“The hook must have come out of the wall,” Dillon said. “I’ll tilt the shelf a little and see if you can bring down the boxes, one at a time.”
Nodding, not that he could see me, I positioned myself by his side. The end box was big and unwieldy but not heavy. I grabbed it and let it drop lightly on the ground. Then I got a hand on the bottle of cherry syrup and the last box came down on top of the other one while Dillon lowered the wide wooden shelf, sliding it under the counter and out of the way. He let out a loud whoosh of breath as he straightened, chest heaving, hands low on his hips. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
He wiped a streak of dust from his forehead. “Welcome to the community center.”
I smiled, laughing a little as some of my tension released. “It’s going to be more exciting than I expected.”
“Wait until you have thirty kids wanting hot dogs and slushies.” He frowned and pointed to my hand. “Did you get that from the shelf?”
I looked down and only then realized I was bleeding. There was a scrape running from the edge of my pinky nearly all the way to my wrist bone. “I didn’t even feel it.”
His fingers slid around my right palm, and my breath caught. I already liked Dillon—more than I should have—but I also didn’t want to read too much into his smiles. What if he was just being friendly? Dillon was Stupid Cute—the kind of boy who was so cute that you did stupid things around him. I’d fallen prey to Stupid Cute before. Like the time I carved “I love you” on a pencil and gave it to Robbie Thompson in the third grade. I didn’t want to be stupid with Dillon. I was probably seeing something that wasn’t there.
Feeling something that he didn’t.
So I kept my eyes down, working to keep my breath steady. He smelled like chlorine and coconut, and that seemed like a remarkably delicious combination—another reminder that I wasn’t thinking clearly where Dillon Hobbs was concerned.
“I think there are bandages under the counter.”
“Oh. I…”
“It’s okay. I’m a trained professional.” He pointed to the word LIFEGUARD stitched above his heart. “It’s my job.”
Three boys came racing up, barreling into the counter and grabbing hold with grubby fingers as they let their bodies swing like towheaded monkeys. “Cherry slushy!” one boy yelled.
“Me grape!”
“Sour drops!” the third said, all their orders overlapping, their legs banging the wood beneath the counter like a bass drum.
“Hold on,” Dillon said. “Logan, get off the counter. All of you stop that banging.” He fished some change out of his pocket and set it in front of them. “Go play a video game and then come back.”
“But—”
“Now!” he ordered.
They grabbed the money, eyes wide, and took off down the hall.
Dillon shook his head and pulled a metal box from under the counter. When he opened it, I saw it was a first-aid kit.
“I can do that.” I was embarrassed now.
“It’ll only take a second.”
He pulled out an antiseptic wipe and tore off the paper, letting the pieces fall to the counter. “So you all moved in to your dad’s place?” His eyes flickered up to mine.
I nodded. “I’m trying to fix things up a little. Make it feel less like a rental house and more like us.”
He smiled. “What’s more like you?”
“Books. Old maps—I love old maps. Quilts.”
“I don’t get the whole quilt thing,” he said. “My grandma makes them. Not comfortable.”
I sucked in a breath at the coolness of the wipe against the scrape. “Yeah, but they’re beautiful.”
“But not practical for naps on the couch.”
“You sound like my dad.”
He looked up. “You’re really close to him, huh?”
“He’s a good guy.” I watched him gently swab at the cut. “I’m glad I moved here, even if it does mean a new school my senior year.”
“You’ll like it at Ridgeway.”
“Yeah?”
“We have block schedule, so that’s pretty cool. Twice a week we have a food truck with decent pizza and rice bowls. Our principal likes to give inspiring speeches, but he has to take off his glasses to read, so he doesn’t notice when everyone nods off. And,” he adds, “you are friends with the captain of the baseball team.”
“Captain?” I said, when really I was thinking, Friends?
“Just got voted in at the end of the season.”
“Congrats. Are you guys any good?”
“We will be next year. You like to watch games?”
“I’ve never had any reason to before.” I flushed when I realized how that sounded. If he was rolling his eyes, I couldn’t tell—he was bent over my hand. Even the top of his head was beautiful, his black hair flickering with shades of purple and blue in the overhead light. He was too beautiful for me.
“Well, now you do,” he said. He looked up. He was smiling and it was a flirty smile. I was nearly positive it was.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, nodding at my hand.
“It stings a little but not bad.”
Now that it was clean of blood, I could see it was just a surface scratch, a little deep in the middle, but it didn’t need first aid, not like this. Still, I didn’t move, holding my hand out as if it would fall off without his attention. “I’m used to scratches from my cat.”
“You have a cat? What’s its name?”
“Cleopatra. She’s very pretty but treacherous.”
“Aren’t all cats?”
“I take it you’re not a cat person.”
He shook his head as he reached for a Band-Aid. “Allergies.”
“Oh.” I could hear the disappointment in my voice and blushed.
“They’re not bad, though. The allergies I mean.”
Our eyes met. Held. Definitely flirting! My heart raced, rabbit-fast.
