plan was fool proof. Except for the fact that she had no clue if they had practice today, or if she was even allowed at practice. She probably should have looked this up online or something, but she didn’t. And that’s all besides the fact that she had no idea what she was going to say to Ben, if he was even here.
She ran the actual scenario through her head, and it suddenly sounded a lot worse than she realized. I know I flirted with you, let you kiss me, kissed you back, gave you my number, and then ignored your calls, but I’m actually a really cool girl.
As Casey sat there the practice seemed unorganized for the most part. Maybe that’s because it was nearly finished, but it just looked like a bunch of shirtless guys walking around and stretching. She still hadn’t spotted Ben yet, but the track was huge. Actually the track wasn’t huge, but the soccer field inside the track was huge. On one end of the soccer field was a strip of track that led to the high jump, and on the other end, a giant circle was cut out of the grass, which Casey guessed was for discus and shot put.
Several guys walked out of the athletic facility and onto the soccer field. It was pretty easy to tell the field guys apart from the track guys. Mainly because they were huge compared to the runners. Several of the runners, however, were actually pretty big as well. Did football players also run track?
She looked down at her phone: 6:52 p.m. She was still the only person in the bleachers, but either the guys walking in and out of the locker rooms didn’t see her or they didn’t care she was there because no one said anything.
Casey recognized several of the trainers helping some of the guys stretch out. A couple of them were in med school with Nikki, likely building up their resume for residency applications. Most were doing some type of hamstring stretch, lying on their back while the trainer pushed their straightened leg towards them. She had to admit, they were unbelievably flexible.
Several more minutes went by and the field was quickly emptying. Two student managers were stacking orange cones and picking up small orange disks off the ground, but there was only one group of runners still at practice, and Ben wasn’t one of them.
One of the female trainers walked off the field with a runner towards the glass doors that led to the training facility. The girl waved at Casey as she passed and Casey waved back. The girl’s name was Megan and she was one of Nikki’s friends. She looked down at her phone again: 7:03 p.m.
The sun was starting to quickly fall below the bleachers on the east side of the field, directly across from where she sat. Casey stood up and stuffed her phone back into the small pouch on the outside of her purse. This was a bad idea anyways, she thought.
She was already halfway down the bleacher steps when a group of runners entered the stadium from the back side, caddy corner to where she was now. They were too far away to see their faces, but she was sure the runner in the front left was Ben. She couldn’t describe how she knew, she just knew.
They crossed over the track in a matter of seconds and stopped in the dead center of the infield. The glass doors behind Casey opened again and a young girl came walking out with a green six-bottle carrier in each hand. The orange and white Gatorade logo was etched across all of them.
When she looked back towards the field, most of the guys were walking around with their hands tucked behind their heads. They were likely told their entire running lives that doing this expands their lungs so they can breathe easier. The problem with that line of reasoning is that it really isn’t getting the oxygen in that is the problem. Heavy breathing during running is more of a function of getting the carbon dioxide out.
One point for doctors, zero points for runners, Casey thought with a smile.
Her smile quickly faded when she looked to the left of that group to two guys standing upright, one of which was pointing directly at her. It was Ben and Parker.
Why am I nervous? I came to see him, not the other way around.
Ben started jogging towards her and she realized again that she had no clue what she was going to say.
He pulled up about ten feet from her and started walking. He was wearing blue nylon shorts with a short runners slit on the side, matching Nike shoes that looked about two sizes too small, and no shirt.
He wasn’t drenched, but a sheen of sweat covered his body. The muscles in his legs flexed as he took each step. She knew his body was likely experiencing active hyperemia, an increase in organ blood flow during increased metabolic activity. Casey tried to shut off the doctor part of her brain, but she couldn’t.
She could easily make out his vastus medialis, vastus lateralis, and rectus femoris as he moved. Her eyes moved up towards his stomach, and his shorts were pulled just slightly below his waist and she could see the tightness in his illiopsoas. Finally the girl in her took over and what it all boiled down to is he had an unbelievably gorgeous body.
Casey hadn’t moved from a row about halfway down the bleacher steps, so when Ben stopped, he was a couple feet below her. He rested his arms on the mid-rail and looked up at her.
Instead of her eyes meeting his, they moved down towards his lips, and a tingling sensation shot up her body. She could still feel the duality of the war
mth and coolness from his lips that night he kissed her.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no visitors allowed at practice,” Ben said completely expressionless.
Casey suddenly felt incredibly stupid. I can’t believe I let Candy talk me into this. Without saying anything, she turned and started walking down the stairs. She should have known by the fact that no one else was standing around watching that visitors weren’t allowed. But it wasn’t even that, it was the way he said it.
Before Casey reached the bottom of the stairs, Ben jogged over and blocked her way. He held his hands up in front of him to stop her. “Hey, that was just a joke.”
“It was a bad joke,” she said as she stepped around him and towards the gate she had come in.
“Okay, it was a bad joke, but remember I’m not good at jokes. I was just shocked to see you.”
Casey turned around and took a couple steps toward him. “I’m sorry. I just…”
“Lost your phone? Got a new number? Probably something along those lines, right?”
Casey smiled. “Let’s go with lost my phone.”
She thought she could see a bit of hurt and disappointment in his eyes behind the light-hearted façade.
“You know this all could have been avoided if a certain girl would stop playing games and just let me take her out.”
I am so not playing games, she thought. But even as Casey thought it, she realized it wasn’t entirely true.
“Benson, this isn’t the damn Bachelor,” Coach Melvick yelled from mid-field. “Stretch out and then you can go flirt as much as you want.”
Ben waved playfully. “Thanks, Coach, that was extremely helpful.”