Puddin'(84)

I laugh a little too hard and touch his arm. I can almost feel his heart beating right there in his bicep. “Hey, I was just messing with you. Chill.”

He lets out what appears to be a long-held breath.

We reach the end of my street and I lead us toward the aging man-made water feature at the center of my subdivision that’s supposed to be a lake with tons of fountains, but the fountains haven’t been turned on in years.

A few ducks splash around in the water and then chase each other onto land and then back into the water.

“You wanna sit here for a bit?” asks Mitch.

“Sure. My ankle monitor electrocutes me if I go any farther.”

“A joke,” he says. “I got that one.”

I cock my head to the side and nearly tell him he’s kind of cute, but I fear it might send him into a frenzy all over again.

He takes off his letter jacket and lays it on the grass for us both to sit on. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.

“I don’t have much use for the thing anymore,” he says. “I finally quit the football team.”

“Wow. Really? But you only have one year left. I mean, you could probably not even go to college and just be like a spokesperson for one of Bryce’s dad’s car dealerships for the rest of your life. Is that why I haven’t seen you at the gym much?”

“Partly.” He pauses for a moment. “But that wasn’t the only reason.”

“I don’t do well with coy,” I tell him.

“Well, I quit the team. And then things were weird with us.”

“Which was your doing,” I tell him. “And what was that about anyway?”

“I don’t want to make you mad,” he says.

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” I laugh. “I’m always a little mad about something.”

He clears his throat. “I had a sort of falling-out with Patrick and all those guys. They were planning some awful hazing prank for the incoming freshmen at spring training. It wasn’t right. I’ve known for a long time that I didn’t like the kind of people they’d become and the way they treated others, ya know? It’s embarrassing how long it took me to act on that, though. Like, I’ve been over their bullshit for a long time, but I just played along, because I was scared of not having friends. Not having a place to sit or whatever. And then you told me to start looking for new friends, and it just made me really think.”

“Well, good for you,” I say. “Those guys are pretty big assholes. Especially Bryce. Not like I’m biased or anything. But what does that have to do with you shutting me down?”

“So . . . okay. Well, you shut me down the first time I asked you to hang out, which is cool and totally fine. But then I started thinking about that joke . . . you probably don’t even remember, but it was this joke you made about Millie.”

“On your first day at the gym,” I say. I let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, I remember.” I feel at once both guilty and defensive.

“And then—”

“Oh, great, there’s more?”

His lips form this soft little half smile. “Then there was that day at school when the hallway was covered in those green flyers with all those secrets, and I assumed it was you. But maybe not?”

I twist my boot into the grass until it hurts dirt. “Nope, that was definitely me.”

He sighs. “I just . . . I started thinking that if I was gonna go to the trouble of cutting all these guys out of my life, maybe hanging out with you wasn’t exactly the best thing I could do. Like, it was cool how you stood up to Patrick that one day. But . . . man, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

“You’re already halfway there,” I say. “Might as well finish me off.”

“We’ve known each other for a long time, Callie. Maybe we’ve never been close. But we went to grade school and then middle school with each other, and you were never . . .”

“A very nice person,” I say.

He clears his throat. “You’ve just always kind of said and done whatever you want. To anyone you want. And part of me really admires that, but it doesn’t always sit right with me either.”

I’m quiet.

“You’re mad, aren’t you?”

I pause for a long moment. “No,” I say. “Yes. But at myself. But also you. Just a little bit. Even if that’s unreasonable.”

“I decided to go back to the gym and see if you wanted to hang out again because I got to thinking what would happen if people just judged me on the little they saw of me and the company I kept. You’re funny and smart. And pretty, too. But mostly I liked how funny and smart you were.”

“Flattery is good,” I say, and this time I can’t keep from smiling. “Keep that up.”

“I knew you were experiencing a little of what I was, so I thought that maybe getting to know you would be a good idea after all.” He stops for a moment, and the only sound is the ducks squabbling back and forth. “Say something. Please.”

“Well, all of that kind of sucks,” I say. “But I can’t blame you, really.”

“Yeah?”

“And at least you’re not hanging out with those assholes anymore.”