Taking six whole steps across my studio apartment, I open the window by the kitchenette to let some fresh air in. I watch a few students saunter along the sidewalk, bags slung over their shoulders, laughing and talking. It’s not right being cooped up in this little apartment when it’s autumn in Chicago and the weather is to die for.
I should get some fresh air. Maybe that’ll help me focus. And feel human again.
I grab a water bottle and my sneakers and phone, spotting a missed text message from my older sister, Demi, along with a screenshot of her TV. It’s fuzzy, and I can hardly make out the picture, but it looks like she’s watching ESPN.
Tapping the screen, I call her, and she answers in the middle of the second ring.
“Oh my god, Delilah. Didn’t you use to date Zane de la Cruz?” Demi’s words are hurried and excited.
“We didn’t date,” I say. “But what about him?”
“Turn on ESPN,” she says. “There’s a special on hometown heroes or something. I was sitting here with Royal, tuning out Sports Center like I always do, and then I heard them mention his name. Did you know he’s in Chicago now? He plays for the Chicago Thunder.”
I’ve turned to stone, standing here unable to move. The phone slips from my hand, but I manage to catch it before it crashes to the floor.
“Turn your TV on,” Demi urges. “It just started about five minutes ago.”
Palms sweating and heart racing, I toss throw pillows from my futon couch until I find the buried remote. I don’t even know what channel ESPN is or if I even have it, but I’m flipping through the stations like my life depends on it.
Found it.
The camera pans across a football field where men in black and grey are practicing drills, and then it cuts to a head and shoulders shot of Zane being interviewed.
He smiles, his dimples just as prevalent as before, and everything around me fades into the distance. I see him and only him.
I hang up with my sister, and in the span of the next hour, I fall for him all over again. And when it’s over, my heart aches. All the pain and hurt I spent the last two months processing and tucking away have all been dredged up again, brought back to the surface.
The fact that he’s in the same city as me . . .
“It’s good to be home.” His voice fills my apartment as he looks straight at the camera.
I finish the documentary, having watched the entire thing from the edge of my seat in a state of suspended animation, and I collapse back into the throw pillows when the credits begin to roll.
“He’s here,” I whisper out loud, because apparently I need to hear it to actually believe it. All of this feels incredibly surreal.
The day Daphne and I moved Aunt Rue out of her home, she slipped me a piece of paper Zane had apparently hand-delivered. At the time, I was too hurt to look at it, so I tossed it aside, laying it on Rue’s dining room hutch. Later that afternoon, when the movers had left, the letter was gone.
I never had a chance to read it.
And I spent the weeks that followed convincing myself that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
I was moving.
We were done.
Whipping out my phone, I do some quick research. There isn’t a lot of detailed information available, but from what I can tell, the Cougars signed some rookie running back out of Texas and then cut Zane from the team shortly after football camp started. At the last minute, the Thunder’s running back tore his ACL in practice and they picked up Zane.
Lying down, I curl up with a pillow and close my eyes, replaying every memory I’ve held onto. The bitter. The sweet. The heartbreaking end I never saw coming.
I felt safe here in Chicago. I thought I was worlds away . . . from him. Now I’m going to be looking over my shoulder everywhere I go, wondering if I’m going to run into him, obsessing over what I might say if we ever come face to face again.
Wallowing in a self-indulgent pool of bittersweet memories, I squeeze my eyes tight and pull up a selfie on my phone. It’s from the night we watched the Fourth of July fireworks from his backyard. We’re smiling, happy, blissfully unaware of what’s to come.
Once upon a time, we were living in the moment.
And I’ll admit, from time to time I did think about the future.
But never in my wildest dreams did I envision going down in flames.
I’m drifting, second by second, into what I hope to be a delicious nap. I need to escape for a bit. Quiet my mind. Still my thoughts. And I’m almost there . . .
Knock, knock, knock.
A quick zing races through me, running down my chest and spreading to my fingertips. I can’t breathe.
Tiptoeing quietly across my tiny apartment, I peek through the peephole . . .
. . . and open the door.
“Hey, Hayden,” I say. “Come on in.”
Chapter 39
Zane
I’m standing outside the expansive purple Victorian, staring up at the third window at the top of the turret where Delilah once claimed to live during the school year.
I don’t know if she still lives there, but tonight, I’m willing to take a chance.
I’ve been back in Chicago over a month now, my days and nights consumed with all things Chicago Thunder, but there hasn’t been a night that’s passed where I haven’t wondered where she is. What she’s doing. If she’s lying in her bed thinking about me too.
Pressing every apartment buzzer outside the entrance, I get a few responses over the intercom and eventually hear the heavy clunk of the door unlocking. I’m not sure how I feel about Delilah living in a “secure” apartment where the tenants blindly buzz strangers in, but I’m in now and that’s all that matters.