Complete Nothing (True Love #2)(67)

“I need you to be completely honest for this to work,” I told them. “Can you do that?”

They each sucked in a breath and nodded. “I can,” Lauren said.

“Me too,” Gavin replied. “But we gotta make this quick. I’ve got practice in fifteen minutes.”

Wallace opened up the laptop again and clicked open an empty document. “What’re you doing?” Gavin asked him.

“Taking notes,” Wallace said matter-of-factly.

I smiled. “Perfect. Now let’s do this.”





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


Peter


“Nice work out there today, man,” I said, and slapped Gavin on his shoulder pad.

He doubled over, hands over knees, and gasped for air. We’d just finished postpractice laps, in full pads, which Gavin hated. He sometimes even threw up afterward. Remembering this, I took a step back. Puke would be tough to get out of cleats.

“Thanks, Pete.” He stood up, arching his back. “I felt like cracking some skulls.”

“Well, you definitely did that.” I glanced over my shoulder as the stragglers came across the finish line and either collapsed on the grass or made a move for the water jug. “I think you might’ve given Chen a concussion.”

Gavin shrugged with a small smile. “Occupational hazard.”

We laughed and loped over to the water. Gavin cleared his throat. “So how’re things going over at the soup kitchen lately?” he asked. “They made that announcement at church this weekend, about needing more volunteers?”

“Yeah, Marcy roped me into a few shifts this week,” I said, shaking my head as I remembered how she’d cornered me after services. Her frizzy gray hair had been pulled back into sort of a puff ball behind her head, and I was so out of it I’d found myself staring at it the whole time she talked. She wanted me to do four shifts, and considering the guilt I was carrying over my Saturday night activities, I’d immediately said yes. Usually I barely squeezed in one or two. I had no idea how I was going to manage four.

“What if I come with?” Gavin asked, leaning down to pull off his cleats.

My face lit up. “That’d be awesome.”

“Cool. And maybe we could ask the girls to come with us,” Gavin suggested. He pulled off his sock and stared down at his red, sweaty foot as if he’d never seen one before.

“The girls?” I asked, thinking of my sister Michelle and his sister Mary, who was away at college, so that didn’t make sense.

“Yeah.” He pulled off his other cleat and sock and tossed them on the grass, then sank onto the bottom bleacher. “Josie and Tara?”

“Oh.” I blinked. Somehow I had a hard time putting Josie together with anything church-related. It was as if it didn’t add up. When I thought of Josie, I instantly got turned on. Church was exactly the opposite of that. But what would it hurt to ask her? “Um . . . sure. You think Tara would want to?”

Gavin pushed his sweat-soaked hair back from his face. “She volunteers at the animal shelter, and she does a lot of outreach work with her synagogue. I think she’d be into it.”

“Okay. Cool,” I said, surprised that he knew so much about Tara Schwartz’s life. I thought about the conversations Josie and I had had, and I realized I knew practically nothing about hers. Was she religious? Did she go to church? Did her parents? Did she even have parents?

Well, of course she had parents. But did she live with one or the other or both or someone else entirely? I had no clue. And suddenly I felt morbidly ashamed. I’d been inside their house. I’d done things with their daughter. And I’d never even given them a second thought. When it came to Claudia’s family, I was an expert. I knew that her dad lied about his golf score, that her mom had a thing for mint ice cream, that her sister recorded every makeover show on TV, and that her brother kept a plastic worm farm in his closet.

I felt a pang, thinking about Claudia’s family. Like I missed them. I wondered if they missed me.

“You in there, dude?” Gavin asked.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

I had to focus on the now and forget the past. Claudia and I had been together for a year and a half. That was a lot of time to get to know each other. Maybe if Josie and I logged a couple of hours behind the counter at the soup kitchen together doling out the food, I could find out a few more things about her. She couldn’t exactly come on to me in that setting.

“I’ll ask Josie tonight,” I said, feeling slightly more positive about the whole thing.

Gavin looked up at me and smiled. But it was a weird smile. Too wide, too satisfied, for what we were talking about. For a second I wondered if maybe he’d gotten a concussion.

“Perfect,” he said. “This is gonna be perfect.”





CHAPTER FORTY-SIX


Claudia


Ballet shoes shooshed and scraped across the gleaming wood floor of the Studio as the eighth-grade pointe class gathered their things and greeted their parents at the door, their chattering voices filling the airy space. I sat down on the corner chair to lace up my shoes, relishing the slip of the silky ribbon between my fingers. For the next two hours I didn’t have to think. All I had to do was dance.

“Hey there.” Lance dropped down on the chair next to mine and stretched his arms over his head. “So, I’m driving you to the auditions on Saturday.”