Come Find Me(63)

She nods, taking some more practice swings.

After a few more pitches where she lunges for the ball as it heads her way, I jog over to show her what I mean. “You’re swinging on the defensive,” I say. “Here.” I stand behind her, my hands on her hands, gripping the bat. I don’t even think about it at first, how close she is, her hands under my own, until I feel her tense up for a second.

“Sorry,” I say, pulling back.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. Show me.”

So I do, my arms folding around hers, stepping and swinging until her body does the same, in synchrony. I step back, watching her as she takes the swing on her own. “Perfect. You got it.”

Then I jog back to the pitcher’s mound, and on the windup, I tell her one last piece of advice that my coach once gave me. “Don’t swing like you’re afraid, Kennedy.”

She nods and gets into position. Then I toss her a pitch, and the crack of the bat on the ball echoes through the emptiness. It sails over my head, and she raises her hand to her eyes. She laughs then, her face mirroring my own. We’re still smiling at each other when the first drop of rain falls from the sky.

“Probably should end on a high note anyway,” she says, the bat hanging by her side. “I think that was a fluke.”

“No way,” I say. “It’s my teaching, obviously.” She shakes her head as I take off for the outfield to retrieve the ball, and when I turn around to head back, she’s still standing there, waiting for me.

    The sky opens up just as I reach her, and we race for the car. I drop the baseball gear into the trunk and she ducks into the passenger side, shaking out her hair. It makes me smile.

“Where to?” I ask after I start the car again.

But I can tell she’s leveled. There are dark circles under her eyes, and she keeps yawning, which makes me yawn. The soda has zero effect. We’re going to need to wait it out.

“I’m thinking a nap would really help right now. You?”

“You know how I feel about naps,” she says.

I drive back up the road until I see an empty parking lot of another empty factory, and I pull the car into the alley behind it.

She reclines her seat first, curling onto her left side, her hands folded into a pillow. The sound of rain on metal picks up, and I curl up on my right side, facing her. I’m not sure which of us drifts off first, but sleep comes fast, dark and deep.





When I wake, it’s dark. The first thing I hear is the tap of rain against the metal roof of the car. The first thing I see, coming into focus, is Nolan’s face, asleep, his lips slightly parted, so at peace. It’s like seeing the Nolan that lives underneath, one that might be possible if his life had followed a different path, a different set of circumstances.

The second thing I notice is the colors, faintly flashing against the window beyond his head. Blue, red, alternating in the streaks of rain against the glass. I push myself to sitting. “Nolan,” I say, shaking him awake.

He stirs, rubbing his eyes. “What?”

“The police,” I say.

Nolan sits upright almost as fast as I did. “What are we doing,” he says, but it comes out slow, like his brain hasn’t fully caught up to the sequence of events.

What’s our story. Why are we here. We’re parked in an alley behind an abandoned factory, in the middle of the night, in some town where we don’t belong. What are we doing? We’re two teenagers, trespassing. Sleeping. We look like runaways. There’s no way the police won’t take Nolan’s ID, run his name, contact his parents.

    “Trust me?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says immediately, but he’s staring out the window, immobile as the bright light gets closer.

I slide over the console to his seat so I’m facing him, a knee on either side of his legs.

“What—”

He’s two steps behind, his arms out and to the side like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

“Seriously, Nolan, at least pretend.” I grab his wrists and hook them around my waist so his hands press to my lower back.

I don’t think, I just lean down and kiss him. His entire body tenses, and then his fingers press deeper into my waist, and his other hand trails up my back, and it occurs to me he knows exactly how to pretend, when the rap of a flashlight against the window jars us apart.

My heart beats quickly, and his hands still grip my waist. I have to squint from the light, and Nolan raises a hand to his eyes. He lets go of me to lower the window more, and the officer leans into the car, the rain dripping from his black hood, the smell of summer rain filling the car, the humidity surrounding us.

He frowns, and his face, so close, smells of rain and aftershave. “This is private property,” he says, though he backs away, seeing the position we’re in. He looks away, like he doesn’t want to look too closely at the disheveled clothing, the fact that we’re young enough to need to be in a car, for privacy.

    I duck my head into Nolan’s shoulder, then slide from his lap, back to my side of the car.

“Sorry,” Nolan says. “We didn’t know. It just looked like a”—he winces—“an empty road.”

The officer sighs, panning the light back and forth between us. He shakes his head. “Go home,” he says firmly.