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“Don’t tell me that you’re putting up with crap from that guy. I know you are,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a doormat to him like you are to Dad.”
“I’m not a doormat to Dad!”
“Sissy, please,” she dismissed me. “All you do is bend over backwards to take care of him.”
“Because somebody has to!”
“Is that supposed to be a criticism of me?” she bit back. “Why does someone need to take care of that jerk? Let him flounder and screw up his life even more. So what?”
“I love him, even if you don’t!” I’d said that loud and I had more to add, too, but I spotted movement behind Aubin’s back. Some of the other girls were also emerging from the locker room. “Never mind,” I told her. “Don’t worry about anyone but yourself. As always.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “What did you just say?”
But I’d already walked past her. I also had places to go and people to see, and I did see the person I was looking for outside of his apartment building, waiting for me. He was a huge figure that might have been scary to other people, except that he wasn’t at all. I was pretty sure that he was really the nicest and best person in the universe.
“Hey there, Lissa,” Bowie said when I unlocked the passenger door and he got into the seat that was positioned back as far as it would go, but still wasn’t exactly comfortable for him. “How was your practice?”
“It was…ok,” I decided. “How about yours?” I asked him more questions about what he’d done with his day, which was as busy as mine. I loved to hear him talk about it. Really, I just loved to hear him talk. He asked me questions too and I told him about the weirdness of my sister showing up to watch us and take critical notes, and how she’d mentioned that things might not be going perfectly with her business. By that point, we’d found a parking spot and I’d inched into it, back and forth very carefully, but faster than I’d been able to do it before.
“Isn’t that crazy?” I asked. We got out and looked around, both for Ward and for anyone who might recognize us together. We were taking a chance, I knew.
“What’s crazy? That your sister is critical or that her company is struggling? The first one I believe very easily, and new businesses fail all the time. I think that’s the most common outcome.”
“Sure, for other people. But Aubin?” I shook my head. “She won’t fail. She’s still looking for investors.”
“To invest in what, exactly?”
“I think rain forest ingredients, but I’m not sure,” I admitted, and he laughed.
“Did you talk to your father today?” he asked next, and I had, briefly catching him while he was on the way to his job at the guard shack. There was nothing new to report there, just continued caginess.
“I also talked to Valerie. Ward’s mom,” I explained.
Bowie’s fingers froze on the keypad to his front door. “Where did you run into her?”
“I didn’t run into her. I called her and asked if she would meet me for coffee,” I explained. “I wanted to see if she knows where he is, and I wanted to tell her that I was sorry. She doesn’t deserve this situation.”
“You don’t, either.”
That was more up in the air, so I only shrugged. I was the one who’d put up with it for six years, after all. It would have been easy for Ward to believe that I liked things the way they were, or at least that I was willing to accept them.
“Lissa—”
“I’m making tacos,” I announced. “What do you think?”
“Sounds great. If you don’t mind missing out on my help, I’m going to lie down for a minute.”
He did that, on the couch where I’d been sleeping a lot of nights since the one when I’d waited for him in the players’ parking lot. It was big enough for me by a lot, but Bowie had to curve into a C-shape to fit his big body onto it. He was dead asleep when I finished cooking. Not even the smell of the food had woken him, which was odd.
I walked to look at him resting there. It had been a hard time for him, too. The football season was a seven-day a week, twelve-hour a day kind of job. Then I’d fallen into his lap and I knew he was disrupting his schedule to meet me, watch me, and worry about me. He was very worried, I was sure about that, because he checked in so often to ask how my day was going and if I was all right. That first night when I’d told him about breaking up with Ward, I had fallen asleep on this same couch without meaning to. Then, the next night, he’d suggested that he could come over to the cottage, and when my dad hadn’t returned home, I’d changed the sheets and Bowie had slept in his bed. Diagonally, because even though it was bigger than my own twin mattress, it was still too small for him.
We’d kept doing that. I’d been over here, stretched out on the couch that was actually just about as large as where I slept in the cottage, and once or twice he’d come to me, but I didn’t want him to. It was just too small and uncomfortable, even in my dad’s big-ish bed. No, Bowie needed to be here and I didn’t need to be foisting myself on him.
Except that when we were apart, when I was at my house and he was here in his, and even if my dad happened to be there with me…I was scared stiff. I was only sleeping in little bursts from which I’d wake up with a jolt of terror, sure that Ward was reaching for me.
I sat down on the very edge of the sofa, where there was a little space on the cushion. “Bowie?” I whispered. He needed to eat. He worked out too hard and too often, and he was too big to skip meals. “Bowie.”
He made a sound like a little groan. “I’m awake. Damn.”
