Are you kidding me right now? “Never mind. Nothing.” I shove past him, speed walk through the halls, and head straight out to the parking lot. Three minutes later the high school becomes a distant blur in my rearview mirror. I can’t be around him right now. Coach will be pissed but I can’t find it in me to care.
* * *
I’m doinghomework at the dining room table a couple of hours later when the doorbell rings. Mom and Dad aren’t home so I hop up to answer it. I don’t bother looking through the peephole before I swing the door open, and am surprised to find Ryne standing on the porch. He looks annoyingly handsome. He’s freshly showered, which makes sense because practice should have ended not too long ago. The ends of his still-damp hair stick out a bit around the edges of the baseball hat he’s wearing backward. With his black sleeveless tank top and his hands shoved into the back pockets of his jeans, his arm muscles are totally the visual focal point. That and his stupid face I can never get enough of. My eyes eat up the view before me like candy. But I’m still upset, so I raise my eyebrows and say nothing. Ryne looks antsy and jittery. I can relate. We stand there staring at each other, neither of us speaking until finally, I can’t stand it anymore.
“Did you need something, Ryne?” His eyes shut and he sighs. It physically pains me to see him upset, but I’m running out of patience.
He opens his eyes again and clears his throat. “Are you busy? I thought we could, I don’t know, go drive around or something?”
I stare at him, unblinking. “Why?”
“Dacen, please.”
The constant push and pull is exhausting. But this is Ryne. And I—Nope. Not going down that train of thought right now. My shoulders sag forward.
“Okay.”
39
Ryne
We end up driving all the way into Camden Hill to grab dinner. It’s not as light-hearted as the first time, but Dacen seems to relax a bit while we eat. When I got in my truck after practice, I drove to his house without even thinking about it. I couldn’t leave things the way they were when he walked away from me earlier this afternoon. It didn’t feel right, and my stomach was in knots all during practice because of it.
We’re on the way back to Knoxton Falls when I make a stupid move.
“Did you ever think it’s weird we met at camp and then you ended up moving to Knoxton Falls? I mean, you’re from New York. What are the odds?” Why am I bringing up camp? I don’t want to talk about camp. Dacen looks up from my phone and shrugs. He completely disregarded the banishment I’d put in place and has been scrolling through my music to find something to listen to.
“It’s not that far-fetched, I guess. We picked that camp because it was close to where my dad was already staying at the time since he moved down here before my mom and me. I was lucky to get in. For many reasons.” He glances at me almost shyly and something squeezes in my chest. I’d decided to detour to the lake instead of going straight back to Dacen’s, and turn into the parking lot, pulling into the first open spot. Dacen turns to me as I shut off the engine. “Anyway, our move to Knoxton Falls was already in motion by the time camp started. Had we talked about where you went to school, I would have realized it then and we wouldn’t have had the epic shock at soccer tryouts.”
“Had you not tried to torture me while you showered,” I tease, “I might have had some brain cells left to bring it up in conversation.”
Dacen is silent for a moment. “Had you not had a lobotomy at some point the last two days of camp and stopped talking to me, I might have thought to ask you where you went to school since I knew you were local.” His tone isn’t joking anymore, in fact, he sounds hurt. But I’m not the one who flipped the kill switch on whatever it was we had going on at the time. I squint over at him and there’s no sign of deceit on his face. He genuinely seems upset. His chest rises and falls with a heavy sigh.
“What happened during those last two days of camp, Ryne? Why did you do a complete one-eighty on me? And why don’t you date? Is it just me specifically you don’t want to date?” He swallows hard and closes his eyes. When he opens them and trains them on me, they’re curious but also upset and a little angry. “It felt like things were headed that direction for us, at camp I mean. I know we were running out of time, I get that, but I really thought we were on the same page.”
I hear the words he’s saying but it’s like we’re not speaking the same language. I don’t understand. He’s the one who set that shit in motion. My lips turn down in a deep frown and I shake my head slowly, crossing my arms over my chest. “I don’t get you, Dacen. You’re asking me why I got pissed at you? And the whole dating thing? I tried to take you on one this summer and look how well that turned out.”
Dacen’s forehead crinkles. “You tried to take me on a date this summer?”
“Yeah… at camp. The note, remember?”
He shakes his head back and forth slowly. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Uncertainty creeps through my bones at the look of genuine confusion on his face. “You said you were free after the kids’ scrimmage, so I’d planned for us to head into town and eat and then, I don’t know, do something. Something non-camp related.”
Dacen stares at me. “Something like a date, you mean?”
“Yeah. Well, my dumb ass locked myself out of our room while you were still out. I had to help Coach D with a few things and intended for you and me to meet up afterward. My phone died, because of course, and I couldn’t let myself back in the room to leave you a note. Bryce happened to pop out of his room, probably because I was swearing a little too loudly at our door. He gave me a sticky note, I wrote you a quick note on it and slapped it onto our door so you’d see it when you got back and come meet me.” Dacen definitely looks like he has no idea what I’m talking about, but I continue. “I went and helped Coach D and afterward headed straight into town to wait for you at that Mexican restaurant.”
Because tacos.
“I waited for, I don’t know, like forty-five minutes maybe and then just walked back. When I got to our room, the note was gone. Bryce passed by again and told me you read the note, crumpled it up, and went inside. I think you know the rest of what happened.” I knocked on our door, Dacen let me in, and I acted like a fucking jackass, I’m starting to realize.
“I never got the note, Ryne.” His expression darkens and he crosses his arms. “You said Bryce is the one who allegedly saw me read it and toss it?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“I don’t know what the deal was with that guy, but he didn’t like me. He glared at me hardcore when he found us in that storage room after you’d already walked out. I don’t know if he was jealous or what the hell his problem was, but he definitely didn’t like me. And he’s definitely a liar.”
