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“Imagine if someone helped you one day, maybe even saved your life, Katelyn. But from that day forward you’d never be able to see or use a computer, the one thing you truly loved was taken from you? That’s how it felt, for all of us that day. We were alive, but I’d never compete again. And my teammates, they’d never even walk again.”
I feel the hurt in her eyes when I mention love. When she hears me talking about gymnastics instead of a person, but that’s how it was for me. Still is in a lot of ways.
It’s my life. My one true love.
Until today, that is.
Until I met Katelyn, officially.
“Now!” I exclaim, checking my watch and getting up to set some places at the table, “enough of my bellyaching, we’ll need to eat soon and I want you to tell me a little more about that one time I think I almost met you but you ran away instead,” I tease her, giving her a wink and a look I hope tells her everything I feel right now.
Leave it for now, but we’ll talk about it more one day. Soon.
She creases a smile and jokingly punches my arm as the door chimes.
“How would you know if I almost met you?” she counters, but we both know what happened that day when she saw me in the gym.
If I’d known it was her, if I knew she was still on campus, I would’ve tracked her down.
“I remember,” I confess, but I have to admit. “I was having a bad day, and an even worse moment from back pain.”
I can see now how I missed her loveliness because of it, because of my own rage and disappointment in myself.
I make my way to the door when a knock comes, and tipping the delivery guy, I take the two brown paper sacks over to the table and start to inspect the contents.
It’s hard not to smile now, and eventually chuckle. But seeing Katelyn’s face when she figures I’m about to serve her up nothing but raw fish is just too funny.
She makes me feel better, makes me laugh even after telling her my horror gymnastics story.
She’s looking queasy, almost green so I put her out of her misery.
“I ordered you a chicken dish,” I tell her, unable to hold back my laughter a second longer.
She looks horrified I could see through her, but mouths the words thank you as she opens her bag, politely ignoring me while I chuckle quietly for a moment longer.
It doesn’t even feel like our first meal together, or even like a date anymore.
It feels like it’s just us.
Like we’ve been doing this for years already.
And I sure as hell hope she feels the same way because I don’t feel like letting things rest at ‘thank you’ and ‘good night’.
Not by a long shot.
Chapter Seven
Katelyn
My heart breaks and then melts when he tells me his story. He’s not just some dumb jock, like those guys on the football team or probably even like the ones he coaches now.
The ones who I know get a kick out of jeering me whenever they see me.
Wes isn’t like them at all, and not every guy who’s fit and athletic is a meathead. That much I’ve learned today.
But what truly unravels me, apart from knowing he can’t see himself as a hero when he really is, is how he just knew I couldn’t stand sushi but love chicken instead?
Maybe it’s from being a college teacher for so long, or maybe he really can read my mind.
And if he can read minds, I hope he likes it dirty, because I’m more than just hungry for crumbed chicken and rice right now.
I want him so bad it’s starting to hurt but I still can’t tell if he’s just being nice or if someone so amazingly wonderful, handsome, and just perfect like him could even look at a chubby younger girl like me.
You could just ask him.
Yeah, right.
Like I could also just hurl myself out that window too, probably an easier solution.
Get it over and done with, avoid the pain of rejection I know would be coming.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks me suddenly, interrupting my train of thought and proving with a look that he may well be able to read my mind as easily as picking an item from the menu.
I glance over at his computer, avoiding his eyes because I know how easy I am to read right now. It’s done its thing and after we eat, I can reboot it, and he’ll be all set to do whatever he has to.
And I’ll have to go, and this magical few hours will be over and I’ll go back to my dorm and cry. I just know I will.
“Hey?” he whispers, nudging my leg under the table with his foot. “What are you thinking?” he asks again, making me snort a laugh because the answer’s so stupid.
