“Sorry,” he said. “My friends are jackasses.”
“Just don’t tell them about this,” I said, surreptitiously handing him his T-shirt from the night of the party. “If an almost-kiss makes them act like howler monkeys, I imagine this would make them go nuclear.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, stuffing the shirt in his backpack and looking over his shoulder again. He looked back at me and then gave me a quick hug, to another chorus of shouts and grunts.
“So anyway,” I said, clasping my hands behind my back and looking up at a cloud of starlings as they erupted from the bleachers on the far side of the field. I looked back down at Grant. “I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come over tonight. Dad’s stuck working late.” His smile widened and my cheeks burned even hotter. “We could, you know, do homework and stuff.”
“I’d love to do homework,” he said. “And ‘stuff’ sounds pretty nice too.”
I laughed. “Well that’s good, because I kind of missed my bus so I could stay and watch you practice.”
“Oh,” Grant said, suddenly looking away and rubbing the back of his neck. “I just remembered, actually…” He looked down at his feet. “My car’s in the shop—a buddy’s giving me a ride home. So I guess I can’t come over. I’m really sorry.”
“I could come to your house,” I offered, brushing my hair back and raising my eyebrows hopefully. “I bet my dad could get me later.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Grant said, frowning suddenly. I tried to catch his eye but he looked away. “Listen, I should go. My ride’s waiting.”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to show my disappointment. “Text me later?”
“Definitely,” he said, smiling again. He leaned up and kissed me on the cheek before muttering goodbye and jogging down the stairs.
I flopped back on the bench and stared down at the now-empty field, sighing long and loud as the cicadas’ song returned. I sent out texts to Anna, Layla, and Chloe, hoping at least one of them was available for a ride. A few minutes passed without a response. The sun was just starting to dip, and as the blue of the sky faded slowly to purple I pulled my phone out again and texted Virginia.
“How are things?” I typed. She responded quickly, before I could even put my phone away.
“Pretty good!” she wrote back. “Except for the fact that I’m in line at Walmart lol. How’s the new bf?”
“Weird,” I typed. I set the phone down on the bench and put my blouse back on against the cooling breeze. I picked up my phone again to type but realized I wanted to hear her voice. I dialed and she picked up on the first ring. “Hey,” I said, realizing how much I had missed hearing her voice. She apologized as the sounds of a child throwing a fit in the checkout line assaulted my ears, but I didn’t mind. It was nice to just feel her on the other end of the line.
“Anyway,” she said as the noise finally quieted down. “Tell me about you. What’s up with your man?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, feeling a little silly now. Maybe I was overreacting. I lay back lengthwise on the bench with one arm behind my head and stared up at the sky. “He acted sort of weird today. He seemed like he wanted to hang out, but then something changed and he practically ran away from me.”
“So he’s got some stuff going on you don’t know about,” Virginia said evenly. I imagined what she was doing right now: leaving Walmart and walking across the baking blacktop toward her beat-up old Bronco. I could see her getting her keys out of her expensive purse, her always-perfect, glossy fingernails as she unlocked the car door. It felt like a really long time since I had seen her. “You’re keeping something pretty big from him too, aren’t you?”
“I guess,” I said. I almost smiled, even though I felt the total opposite—Virginia was always right. “Still. It feels different.”
I sighed as a thin film of cloud scudded by overhead. Maybe I was a hypocrite, but the idea of Grant hiding something from me made my stomach turn. What if his liking me was all some elaborate trick? I knew it was a paranoid thought, but the impulse to find a dark underside to every action had been trained into me over so many years, it was hard to shake.
“You’re spinning,” Virginia said, always able to read my thoughts perfectly, even from the other end of the phone. “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Just take your time, get to know him, figure out what his deal is. I bet it’s nothing. And if it is something, you’ll either bail, or you’ll deal. Right?”
“Right,” I agreed finally, sitting up from the bleachers and gathering my things. I would call Dad and ask for a ride and pretend nothing bad had happened. I would keep going on with my life and keep seeing Grant, and I would take things day by day. What was my big rush anyway? I knew I should want to take things slow—I should be afraid of getting close to Grant, because growing closer meant knowing things about each other, and there was so much about me that I didn’t want him to know, that he could never know. But somehow, just thinking about his broad, easy grin and the way his black eyes seemed to flash in the sunlight made me feel like the only thing that mattered was being around him.
“Listen, babe, I gotta jet,” Virginia said. I could hear her car starting in the background, the familiar sound of V-103 blaring on her stereo. “You gonna be okay?”