“I told her you hired me for a few projects.”
“And?”
“I’m building her a couple raised flower beds next weekend.” He laughs.
“Of course you are,” I reply, shaking my head. “Well, tell her that those raised flower beds are not a write-off for her business of being the town gossip.”
A grin spreads on his face. “I’ll make sure to tell her that.”
Grant left hours ago,and I’m busy attempting to satisfy the girl in the mirror.
I’ve pulled half my hair into an elastic band, doing my best to twist loose tendrils around it. I’ll admit, it looks halfway decent. Intentionally messy instead of just messy. I’m wearing old cut-off jeans, a white tank top, tan cowboy boots I used to wear in high school, and red lipstick.
I grin at my reflection; then my pulse picks up when I hear the familiar rhythm—knock—pause—knock, knock—pause—knock—against the glass of my bedroom window. It’s something I haven’t heard in years.
I pull open my blinds, glancing around my small backyard, and spy the crisp corner of white paper slid between the screen and frame. I slide my window open to retrieve it.
My heartbeat sounds heavy and loud like a kick drum against my chest.
I already know what it is before I unfold it.
Bookworm,
Something you don’t know about me:
I was so nervous for my first game as a Giant that I threw up. The only thing that got me on the field, besides a contract, was remembering the girl who used to quietly smile at me from the sidelines. No screaming or theatrics. Just the steady smile of a girl who believed in me.
Your turn.
Hot Shot
I close my eyes, the note transporting me back to the first time Milo Carter was more than just a friend.
It was sophomore year, biology class. I caught him staring at me across the aisle, and when my eyes met his, he knocked over a beaker of cloudy blue liquid that immediately began creeping toward the edge of his desk.
“Uh,” he said, lunging for it too late.
The beaker shattered on the floor, sending glass and chemical splatter everywhere, earning Milo a very long look from Mrs. Hensley.
“Mr. Carter,” she said flatly. “Is there a reason hydrochloric acid is migrating?”
Milo glanced at the mess, then back at me with that wide grin of his. “Gravity?”
Later, I found a note in my locker addressed to Bookworm. He told me that I owed him for blaming gravity instead of my beautiful brown eyes.
I wrote him back, calling him Hot Shot since Dusty Hollow was buzzing with his talent on the field. I also told him my brown eyes had nothing to do with his clumsiness, and he better figure out a solution fast.
His solution was asking me out after we spent six weeks passing notes.
But even after we were officially dating, the notes continued. We wrote them whenever we wanted the other to know something about ourselves that was hard to say out loud.
Some things are scary when released into the open air, slivers of our soul exposed. In written words, they felt different. Like permission—like the list I carry in my pocket now—except permission to feel the hard things even when no one else notices.
And Milo Carter just wrote me one of those notes that somehow makes ten years feel like ten seconds, as if paper and ink can make time disappear.
22
SADIE
