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But I want him. I want him towantme . . . to have stuck around and waited for me to get home. But he didn’t, and Brooklyn has unfairly been my sparring partner enough today. So instead, I tuck my ID badge into my wallet and pull out the work I brought home to distract me for the night. I spend an hour and a half reading through everything I wrote during the day, mentally not retaining a single word. The only thing I think about is James, and how much his dad hates me.
Chapter18
James
I’m the first from our team to walk into the aquatics center at the fieldhouse. The space is pretty packed for a swim meet, at least in my experience. We never had enough to field a full team at Public. Sharing lanes with a dozen different teams at the Y didn’t really lend to strong competition. I guess at schools like Welles, however, swim is big.
I’m not sure how many seats to save, so I climb to the top, figuring that’s the best view. I pull my sweatshirt off and stretch it out to hold a few spots, then sit at the end and prop one of my legs to the side to cover more ground.
My dad isn’t going to make it. He wanted to, and not only for the team, but I think for me. Things have been strained between us since our huge truth session. I think my father’s embarrassed. He prides himself on family and how close we all are, but having to talk about the times when things weren’t great between my mom and him meant he had to expose the cracks. If that all had happened when I was younger, maybe in grade school, it would have hit me differently. But now it only makes me admire my parents and their relationship more. There’s comfort in seeing people handle curveballs. And my curveball just walked in.
I take a deep breath and sit up tall, hoping Morgan spots me. She stops in the doorway for a few seconds, so I stand up to make it easier for her to spot me. She wasn’t home when I left her badge last night, and Brooklyn seemed really busy with her studies, so I didn’t wait around like I wanted to. I asked Brooklyn to tell Morgan to call me, but she must have gotten in really late.
I lift a hand above my head and mentally will her eyes to look at me. She seems to be scanning the stands, so I wave a little more emphatically. Her arms fall heavy at her sides the minute she spots me, and she looks down at her feet as she trudges forward.
The bad feeling in my chest grows the closer she comes. She abruptly stops in the front row of the student section, about twenty rows in front of me, and plops her bag down along with a sweatshirt before she sits on the very end of the row, kind of like I did. Only she’s twenty rows away.
I look to my right, to my empty bench that is not even remotely under threat of filling up as people file into the lower rows first, and decide it’s probably safe to abandon my row and move down to join Morgan. I snag my sweatshirt and take the bleacher seats two at a time until I’m standing behind Morgan. I hover there for almost a full minute without her turning around, and the longer I stand the more I feel like a total jerk with absolutely no clue what to say.
I may as well cut my misery in half. Sitting down behind her, I’m enough to her right that I have a clear view of her profile. She’s wearing an intense expression, her lashes kissing her cheeks every time her eyes dart to a new focus. She seems nervous, and I’m not sure if that’s for her friend or due to the fact we are sitting close enough to touch yet not saying a word. This is silly.
“Did you get your badge?” I ask, leaning forward enough to catch her eyes. She shifts a little, startled, and meets my gaze.
Flashing me a quick smile, she utters, “I did. Thank you.” Her attention immediately returns to the pool and the door on the other side, waiting for anyone else to join us and save her from this. I find myself wishing for that too.
Leaning back, I rest my shoulder blades on the bench behind me and pull my phone out to see when Theo is coming.
ME:Dude, where are you?
He doesn’t write back right away, so I waste a little time flipping through social media. I pause on Morgan’s profile and notice that things have changed. Most of her images are gone, maybe only a handful still posted. And those are the images from important dates like her Sweet Sixteen party, and the photo of her with Anika, Lily and Brooklyn. My eyes dart up to catch the side of her face. She’s chewing on her bottom lip.
My chest gets heavy, my stomach sinking with an overwhelming sense of dread. I feel like I’ve lost her.
I lean forward, holding my breath because I’m so damn nervous to speak. But that’s the only way to figure this out, to fix things. Eventually, I’m leaning so far over my own knees that I enter her periphery and she tilts her head to the side and lifts a brow as if asking, “What?”
“I was hoping maybe we could talk. Not now, of course, but after. If you want.” I meet her stare, and she blinks a few times, the way she does when she’s baffled by someone, and not in a good way.
“You want to talk.” Her statement is simple. Short. Maybe a little mean.
I swallow down the acid climbing up and pray my heart steadies. She makes me so fucking nervous.
“I do. Yes. I want to talk. With you,” I say.
Her mouth forms an instant smile. Again, not in a good way.
“Is that why you dropped off my badge and ran last night?” she asks.
I look on for a moment, not sure how to answer her. My tongue gets more tied when Brooklyn steps up to her row, then proceeds to move up one step to sit next to me. Morgan makes eye contact with her friend for maybe a second before Brooklyn turns to her side and begins a conversation with a faculty member across the aisle.
“Unbelievable,” Morgan utters, turning around in her seat and effectively ending our conversation.
I’m missing major context clues, but from the little I’ve gathered, Morgan and Brooklyn aren’t getting along. I have zero experience with siblings and wouldn’t presume I’d be able to step into a situation that’s more like sisters, but if Morgan’s beef with Brooklyn is getting in the way of resolving the one with me, I have to do something. I wait for Brooklyn to finish her conversation, but the moment she turns back into our row, I pounce with my own questions.
“Did you tell her I dropped the badge off? She knows it was me, right?”
Brooklyn stares at me as if I spoke Latin.
“Did you tell her—”
