Little Do We Know(54)

“It sounded that way at first. He started off saying they wanted to wait a few weeks to see how I heal, so they know if I’ll be able to play next year or not. But then he started talking about my SAT scores and my transcript and…well, those are hardly glowing.” He stared at his shoes. “There’s no way I’ll get into Denver or any other D-one schools based on my grades alone. I’m supposed to start making a list of all the schools I might want to apply to instead, just in case Denver pulls my offer. He gave me a long speech about how I’ve been ‘resting on physical skills,’ whatever that means, and now I need to focus on my academic record and extracurricular activities for the rest of the year.”

“The rest of the year? It’s the middle of March.”

He let out a hard breath. “Yeah. That’s a problem.”

Owen Campbell walked by and slapped him on the back. “Dude, glad you’re okay.”

Luke grimaced as he squeezed my arm. “Thanks, man,” he said through clenched teeth. “Me too.”

Owen kept walking, oblivious. “See you at practice,” he said.

I waited until Owen was out of earshot. “Practice?”

“Coach said he expects me to show up, even if I can’t play. Support the team and all. But I can’t go. Not today, at least.”

“You should go. Get back to normal, you know?”

He rolled his eyes.

“What?”

“I thought you were going to cheer me up, not make me feel worse.”

I told myself not to take it personally. The last week had been full of pain and medication and surgeries and hospital beds, and his first day back at school had been full of questions and bad news.

“Fine. If you’re skipping lacrosse, I’ll skip play rehearsal. We can go to the diner, order apple pie à la mode, sit in our booth and talk.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “I just want to go home. I’m exhausted.” He pulled my hands off his shoulders.

“Are you sleeping?”

“Not much.”

“Are you still staying up all night researching dead athletes?”

He shook his head, but I had a weird feeling he was lying.

He’d been acting strange all weekend. When I asked him where he’d been on Sunday, and why he lied to his parents about spending the day with me, he said he’d taken a drive to the beach to be alone and think. I had a feeling he was lying about that, too.

“Have you thought about talking to someone? Like…a therapist?”

“Why would I do that?”

“It might help. It’s totally natural to feel depressed after what you went through.”

“Depressed?” He chuckled. “What makes you think I’m depressed?”

Because he was acting exactly like Mom used to. Cold. Angry. Avoiding everyone and distancing himself from the things he cared about. The old Luke never would have driven to the beach without me.

“A lot of athletes who’ve been injured go through this. I’ve been researching it.” I reached for my phone. “I can send you links. It’s really common.”

He took my phone from my hand, closed the browser, and handed it back to me. “I’m not depressed.”

And then he kissed me. I wanted to think it was because he really wanted to, but I felt like he was just doing it to shut me up.

“Okay, you win,” he said. “Let’s go to the diner. A milk shake actually sounds really good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ll treat that place like a time machine. The second we walk through that door and sit down in our booth, it’s two weeks ago. Nothing bad happened, no one got hurt, and nothing’s going to happen.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to change his mind. Then he grinned down at me. “I like the sound of that.”





It was almost midnight, but I couldn’t sleep. All I could think about was Aaron.

Earlier that day, Alyssa and I were cleaning up after practice, carrying the equipment from the stage to the music room, when he came out to help us. Alyssa was flirting with him relentlessly, but he kept looking over at me and giving me that half smile that made my whole face flush. I thought she’d noticed, but when we got in the car, she turned to me and said, “God, could you feel that sexual tension between Aaron and me?”

I could, but not between them. Between us. Every time we were together. All day. Even during class, all I could think about was being alone with him in the sound booth, with his hands on my waist and his fingers on the back of my neck and his mouth on mine.

You awake? I typed.

As I stared at the screen, waiting for him to answer, I thought about the excited expression on Alyssa’s face in the car that day, and I felt a wave of guilt wash over me. And then a second, much larger wave crashed into me when I thought about the look on Beth’s face in that picture I’d only seen once.

I knew this whole thing was wrong. But as soon as my phone screen lit up with a new message, the water calmed and the waves disappeared, and Aaron was there, making my heart beat and my face beam and my toes curl. Making me feel like someone cared about me and I wasn’t so completely alone.

Aaron: Yeah. Hi.