Page 19 of Wrecked

“Why isn’t your boyfriend out here teaching you?”

“Brad got a call and took off. I don’t know where he went.”

“He just left you here?” Adam took another shot, and the ball went in. “Come on, I’ll teach you.”

I did a double take. “You’re gonna teach me basketball? Now? What about Nina?”

Adam shrugged. “She can wait. Now, come here, and show me what you’ve got.”

We played almost every day for five months. When the weather got nice, we would move our lesson to the schoolyard, and then we started meeting in his driveway. We spent those nights talking about everything—school, friends, movies, life. He was getting ready to graduate and go away to school to become an architect. I was just a wide-eyed sophomore who was settling into a deep Matthew McConaughey obsession. We laughed, and we played, but mostly, we talked.

A slight breeze brushes the hair from my face. It feels nice and peaceful after a morning of manual labor. I’m about to fall asleep, but the breeze stops.

I open my eyes and see jean-clad legs standing in front of me, blocking my wind. I look up, and Adam is standing above me, holding two brown paper bags in one hand and two Cokes in the other. He holds out his hand with the bags.

I don’t move or say a word.

He raises his head to the sun and takes a deep breath that puffs out his chest. When he looks back down, he closes his eyes, shakes his head, and then takes a seat on the ground next to me.

He places a bag on my lap and props a Coke on the side of my hip. He proceeds to open his bag, taking out an apricot, a sandwich, and a cookie.

I look in my bag and see that I have the same.

“Is this some sort of peace offering?” I ask.

Adam takes a bite of his sandwich.

I open my sack and start with the cookie. “Who made the lunches?”

With a mouthful of sandwich, he replies, “Me.”

I turn my head to him in surprise. “You made lunch for the whole crew?”

“No.” He pops open his soda and takes a sip. “You still eat your dessert first?”

“Yes,” I answer. Then, I swallow my cookie. “Wait, what do you mean by still?”

The side of his mouth rises just barely, as if he’s recalling a memory. “When you used to come to my house, you always asked for a piece of pie before dinner. I remember my mom saying it would spoil your appetite, and your reply was, ‘What if I choke and die during dinner? Do you really want me to die, not having dessert on my last day of life?’”

Adam laughs lightly. I, on the other hand, am dumbstruck that he remembers this. I didn’t think Adam remembered anything about those days.

When he looks back at me, the slight rise of his lip is gone. Maybe it’s because I’m staring at him with the most confused expression.

I shake off the oddness of the moment and say, “Well, you know, a branch from this tree could fall on my head and knock me unconscious. Do you really want me to die, not having devoured that delicious cookie?”

Adam looks out into the field and says, “No. We wouldn’t want that.”

We sit in silence and eat our lunches. Our feet are stretched out before us, and the breeze is back to whistling in the trees.

“Must suck, huh?” I say, the first to break the silence, talking into the open air. “Having to give up your Sunday to babysit me?”

“No. I’d have been here anyway.”

I raise a brow. “You volunteer here a lot?”

“Three times a week. I work a four-day shift, and I’m here the other three.” His words are nonchalant, like every twenty-five-year-old guy gives up his days off to build houses in the heat for people he doesn’t know. “If you want to come Tuesday, you can knock off a few more hours before your night shift.”

I have a lot of questions but don’t know which one I want to ask first.