You'd Be Home Now (21)

It didn’t seem like a problem then. And it was nice being with Joey, looking at the sea as the sky changed colors, watching the waves as they went from blue to black, music in our ears. I felt like I could live beside the ocean forever.

I wish we could be back there. I wish we could go back, way back, to before all this ever happened.

“Ryleigh!”

Gage is leaning over the wall. His eyes slide to me and then back to Ryleigh.

Ryleigh yells back, “What!”

    “Mom wants you to come in. You’ve got a hair appointment.”

“No!” She scrunches up her face.

Gage holds out his hands. “Sorry, kid. Clarissa at Curl Up and Dye waits for no one.”

He looks at Joey standing at the edge of the pool.

“Hey, Joe.”

“Hey.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” Gage squints. “Are those my trunks?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I let him borrow them,” Ryleigh says, getting out and wrapping herself in a towel. “You have like fifty million.”

“I do?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’m coming in.” He disappears.

I can feel myself flush, so I duck under the water really quick. Joey’s sitting on the pool steps when I come up. “Thanks,” he says. “I feel better. That was one thing about Blue Spruce, they kept you really active, so whenever you’d start to feel crazy, it was hike time or gym time or time to make dinner. I still feel like shit, because I have no friends now, but whatever, right?”

“You’ll make friends,” I say. “Different ones.”

“Says the sister who has no friends.” His face reddens. “Sorry. Maddie told me. Screw them, though, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, grateful. “Screw them.”

Gage drops over the wall.

I try to keep my cool as he dives into the pool. I’ve seen parts of Gage without clothes, but not in the daylight, and I’m not sure how I feel about keeping it together while he’s wet and in a swimsuit in my pool. He used to swim here all the time when we were little, before Joey tried to fly off the roof, but his parents didn’t let them come over after that. It was Maddie who convinced Mrs. Galt last summer to let Ryleigh come over. “It’s hot, Beth, let the girl swim. Let’s move on.” I was shocked how easily Maddie let Mrs. Galt’s first name roll off her tongue, but that’s just Maddie, I guess, and Ryleigh has been a mermaid in our pool ever since.

    Gage flips his wet hair out of his eyes. “God, this feels good. You guys ready for another year of Heywood High Hell?” He’s not serious; he makes that jerking-off gesture that guys like, which is gross.

“Not particularly,” Joey says.

“You’ll be okay, Joe. Gotta have a goal, is all. Work toward it. You don’t have to get screwed up.”

“Everybody’s screwed up at Heywood,” Joey says. “Half your teammates sell their pain meds on the side.”

Gage shrugs. “Maybe. But not me. Never touch the stuff.”

And then his eyes are on me. Like we’re just normal neighbors, enjoying an afternoon in the pool. “What about you, Em? Ready for dance team again? Shimmy-shimmy.” He wiggles his hips. Joey laughs.

“I can’t because of my knee,” I say.

Gage grimaces. “Ah, no. I guess I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

Suddenly I realize there weren’t any texts from Gage when I checked my new phone. Hazy as I was in the hospital, I sort of got why he didn’t visit me. It would look weird, to suddenly have Gage-from-next-door there.

But he didn’t text, either. And no one would have seen those.

    He could have texted. Just once.

Maybe he was just too busy getting ready for his pitching camp. Maybe…a thousand things run through my mind.

“You okay? You look weird,” Joey says.

Gage and Joey are both looking at me.

“I…it’s no big deal,” I say. “I wasn’t any good, anyway. I was just an alternate.”

“You looked pretty good to me.”

I splash water on him, trying to be playful, but mostly so some gets on me, too, and washes away the awful feeling in my stomach.

He could have sent one text. Just one. That wouldn’t have been breaking the rules.

From the corner of my eye, I see Joey frown and I think Gage notices, too, because he quickly says, “Hey, Joe, you still got all those games, man?”

“What?”

“You know.” Gage makes a motion with his thumbs, like he’s using a controller. “I might be down for Fortnite right about now.”

Joey looks at me and then back at Gage. “Um, okay?”

I nod, because I guess I’m supposed to, now that I’m Joey’s keeper. Of course Gage is safe. Like he said, he never touches the stuff. In the universe my mother would like us to live in, Gage would be the perfect friend for Joey.

“Cool. Let’s get to it,” Gage says. “I got a whole free afternoon.”

They get out of the pool and wrap themselves in towels.

“You better put some dry towels down. You know how much Mom hates pool water on the floor! And put some towels on the couch!” I call.