Abi and the Boy She Loves

by Kelsie Stelting

  She glanced at her phone. “At nine in the morning? There’re just creeps and drunks at the bar this time of day.”

  I shrugged, then shooed her toward the door, knowing what was coming next. “Go.”

  “You’re bossy.” She climbed down her ladder, paper ripping on her way down.

  “You’re slow,” I said. “Shoo.”

  Still shaking her head, she grabbed an outfit and her shower caddy and headed toward the door. The second she opened it, balloons and streamers cascaded over her, just like Kyle, Jon, and I had planned.

  Covered in glitter, she turned to me and blew some off her lips. “I take back my comment about crazy. You’re certifiable.”

  “I take that as a compliment.”

  She laughed. “I’ll be back in fifteen.”

  While she changed and showered, I grabbed a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes for her out of her dresser, then put them in a big purse. I put on sweats and left my workout clothes on underneath. By the time she came back, I was ready to go.

  We drove in my car across town, and I parked in front of the restaurant.

  “When you said we were going out, I hadn’t planned for breakfast.” She laughed.

  I shrugged. “Pancakes are my idea of pregaming.”

  We went inside and sat together at a booth. While we waited for the waitress to take our order, I made conversation. “Do you know what Kyle has planned for later?”

  “No idea,” she said behind her menu. “And he refuses to budge.”

  “I know,” I grumbled. “I tried to get him to tell me the other night, and he was adamant.”

  She rolled her eyes, but in that way that said she kind of admired his determination. “I just need to be patient.”

  “You are a stronger woman than I.” I set my own menu on the table. “Do you have any guesses? He’s not proposing, is he?”

  “No way,” she said. “My parents would die.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You’re nineteen. It’s not like you’re a child.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t want me to drop out of college or lose focus. Or get pregnant.”

  My heart hurt for Stormy just then. I knew Anika hadn’t meant to, but she’d just insinuated getting pregnant would be an end to her options. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

  “So what else?” I asked. “I know he’s not planning a sexcapade or anything like that.”

  Her cheeks heated. “Knowing Kyle, it’s probably something super sweet and heartfelt.”

  “Well, I feel like a jerk.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Even if you were, I’d let you off for insanity. I’m pretty sure I’ll never get the glitter out of my hair.”

  I laughed. “I knew the streamers were a good idea.”

  The waitress came back, and we ordered and ate breakfast together, just talking and catching up about school and our boyfriends and our friends back home.

  She told me she used to have a pen pal, and her friends conspired to help her see him at outside of school, even though her parents would have died before letting her do something like that. Just one way her friends had backed her up.

  “I miss Bran and Leslie so much,” she said. “We try to stay in touch, but it’s hard with being at different schools, you know?”

  I fought to keep my face normal. “When will you see them next?”

  She pouted. “Not until Christmas. Ugh.”

  The waitress brought our check, and I paid for it.

  “Where to next?” she asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  We drove back across town to the campus, and I parked in a metered spot in front of the rec center. Usually, I’d make her walk forever with me, but it was my girl’s birthday. And I couldn’t wait to show her the surprises waiting for her inside.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  I started toward the doors. “I heard you loved volleyball?”

  She nodded.

  “Well…” I reached into my purse and handed her the clothes. “Go change, then meet us in the gym. We’ve got a pick-up game planed.”

  We got through the doors and swiped into the building. I’d been here a few times, mostly just exploring. Enough to know where we were going.

  Once she was on her way to the women’s locker room, I hurried to the gym. I hoped everyone had shown up on time as planned.

  A group of people sprawled around the gym floor, stretching, hanging out. I recognized Jon, Kyle, some girls from the track team, and then two other people from the photos on Anika’s board.

  They stood with Kyle and Jon, talking, laughing.

  “Hey,” I said, joining them.

  Kyle’s eyes lit up. “Where’s our girl?”

  “Changing.” I looked at Bran and Leslie. “She’s going to be so excited to see you two.”

  Leslie rubbed her hands together, her eyes giving away just how much she wanted to see her best friend. “Let’s hope that makes up for how terrible Bran is at volleyball.”

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s not my fault Mr. Mullen ran in front of me while I was serving.”

  “He was behind you,” Leslie said, laughing.

  “Minor details.”

  Anika’s shrieked from behind me. “WHAT?!” She ran into the gym and attacked her friends, wrapping them in a hug.

  Bran looked over her shoulder and winked at Kyle. “Told you she loved me more.”

  I smiled at them. They made me miss my friends even more.

  “Come on, come on,” Kyle said, pretending to be annoyed. “We’ve got a game to play.”

  For the next couple of hours, we scrimmaged. I wasn’t very good, but at least I was better than Bran. To be fair, it wasn’t hard to outplay him. He hit the thirty-foot ceiling twice on wild passes, somehow rolled over the top of the ball while trying to pick it up, and his serves made me wonder if he thought we were playing dodgeball instead of volleyball. But he was hilarious. I could see why Anika liked him so much and had pictures of him all over her corkboard.

