Lauren locked the café door behind her and bent to lace up her sneakers. After a full day of work and the pent-up agitation from her morning encounter with Matt, she couldn’t wait to burn off her frustration.
He had some nerve. Okay, so he’d been to Iraq—as a journalist. Did that give him the right to get into her business? Rory’s business? And to hound her during her morning run! What was next—showing up in her bedroom?
With the wind at her back, she thought of a morning a decade and a half ago when another man had interrupted her run. Well, a boy.
It had been a Saturday, the morning after watching her first LM hockey game. She was running around the track at Narberth Park, close to her friend’s house, where she’d spent the night. Halfway through her second lap, just as she was starting to break a sweat, someone called out her name.
She turned, jogging in place.
It had been barely twelve hours since she had watched Rory Kincaid win the game against Radnor, and now he was in front of her.
He was dressed in an Aces sweatshirt and white Champion running shorts, and he had an iPod strapped to one arm, the earbuds in his ears. His cheeks were ruddy, his dark eyes flashing. She, unfortunately, was wearing baggy sweats and a Britney Spears Baby One More Time concert tour T-shirt that she’d slept in.
“Oh. Hey.” She was amazed at how casual it came out.
“What are you doing around here? I know this isn’t exactly your neighborhood.”
The way he said it made her feel embarrassed. Not exactly her neighborhood; no, that was true. In her neighborhood, the houses were about three times the size, spaced some distance apart, with wide backyards and manicured hedgerows. She ran on private, winding back roads that invited very little vehicular traffic because most of them ended in cul-de-sacs.
“I slept at my friend’s house last night. You live around here?”
He nodded over his shoulder. “Yeah. On Conway.”
Silence.
“Good game last night,” she said. They had beaten Radnor, 3 to 0. Rory had scored every goal.
“You finished your article?”
She nodded. Almost finished. It took a lot of effort to craft the article so it was more about the team and not a profile of Rory Kincaid. And the truth was, it probably wasn’t going to make the cut anyway.
“Look, I have to tell you—it might not even get published.”
“Why wouldn’t it get published?” He seemed genuinely outraged.
Great. Now it looked like she’d wasted his time.
“I mean, that’s just how it is at the Merionite. A lot of articles get submitted and the editors decide which ones make it into the paper. And I’m just a sophomore. Most sophomores don’t even get to submit.”
“So you’re special.”
She turned red. “No, I’m just saying, there’s a good chance that it won’t—”
“How much do you have left of your run?”
“My run? Oh, a few more laps.”
“Good deal. Let’s go—if you can keep up with me.” Typical alpha-male competitive bullshit. Of course she could keep up with him. But running laps was not the world’s most attractive pastime. Was it too late to say that, actually, she was finished running?
They started out at a moderate pace, passing the basketball court. He picked up speed and she matched his stride. Two, three, four…seven laps around, and he showed no signs of stopping. Lauren wasn’t going to be the one to quit.
She’d lost count of their mileage when he looked over at her and said, “You’ve got some stamina.”
“I run track,” she said.
He laughed, then stopped running, leaned over, and braced himself with his hands on his thighs. “I actually knew that. I knew it, and I forgot.” He straightened, and she looked up at him. It was like staring at the sun.
Lauren reached the Green Gable, hoping no one was home. When she got upstairs, she called out, “Mom? Steph?”
With the coast clear, she headed up to the attic with a pair of scissors.
Lauren found her boxes sequestered in their own corner.
After Rory’s death, her mother had offered to shut them up in storage. But ultimately, it didn’t sit right with her; locking away the remnants of her life with Rory felt disloyal. Now the best thing for her to do was to move the boxes into her bedroom until the house was sold. She still couldn’t quite believe that was happening.
The first box, marked House/Stuff, was secured with so many layers of packing tape, it would be a project just to get it open. The smallest box, the one that would be easiest to move, was marked with her name and the years 2002 to 2006. All of her high-school things were packed inside, but it was difficult to remember exactly what she’d saved. She wondered if she still had that issue of the Merionite. Should she…
Before she could second-guess herself, she found an X-Acto knife and sliced through the taped center of the box.
The pile of old newspapers was on top. She hadn’t packed them in plastic or anything to keep them preserved, so the edges were yellowed. She had, however, been careful enough to store them in reverse chronological order, so the top edition of the Merionite was the final issue she edited her senior year, and the bottom of the stack was the issue with her first article: “LM Hockey Skates to the Finish Line—State Title Is Within Reach.”
She pulled it out gingerly. Sometimes, it seemed like she had imagined a lot of the things that had led up to her falling in love with Rory. It had taken on a fairy-tale quality in her mind. But touching the faded newsprint in her lap, she thought, It was real, it was real, it was real…
She remembered how proud she’d felt seeing her byline for the first time. It was the lead article in the sports section. And just when she thought she couldn’t be any happier, a text came from Rory: Congrats.
She hadn’t responded right away. She wasn’t trying to be coy; she really just couldn’t think of an adequate reply. Thanks seemed too curt. I hope you liked it, too needy. Great quote from you, kissing ass. Maybe it was her silence or maybe he would have suggested it anyway, but an hour later a second text vibrated in her book bag. We should hang sometime.
Lauren, stunned, stared at her phone, completely at a loss as to how she should respond. She was distracted by hearing her name shouted from across the hallway in the confident bellow of a born cheerleader.
“My sister is famous! She’s the next J. K. Rowling!” Stephanie swung her arm around her.
“J. K. Rowling is a fiction writer,” Lauren said.
“I just have one critique,” Stephanie said. “You gave too much ink to that asshole Rory Kincaid.” That settled it. Lauren would not respond to the text.
The sound of footsteps brought her back to the present day, to the attic, the boxes.
“What are you doing up here?” her mother asked from the top of the stairs.
“You startled me. I didn’t think you were home.”
Her mother’s face was red; she had a streak of white zinc oxide on her nose.
“I just got back from the beach with Ethan,” she said.
“I thought Stephanie was taking Ethan back to Philly.” He still had two weeks left of the school year.
“Tomorrow, apparently.” Her mother crossed her arms, her face tight with consternation. “I feel so bad. She does nothing with him.”
“Well, he’s a great kid. Maybe she’s doing something right.”
Her mother looked unconvinced. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you take him for ice cream? I have to make some progress up here, and Stephanie is too busy working on her tan.”
“Sure,” Lauren said, closing the box. “Mom, just do me a favor? Don’t touch any of this stuff. I’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t know why you always refuse my help,” Beth said, eyeing the ribbon of torn tape. “Going through all of that is probably not the best thing for you. I don’t want you getting mired in the past. Sweetheart, you need to move forward.” She teared up.
Lauren shook her head, knowing her mother meant well but also knowing her mother could never understand. “I’ve moved forward as far as I want to, Mom.”