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He nods, stifling a yawn. “Yeah. And no, I’m OK.” But he still doesn’t move.
The parking lot isn’t busy. It’s small, surrounded on three sides by trees and landscaped bushes. Cicadas drone nearby. “There’s still twenty minutes before the match starts, right? Want to nap? I can be quiet.” I crumple my empty bag to extinguish any chance it will make noise while he’s resting.
“Can you just talk to me?” he asks. “Tell me about your day?”
“Sure,” I say slowly. I want to tell Jesse about the interview, about how it felt to know I’m wanted but not wanting to go and I want him to tell me something simple and sweet to help me decide, if I get the position, whether I should go or not. So, I tell him about my dad and how he suggested I go back to Lancaster; I watch his face as I say the words, as I describe the call with Cecelia and how I put Audrey’s name forward instead of my own. I wax poetic about what Lancaster is like, but explain how my ex-boyfriend—Brian—and ex-best friend—Nora—are still there. Together. Happy. In true Jesse fashion, his face doesn’t change. He could be fast asleep if it wasn’t for the way he opens and closes his fist. I reach for him, putting my hand in his, and he squeezes. The longer he is quiet, the more I second-guess myself. Maybe I should have been selfish and just taken the job. Maybe I should have told him my second, secret reason for wanting to stay: him.
“Do you think I did the right thing?” I ask.
He’s quiet, so quiet. I look at the clock on the dashboard; we could miss the match completely waiting for his answer. Finally, he says, “What do you want, Lulu?” He sounds tired.
I want to stop having to decide what I want, just for once. I want to feel wanted, right here with the people I love. I reach for his ear, where some past hit has made the skin puffy and pale. I think about Lancaster, but I can’t see myself there. I see myself here, in this town, in this truck, with this person.
Chapter Twenty
Jesse
Usually, Lulu is the fidgeter. She’ll shake her knee, pick her nails. Tuck her hair behind her ear again and again. I’ll grab her free hand until whatever compulsion to move she’s experiencing passes. Today, I’m the one who’s a bundle of nerves.
There were never a lot of people in the stands when I played, and it’s no different now. We stick out like sore thumbs, at the top of the bleachers. A couple players from earlier matches and their families lounge closer to the field.
The metal shakes beneath us as I bounce my leg. There’s no reason for it—there’s no cloud cover, it’s not cold, I’m not overworked or overtired—but my leg aches. I thought I’d be immune from this far away, that the smell of the mud and sweat wouldn’t reach us here. That the sounds of bodies hitting bodies, the resounding smack that comes from a well-placed hit, the quietoofthat accompanies a shoulder to a gut, would get filtered out. Maybe my brain just can’t help but associate this place with those smells, those sounds. Maybe these are phantom senses.
Lulu squeezes my thigh, not in a sexual way, comforting, anchoring.
“Tell me about this game,” she says, and I recognize it for what it is: a distraction, something I can focus on that isn’t this game that I’ve loved that I can’t play anymore. “I don’t know anything about it.”
My team, my old team, takes the pitch. “It’s like American football in that the point of the game is to get the ball behind your opponent’s try line, but players throw the ball backward instead of forward. And the team with the most points at the end wins.”
She squints against the sun. She left her sunglasses in the truck. “And no one wears pads or helmets. Nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“Did you ever break anything when you played?”
“Nope. Not playing rugby, at least.” A whistle blows; one of my old teammates touched the sideline, stopping play. “I fell off the roof once helping Pop clean the gutters, broke my ankle.”
She makes a speculative sound as play resumes. I don’t want to talk about my broken bones when I was a kid. Coming here was nerve-wracking enough, but I feel like I’ve been sideswiped by that SUV all over again. If anything, the depth of my shock, that she is even considering leaving Wilvale, is just a sign of how far gone I am for her.
Friends should be supportive. Even if I don’t want her to leave. Even if her leaving would put me right back where I was before: alone.
“Jess.”
I might be imagining the hopeful expression on her face, inserting my own hopes into its meaning. But we’re interrupted by another voice calling my name. A young Black woman takes the bleacher steps by twos, her braids pulled back in a low ponytail, her Crocs squeaking on the metal.
“April. Hey.” April has a wide smile that matches her cousin Marcus’s.
“Where have you been, Logan?” She wraps me up in a hug. I keep waiting for the moment that seeing someone from my past life won’t feel a little bit weird. Today, it’s still weird. But it’s bearable. We get through the niceties, the how are you’s and how are things, and when she asks me what’s new I introduce her to Lulu.
“I’m Marcus’s cousin,” April explains. “He mentioned he met you the other night.”
“How come you didn’t come to the party?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Had to work.”
“April is also a firefighter,” I tell Lulu.
“Cousin firefighters?”