  As we broke for lunchtime, Leslie put her arm around Anika’s shoulders and said to the rest of us, “Okay, I think Bran and I can take it from here.”

  While our friends filtered out of the gym, I turned to Jon and said, “What now?”

  He gave me a sultry look and crooked his finger. “Follow me. I have an idea.”

  Chapter Twelve

  He led me to one of the lower levels of the rec center, past an abandoned badminton court.

  “There’s no one down here,” I said.

  “That’s kind of the point,” he replied. He stopped at a door labeled Men’s Locker Room and took me inside.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  He disappeared around a corner, and I stood in the doorway for a few moments wondering what he had planned for me down here.

  When he came back, missing his shirt, he said, “All clear.”

  My heart started racing for entirely different reasons. Jon wasn’t thinking what I was thinking...was he?

  “Come on.” He took my hand and led me farther back, past maroon lockers and old shower stalls until we were standing in front of a wooden hut. A sauna. “Want to fog up the windows with me?”

  I hit his shoulder. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “That’s why you love me.” He grabbed a couple towels from the stack and handed me one.

  I took it from him, then slipped off my shoes and followed him inside. It hadn’t completely warmed up yet, but sweat still sprang to the surface of my skin. Jon sat on the opposite side of the sauna and said, “Give me your foot.”

  “A foot rub?” I asked. “Now I know you’re the one.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Hand it over.”

  “Don’t you mean foot it over?”

  “That was lame.”

  “And?”

  He nodded toward my foot.

  I lifted it, and he took it in his hands, slowly rubbing all the knots and callouses that came from being on the track team. His
rhythmic touch felt like...heaven.

  “Just a couple weeks until winter break,” he said.

  “I know. I can’t wait. Grandma already emailed me my packing list.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Your grandma can email?”

  “Jorge showed her,” I explained, a smile finding my lips. “He just didn’t show her how to turn off the caps lock.”

  He laughed. “Did you get some shouty emails?”

  “Just one. And a frustrated phone call.”

  Still smiling, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “I can’t wait to show you the cabin.”

  “Do you think we’ll get our own room?” I asked.

  “With my parents? Not a chance. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they’re not as progressive as your grandma.”

  I laughed. “You mean the woman who just got her very first laptop?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I can’t wait to try snowboarding.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want you getting hurt.”

  How could I get it through to him? I wasn’t worried about a sprained ankle or even a more serious injury if it meant living life to its fullest. “I want to try everything,” I said. “After...what happened, I don’t want to let life pass me by playing it safe. This might be the only chance I get to try it.”

  “Don’t think like that,” he said. “We have plenty of time for you to try snowboarding, skiing…heck, even tubing.”

  “But I have to try it now,” I said. “You don’t understand. When I was running away from Eric, there was a very real chance I wouldn’t have made it through the night. If he wouldn’t have wrecked...” I cringed against the image of his pickup sideways in the gully and his headlights flooding the countryside. “If he had hit me with his gunshots, I wouldn’t be here with you now. I don’t want to waste a minute.”

  “Then we won’t.” He set my foot down and came to sit next to me. His lips captured mine in a salty kiss that showed me just how much he meant it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Unfortunately, our rendezvous in the sauna was the last chance we really had to spend any significant amount of time alone together for the last few weeks of the semester.

  Finals demanded our full attention, along with our track coaches who were trying to get us in the best shape possible before winter break came along and set us back.

  The rest of the students at Upton would have nearly a full month off of school, but the track team got two weeks. Still, that two weeks could easily derail months of progress if we weren’t careful.

  Jon and I studied together, ate together, and walked to practice together on the rare occasion our schedules lined up, but that was about it.

  Although it seemed like I’d just started college a week prior, I found myself on the Friday before semester break about to take my last final. I sat in the study lounge nearest my political science classroom, poring over my notes for some last-minute cramming. A TV played in the lounge, permanently set to a local news station.

  Stories about winter storms and upcoming Christmas events played in the background, making me feel almost like I was at home with Grandma, working on homework while she watched her nightly news.

  “Eric Shepherd, the culprit in an attempted murder nearly two months ago, is being released from the hospital today, into police custody.”

  My body strummed tight like a wire ready to break, and my neck snapped back to look at the TV. There was his face on the screen. Eric.

  He looked battered still, hair shaved close to reveal long lines of stitches on his head as he walked away from the hospital, handcuffed and escorted by police officers. The news cameras did a close-up on his face. He was unrecognizable. Except for his eyes. The blank stare there attacked my soul. They were dead, just like they had been that night.

  “He will stay in county jail without bail until a court date is set.”

  Just like that, the anchor flipped to another story like a monster hadn’t just been on the screen. Like that simple piece of information hadn’t sent me spiraling back to running so hard my shoes burned through my feet. To the memory of some stranger ripping cactus spines out of my skin. To gunshots firing behind me.