The sound of the Band-Aid wrapper crumpling startled us both. We looked down to see the bandage crushed in his hand. Red stained his neck as he tossed it out and grabbed another one from the box. He ripped the paper and peeled back the sticky tape and then laid it over the deepest part of the cut. He rubbed his thumb over it. Over my skin. My mouth dried up. My tongue suddenly felt five feet thick.
When my eyes rose, he was watching me. He smiled and I was suddenly, stupidly, happy.
“What’s your last name?” he said. “I never even asked.”
“Lorde,” I said. “With an e.”
“Emma Lorde.” My name sounded special coming from his mouth, shaped by those lips, by his white teeth, by his breath that smelled like lemonade. I wanted him to say it again.
He closed up the first-aid kit. “I should get back. I’ve used up most of my break.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He stashed the kit and then faced me. “I’m not.”
As he left, I ran my thumb over all the places where his fingers had touched my skin.
And I thought about the myth of the Red String.
After my shift ended, he came by wearing a yellow tank and black board shorts, sunglasses propped on his head. “I’ll walk you home,” he said.
“I have a car.”
His gaze held mine. “So do I.”
With my heart fluttering like a caged butterfly, we walked the three miles to my house. I kept waiting for awkward pauses or for him to say something to break the spell. But he never did. We talked about the community center and his job as a lifeguard and our senior year and his favorite classes and how I liked to play in the dirt, as he called it. We also talked about hard things. Hidden things. About bad days. About leaving and being left.
It was at least a hundred degrees and I was sweating through my shirt. I was pretty sure my shoulders were getting burned and the broiling pavement was eating through the soles of my cherry-slushy-stained Toms. I didn’t care. I was never so sorry to see my house.
“
That’s it,” I said, pointing to the single story with patchy grass in the front and blue curtains that I’d hung the day before.
We stood there for a long minute. “How are you going to get your car from the pool?” he asked.
I blinked, realizing I’d forgotten all about that.
“I’ll walk you back to get it.” His grin tilted up at one corner.
I laughed and all the misery of the past year and all the misery that was waiting inside my house vanished at the sound of it.
He reached for my hand and I let him. Our palms were both sweaty and it still felt absolutely perfect.
On the way back to the pool, I told him the story of the Red String.
—
Since nearly the beginning, I’ve felt certain that Dillon was for always. We’d talked about it…late at night when we could whisper dreams and make plans that our parents would have called naive but that were real to us. We’d marry after college. Dillon would get his CPA, and he had some money from his dad saved up. We’d live in the area—he couldn’t leave his mom—and I would go to grad school and work as a teaching assistant.
And now?
Guilt is like a chisel, chipping away at my conscience. Is it me? Is he right? Am I being selfish about this? Do I somehow not love him enough? Not as much as he loves me? All he wants is for me to stick to the plans we’ve made. And they were good plans. Great plans.
We can still follow that plan.
I keep coming back to the same thing. It’s an internship. It’s nine and a half months. I can go and come back and nothing has to change. I’m not his dad. I’m not going to leave him. Shouldn’t he be okay with this if he trusts me?
The questions spiral around my head.
Is it me?
Is it him?
How did it turn into him and me when for so long we’ve been an us?
Is it so wrong to want Rome and Dillon?
Maybe because Rome is on my mind, I think of Julius Caesar and one of the most famous betrayals in history. Brutus, his close friend and ally, shoving a knife in Caesar’s belly. I’m sick at the thought. I could never hurt Dillon—but even my thoughts feel like a betrayal.
I love Dillon. I owe him so much.
But do I owe him Rome?
My mind spins around questions I have no answers to. Sometime during the night I fall asleep and then wake up, again and again, so that when I open my eyes to hazy sunlight it feels like I never really slept.
It’s morning, and I still have no answers. If I can’t outthink my questions, maybe I can outrun them.
The sky is a soft blue when I leave my house, the sun a bright light I wish I could switch to dim. My eyes hurt. My legs are stiff, my feet heavy as I hit the pavement in my running shoes and head for the park. Tim McGraw is pumping through my earbuds and I try and match my pace to the beat, will myself to sink in to the song. If I’m lucky, I can lose myself in the music and the rhythm of running. For just a little while, I need the sound track of my own life to fade to silence.
It’s not working. I’m nearly to the park and I still feel like both of my feet are bags of cement. I’m ready to turn around when I see someone bent over at the trailhead. I don’t have to guess—not once I get a look at the bright yellow running shoes with pink lightning bolts. Only Jace.
“Tell me you got those on clearance,” I say as I jog up.
“Really?” He looks at his shoes. “I was trying to tone things down.”
I smile and adjust the visor on my forehead, hoping to hide the puffy slits of my eyes. “What are you doing up so early on a Saturday?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says.
I tuck my earbuds under the strap of my jog bra. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
Our eyes meet and his understanding feels like a warm shot of espresso.
“Want some company?” he asks.
I nod, realizing that, yeah, I do. “Slow, though?”
“You’re always slow.” His smile is so easy and so uncomplicated I have the urge to hug him. Instead, I smile back. “Lead the way.”
