The Coaching Hours (How to Date a Douchebag #4)(63)

When I finish, he nods tersely, narrowed gaze sliding to a nervous Rex Gunderson, who didn’t have the balls to join us.

Two days later, we heard through one of my dad’s wrestlers that Rex had been fired as team manager, suspended for the remainder of the semester, and is no longer able to hold a job on campus. Eric Johnson lost his partial scholarship and eligibility to wrestle at any Division 1 school.

My feelings range from glad to guilty and every emotion in between, but that’s not what has been haunting me.

Elliot is finally graduating, the end of the semester looming above us like a storm cloud, shadowing us wherever we go. With every box he packs up, every call from his mom to find out when he’ll be home, it becomes more real.

Everything about us has been too easy. Everything about him is too constant and good. He’s handsome and funny and makes me feel…

He makes me feel…

I glance up at him from my spot at the library table with an unsteady smile, pen poised above a notebook. When he notices my eyes welling up, he’s quick to reach across the table and brush away the tears with his thumb.

And tonight, after we make love, he’ll hold me with his strong, steady arms. It’ll make me feel better, for a few moments.

Until it’s time for me to let him go.





Anabelle




“What are your plans this summer?”

I can’t meet his eyes as he hefts a large box, carrying and setting it next to the door. Elliot’s pile of boxes is growing, stacked in the living room.

The semester is over and he’s packed up, ready to leave, a summer internship already waiting for him a few states over.

“Work.” I shuffle my bare feet. “I’ll probably try to see my mom for at least a week or two in Massachusetts. She’ll expect a visit since it’s been an entire semester, making me basically the world’s crappiest daughter.”

“You’re hardly the crappiest.” He laughs. “I’m sure there are worse daughters in the world.”

I don’t know what to say next, so I go with, “Thank you for leaving the couch—it would suck having to sit on the floor.”

“No problem. It’s not like I could have taken it with me anyway.”

Everything he’s taking along on his journey has to fit in his car, and it’s not much. Just a few boxes, his bedding, computer, and toiletries from the bathroom.

“As it is, I only have room for a few more boxes, so…” Those mammoth hands of his get stuffed deep into the pockets of his cargo shorts.

I look around, surveying the landscape. The bare walls, the nearly empty rooms. “What about your TV?”

He hasn’t taken that out of his room yet.

“I’m leaving it for you.”

“Jeez, Elliot, I’m not keeping your TV.”

“Anabelle, can you not make a big production out of it? You can have my bed and the TV and you won’t have to sleep in that shitty twin anymore.”

“It’s not a shitty twin! It’s just tiny.”

Since I have one more year of school before graduation, I’m staying, in this town and in this house. Who knows, I might even find myself a roommate to rent out my old room.

“So this is it, huh? You’re doing it.”

Packing up and moving to Michigan.

“It’s really not that far.”

Six hours and forty-three minutes, or an hour-and-forty-five-minute flight…not that I Googled it or anything.

“No. It’s not that far I guess. I’m excited for you.”

But not for myself. I’m going to miss him, going to lose a bit of myself when he finally turns and walks out that door for the last time.

“We can text and follow each other on social media.”

“Great.”

“You don’t seem excited.”

That’s because I’m not! I want to shout. I’m devastated you’re leaving! My best friend is leaving to create a new life for himself, one that doesn’t include me.

“I’m excited, of course I am, don’t be silly. I’m just…I don’t know, Elliot. I’m pouting. Don’t even listen to me, okay? Don’t let me ruin your day.”

“Ruin my day? Do you think I’m happy about this?”

Then stay!

Stay and finish your education here.

I hang my head, unable to look him in the eyes, afraid of what I’ll see there. “I’m just being selfish.”

“It’s not selfish, Anabelle. It just means you care.”

A lump forms in my throat, and I swallow it painfully when he adds, “You’ve been a really good friend to me.”

“Friends.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted—to be friends.”

“Of course I do! But I already have enough friends, even if most of them aren’t in Iowa, and now you’ll be long-distance, too.” Outside, cars drive slowly down the street. The sounds of the students a few houses down can be heard as they haul furniture to their curb. “You have to give me time to adjust, okay? I already miss you and you’re standing right in front of me.”

“Give you time? Time for what?”

“I’m losing someone I was just starting to, you know…love.”