  The bell tower rang on the hour, making me jump about a million and a half miles out of my skin. My notes went flying to the floor.

  Someone nearby, a girl I recognized from class, helped me pick them up. I barely managed a “thank you.”

  She held out the notes. “Are you okay? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  I shook my head and said, “I’m fine,” being sure to take several deep breaths, just in case.

  Tears brimmed in my eyes. Why me? Why now? I was moments from taking one of the most important tests for me to get into law school, and I could hardly put one foot in front of the other, much less remember the results of Gideon v. Wainwright.

  I didn’t have time to go back and collect myself—call my therapist for an emergency session. Our professor had made it very clear that if anyone was late, they wouldn’t be allowed to take the final.

  So, I walked into the classroom, head down, and sat in the front row. I put my notes in front of me, and I read the words over and over again, trying to remind myself that I was here, not there.

  But then Professor Beauford’s TA was passing out the tests, telling us to put our notes away and keep our eyes on our own papers.

  I worked through each question, but my mind couldn’t focus. I wound up selecting the third answer on each one and left the room with tears threatening to fall.

  “Miss Johnson,” the professor called behind me.

  I turned to him but kept my face down, trying to hide the emotions spilling over my eyelashes.

  “Let’s step outside,” he said, then hurried an order to his TA.

  I followed him into the gloriously empty hallway.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, his lined face showing more emotion than it had all semester.

  I looked toward the sky, tried to hold in all the tears. “He’s—Eric—he’s out of the hospital.”

  He folded his arms and covered his mouth with his hand. “When did you find out?”

  “They played it on the news,” I said flatly. “Right before I walked into the classroom.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder in the kindest gesture I’d seen from him all semester. “You worry about you right now.”

  I nodded, but as I walked away, I still didn’t know what that meant. Had I failed my first semester of college?

  Chapter Fourteen

  On my way back to the dorms, I tried calling my therapist’s office, but since it was part of the university, it had already closed for winter break. The entire campus around me looked empty. There were actually parking spots up close. The sidewalks were atypically sparse, and there was a chill in the air that seemed to silence everything.

  That only made the pounding in my head and heart seem that much louder.

  I dialed Jon’s number and held the phone to my ear with both hands.

  When he answered, I finally felt like I could breathe. “Jon.”

  “How was the test?”

  “Horrible,” I cried, my voice shaking. “Eric is out of the hospital!”

  There was a pause. His voice was harsh as he uttered, “What?”

  “I saw it on the news, Jon, right before I went in for the test.”

  “Wasn’t the police department supposed to call you?”

  “Before his trial,” I said, my whole body shaking now. “They haven’t set the date. Yet.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I laughed. Kind of. More like a hysterical sound that seemed at odds with the quiet world around me. “No, I’m not okay.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Almost to the dorms.”

  “I’ll be there. Put me on video call.”

  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and did as he asked. He was throwing on a hoodie, yanking on h
is shoes.

  I held one hand over my pounding heart. The heart that was his. “Hurry,” I breathed.

  “I am.” He passed the elevator altogether and flew down the stairs, all the way from the ninth floor. His breathing came so fast he couldn’t talk, but words weren’t necessary.

  This was Jon, and he was coming.

  The lobby passed behind him on the screen, and when he got to the front door of the dorms, I saw him. I wanted to run to him, but my legs wouldn’t move. I couldn’t think. Everything was starting to sound far away.

  I focused on Jon. On his face. On the fact that he was here. I was here.

  He wrapped me in his arms, and I breathed him in. If I was holding on to him, I couldn’t get lost in the depths of my mind. Right now, it was a pretty scary place. I just hoped I could get out.

  Jon led me to his dorm room, his arm holding me up the entire way. He seemed to be the only thing in my world that wasn’t constantly shaking and swaying.

  Inside his room, he guided me to his bed, helped me up, and then lay beside me, cocooning my shivering body with his warm one. “I’m right here,” he whispered. “You’re safe.” Over and over again, he whispered those two powerful words until I finally let exhaustion carry me to sleep.

  When I woke up, Jon still had his arms around me. He brushed my hair away from my face. “How are you feeling, beautiful?”

  “Better,” I said. The shock of the news about Eric had worn off, and all I was left with was a dull thud in my brain that reminded me of what I had been though.

  He let out a relieved breath and kissed my forehead. “Good.”

  I closed my eyes, wanting to feel every second of his touch.

  “We’re going to have a good break,” he said in a soothing voice. “We’ll get home, see our friends, be with family. And we have five whole days at Red River. It’ll be us, the slopes, hot chocolate. You’re going to love it there.”

  I knew I would. Just because he was there. Still, I needed to get out of Austin. Out of this place where fantasy had quickly turned into a nightmare.

  “Let’s go home?” I begged.