He starts to the right, which is the way we usually go. It didn’t take me long to figure out that seeing Dillon on the trails that morning last February was a fluke. Dillon doesn’t like to run early—he has so much trouble falling asleep that it’s better for him to run at night and sleep in as much as he can. But I’m glad Jace is like me—up early.
The dirt path, used by runners and bikers, cuts a wide strip between the desert on our right and the city park on our left. There are trails shooting off into the surrounding hills, but if we stay on the main path it’s a four-mile loop back around to where we started.
For a few minutes we’re quiet as we settle into our pace. I’m finally feeling better—the fresh air and sun are working their magic. I can focus on the trail, never needing to look beyond the next step—it’s a relief. Our feet strike the dirt in a comfortable rhythm, and I don’t know if it’s me adjusting my pace or him adjusting his, but we’re in sync as the path veers left. Traffic noises fade and are replaced by the low hoot of mourning doves that are always flitting from tree to tree in this part of the trail.
“So what’s new with your scholarship?” I ask. “Have you figured out what you want to do?”
“If I had, I’d be sleeping right now,” he says. “But it’s not just about what we want, is it?”
I nod, thinking about Dillon. “No, it isn’t.”
“I was lying in bed last night trying to think of something I do just because I want to,” Jace says. He pauses, his breath sighing in and out in pace with our slow jog. “Not because it’s something I should do, or need to do, or because it’s the smart thing to do.”
“And?”
“I buy annoyingly bright footwear.”
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“It’s depressing, isn’t it? I found my first pair of neon yellow shoes on eBay in eighth grade. Now I wonder—was I already feeling trapped back then?”
“Trapped by what?”
He dances lightly across an uneven stair of boulders. “I don’t know. Normalcy?” He shoots me a look. “It’s a surprisingly difficult concept to live up to, as in, a normal National Merit Scholar would normally jump for joy at receiving the Bergen Scholarship.”
“And you’re not jumping?”
We both shift right and Jace crosses in front of me as a biker comes into sight. Air swirls around us as he speeds by and Jace waves off a faceful of dust as he settles beside me again. “My parents think it’s irresponsible for me to even consider giving it up.”
My breath quickens. “You told them?”
“Just that I’m having second thoughts. Which have turned into constant thoughts.”
I pull my eyes from the trail long enough to say, “Don’t take it if you really don’t want to.”
He laughs, a short, sharp exhale. “You’re the only one who’s said that. Even Coach Diaz, who’s also my guidance counselor, says to take the scholarship. He wants me to give it a year and then decide. Which makes sense. It’s a reasonable compromise and it makes everyone else happy.”
Again, I find myself nodding. I wish I didn’t understand as well as I do.
Up ahead the trail splits into a V with a wide dirt path leading up and away.
This is how life works, too, I think. Paths splitting off in different directions. No markers to point the way. As we run past, I look up the slope. Just more brush and rock, but what happens when the trail crests the hill—what’s beyond that? Part of me wants to hop over the rocks and uneven ground and follow that other trail. Screw the loop I know and the clock in my head that says I should get home and just…go. In the time it takes to draw in another full breath, the path has slipped farther behind and it’s as if the trail doesn’t even exist.
“So what about you?” he asks. “What do you want?”
“That’s easy,” I say. “I want to go to Rome and I want Dillon to be happy about it.”
“He’s not coming around?”
“You saw him at lunch the other day.” The words swirl around us and disappear under our feet. If only it were as easy to leave my worries behind. Last night flashes through my mind. The sound of hot wax hitting his skin, the smell of cinnamon and the way the wax whitened and his skin reddened. I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing my mind were like a computer screen I could reset.
We’re quiet except for our breathing as we climb the steep side of a wash and I find myself wanting to tell Jace—wondering if I can. He’s Dillon’s best friend; if anyone can help, it’s him. I dig my legs into the hill and wait to clear the top before I say, “He’s…acting weird…about it.” My voice is a little ragged, but I can pretend the hill is responsible for that. “Have you noticed him…acting weird, I mean?”
“Weird how?” His breath is thready, too. “What’s going on?”
I slow to a walk, my hands on my hips, my eyes on the trail, though I don’t really see it. I can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to say the words—not even to Jace. “He didn’t used to get so mad about things. Not like this.”
“Yeah,” he says. “He’s been on…edge.”
Something about the way he says the word makes my heart quicken. “Did something happen?”
“He got into it with Brian at practice last week.” He gives me a quick look. “In Dillon’s defense, Brian is an ass who regularly gets into it with everyone.”
“But?”
“But Dillon always lets it slide—he has for four years.”
“So what happened this time?”
“He lost it. Started yelling. Started shoving. Then Coach showed up.”
“Something’s going on. He’s not himself, Jace.”
“He’s stressed like the rest of us. And Brian had it coming.”
“I don’t care about Brian.”
He sighs. “I’ll try and talk to him, but…”
“But what?”
His expression is pointed. Knowing. “It shouldn’t matter if Dillon gets mad or not. You have to decide this internship for yourself.”
I snort out a breath. “You mean the way you can’t let your parents decide what you do?”
“It’s totally different,” he says. But his shrug concedes the point.
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