Someone will freak out.
So, instead, I wait until no one is looking and dump two handfuls of ice from the Gatorade jugs into my helmet and hightail it to the locker room. Yes, I’ve done this before. Softball is a game of many bruises.
Instead of showering, I swap my swampy clothes for fresh ones and then sit my butt on the locker room bench with wads of ice stuffed inside my gross jersey for a makeshift cold compress.
It feels so good that I’m almost too distracted to hear the locker room door swing open. Before I can get my stiff ass out of my current position, there’s a swing of red ponytail in my periphery and I know I’m caught.
Kelly Cleary.
Shit.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I say, sounding a lot like Grey the night I caught him with Stacey.
Kelly’s cat eyes skip from my face to my knee and back again.
I expect a slight little smile from her. Somethingmeangirlthat is going to be trouble later. But, instead, all I get is a shrug. “You look like a football player.”
Fishy. That smells fishy. “I’m totally fine. Just sore,” I say. Which is true. I’ve just been sore for more than a week, and progressively more sore as that week went on. NBD.
Then, to my utter shock, Kelly sits down on the bench. She’s chewing on her lip, heavily mascaraed eyes downcast and aimed at my iced knee.
“I’m jealous.”
I gape at her. Whatever words I expected out of her mouth, those weren’t them.
She’s picking at her nails, painted in a gel black that’s seen better days. “I’m jealous. Of how you’ve been able to join the team like it’s nothing. How the guys accepted you. How… how Jake is with you.” Her eyes flash up. “And I didn’t know how to deal with it. I thought I had to be mean. And… that was immature.”
I cannot believe this.
She stops biting her lip and frowns. “I let Stacey influence my opinion of you, and I should’ve learned from the boys and just made an opinion for myself.”
Holy shit.
“I was the one who told Stacey you joined the team, about you and Grey, about everything.”
Oh.
Stacey knew I’d meet Grey outside the locker roombecause Kelly had told her that’s where I’d be. She knew she’d get a reaction out of me that would punish both Grey and myself.
Kelly lifts her eyes to mine. They really are the clearest of blues, shallow water on a hot day. “She wasn’t my friend. Not really. The second she found out that Jake and I were going to homecoming together, she turned on me. In front of the team—all of our friends. In front of Coach Kitt on her birthday.” She actually looks like she might cry. Kelly squeezes her eyes shut and there is wetness there, lapping at her eyeliner. I reach out and touch her shoulder. She doesn’t move away. “It was something I should’ve seen coming.”
I want to ask what happened, but I’m sure that will make it worse. And, God, she’s already crying.
“If Stacey can’t have someone, no one can.” Her voice grows smaller. “Not even me.”
“Kelly, that’s shitty. I’m sorry.”
She releases a shuttered sigh and just nods at me, spent. My hand on her shoulder suddenly doesn’t feel right. “Can I hug you?” I ask, and I’m sort of surprised when Kelly consents. I wrap my arms around her and we stay like that for a solid minute. When we part, Kelly rubs her eyes, her thick liner mostly surviving.
She stands and what she says next absolutely knocks the wind out of me.
“I know what happened that day, you know. Walkingback from the mound. I heard exactly what she said that made you punch her. At the time, I thought maybe I didn’t hear it right. That she said something else. But… that’s the kind of person she is.”
Then Kelly leaves me alone with my ice and disbelief.
38
FRIDAY NIGHT WITHOUT A FOOTBALL GAME FEELSweird. Really weird. Practice is short and sweet (my knee isthrilled) and, well, weird. I come home to fresh-out-of-the-oven pizza from Heather, who made both the pizza dough and mozzarella from scratch—?!?!?!?—and spend the next hour with Mom’s head on my shoulder, watchingA League of Their Ownfor the millionth time.
