The restaurant seems pretty nice, so I’m hoping it’s as good as the online reviews say it is. There’s a basket of freshly baked rolls in the middle of our table and I grab one and cover it in butter. Bayleigh watches me.
“So how’s your knitting going?” I ask her. I seem to remember her telling me her grandmother was teaching her how to make a blanket.
“You mean crochet?” she says, watching me.
I shrug. “Same thing, right?”
She laughs. “I crocheted a blanket, and it’s pretty awesome. But knitting is so not the same thing. I’ll let you slide this time, but don’t let Grandma hear you talking like that.”
“Understood,” I say, then I pretend to zip my lips closed. “So where do you normally live? You know, when you aren't banished to your grandparent's house.”
“I'm from a small town near Dallas,” she says.
My heart leaps. Mixon is near Dallas. “Does it happen to be Mixon?” I ask, hoping like hell that her answer is yes.
Her eyebrows pull together. “Huh? No, I’ve never heard of that place.”
I take another bite of my roll. “Eh, I figured as much. No one lives there.”
“What's Mixon?” she asks. “You're from LA, right?”
“Don't worry about it, I'm just…thinking out my options. So,” I say, realizing I need to change the subject before I get all pissed off about motocross. “How was your week?”
“Well, I learned how to crochet and I made myself a throw blanket. So, obviously, my week was insanely action-packed and you should be sorry you missed it.”
I smile. “I missed you. I wish I could have called or something but…” I point at her and give her a playful grin. “Someone got themselves grounded.”
She starts to say something and then she blushes. Luckily for her, our waitress brings our food so the pressure is off her.
“You never answered my question about Mixon,” she says after a few minutes.
I gnaw on my bottom lip. “Mixon is a tiny town much like this one, but it's different because Mixon is super famous for its motocross track.”
“Oh. So are you going to go ride there or something?”
I shake my head. I can’t think about that right now. I can’t give up on my dream of going pro. But when I look up, Bayleigh is watching me curiously and I realize I care about her too much to just leave her hanging like that. “I spent the last few days in Mixon. They were hosting a nationals race, and my agent met me there. He was already going to be there and it's just easier to see him at the race than to fly back to LA for a weekend, even though he assured me that either way I saw him would be pointless.”
“Why’s that?” she asks.
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. As much as I want to run from the truth, I guess it’s time to face it. “I guess my career really is over. He claims he did everything he could to get me back in, but no one will allow it. I've been all but excommunicated from professional motocross.”
“Excommunicated?” she says, lifting an eyebrow. “That's a thing in motocross?”
I roll my eyes. “Come on, Bayleigh. Your gullible is showing again.”
* * *
After dinner, I ask her to come back to my house for a little while. She agrees, and I’m happy to spend the time with her. Every second with Bayleigh is a second I’m not stressing about my career. Even though I’ll be going back to California after this summer, I can’t help but hope that she asks me to stay.
Would I stay?
I can’t really answer that question right now. If my career really is as over as my agent says it is, I guess I have no reason to return back home. But every time this thought crosses my mind, my heart rips in half again. This can’t possibly be the end of the line for me. There has to be something else.
When we get back to my place, we settle into the couch. Bayleigh lays her head against my shoulder and everything feels right, even if only for a little bit. We flip through channels and try to find something to watch, but really I don’t care what’s on. I just like being cuddled up next to her.
And then my mom calls. Ugh. “It’s my mom,” I say, giving her an apologetic look. “I’ll be back in a second.”
I duck into the other room to take her call. She just wants to chat, as I suspected, but if I hadn’t answered then she would have called me back again and again, because that’s just how my mom is. I listen to her stories and try to be a good son even though I’m desperately dying to get back to Bayleigh and feel her soft skin in my arms again.
