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I point to the spot on the sidewalk next to the church.
“She stopped, right there. She turned around to me and said, ‘We can’t buy your glove today. Please, drop it.’ She wasn’t mean. She never was. She wasn’t mad, but she sounded like she was upset. Like she knew the glove that she bought me wasn’t good enough.”
I feel sharpness in my throat as I start to choke.
“Right then a car jumped the curb. It hit her. She died moments later right in front of me.”
Klein wraps her arms around me. I wipe my eyes.
“The next week, I beat the shit out of Josh Hirshberg. I knocked his teeth out. He didn’t deserve it. I just needed some way to take my anger out. How many other people have I taken my anger out on over the years?”
I wrap my arm around Klein. I’ve never told all of this to anyone.
“If I hadn’t been bugging my mom, maybe we’d have walked far enough that the car wouldn’t have hit us. If I could switch places, have that car kill me instead of my mother, I have no doubt the world would be a better place.”
“Is that why you don’t drive?” Klein’s voice sounds choked up. It almost makes me laugh. I know it’s such a stupid reason.
“I don’t drive. I don’t like walking on the sidewalk of busy streets. And you couldn’t pay me to watch a baseball game. Guilt does some weird and fucked up things to us.”
Klein squeezes me tighter.
“You would have liked her.” I kiss Klein on the top of her head. “And she would have liked you, too.”
17
KLEIN
Monday I’m backat the office. Friday night seems like an eternity ago. Almost like it didn’t even happen. Being in Mateo’s home was like entering a different world.
In some ways, I feel closer to him than I’ve ever felt. He brought me into his life, and opened up to me in a way I don’t think he’s opened up to anyone else before. He told me about his mother. How she died. He showed me the things that are most painful to him.
I don’t take that lightly.
I know he struggles with whether or not we should be together. I do too. It’s like we both don’t want to make a decision either way. We know that at some point, something will just force us to be apart and that will be it. That’s just how it seems to be, so until then…?
I can’t picture a future with Mateo. But I can’t picture one without him anymore either.
I’ve had my life planned out so precisely for the last few years, and miraculously, it all fell into place. Not that I didn’t work for it, but everything was going according to plan until that day at the courthouse. Now, it’s all become so cloudy.
I’m trying to focus on my work, trying to make sense of this world that now seems so foreign, when Blaine comes over to my desk. He sits on the edge, acting like he needs a break from his crutches. Whether that’s true or not, he uses it as an excuse to get just a little too close for my comfort.
“Aaah,” he sighs melodramatically.
I ignore him.
“You know,” he says, rubbing his thigh, “The doctors have done a great job on my leg.”
“M-hm,” I reply, without looking away from my computer screen.
“But a kiss always makes it feel better,” out of the corner of my eye, I can see Blaine drift his leg toward my chair.
It takes all my strength not to physically react to him, not to just shove his ass off my desk into a heap on the floor.
“Maybe you can get Nicoletti to do it,” I say. “He owes you, considering how much you kiss his ass.”
Blaine’s leg immediately retracts from my direction.
I finally turn and look at him. He’s glaring at me. He should know by now that I don’t play along with his stupid jokes.
