Chapter Three

“Avery. Why don’t you put away your planner for a few minutes and take this young man home?”

Before waiting for either of them to agree, her dad stood and started stacking plates.

Lucas watched emotion run over her face. He imagined that she was outraged over being tasked as a cab driver. She was probably calculating how quickly she could get home, resigned that she had to do what her father asked.

She grabbed a set of keys from a peg in the hallway and nodded him toward the front door. “Come on.”

Lucas looked over his shoulder to make sure Colin and Coach were out of earshot. “You don’t have to take me—it’s okay.” As he said the words, he realized he had no idea where he was or how to get home. “But tell me one thing: Who the actual fuck is Brady, and why are his balls going to be all over me?”

Her face relaxed into a short laugh. “I’ll tell you in the car.” She nodded him to the door. “It’s okay—I don’t mind. Where do you live?”

“Greenbrier,” he lied, naming the slightly less drug-den-filled neighborhood next to his.

“Come on,” she said, opening the door and walking out into the dull yellow wash of the streetlights. He was entranced by her long dark-blond hair swinging with every step. The fingers on his right hand spread as he imagined running them through the heavy-looking strands.

What was he thinking? Nope. No way. She was Coach’s daughter, and that made her 110 percent off-limits. Every girl was off-limits.

…

Avery drove really slow…like really slow.

Once she’d explained that Brady’s Balls was a football Facebook page—and half the reason anyone in town was even on Facebook—they’d lapsed into a weird silence.

Which gave Avery a chance to actually think.

Maybe this was some kind of karma, fate, or destiny. She’d asked the universe for him to come back to help her, and he turned up so close that she nearly sat on his lap.

There was no forgetting her bare leg against his, either.

Ugh. She needed to focus on the problem at hand, not on the butterflies pinballing around her stomach.

He looked at her a couple of times as if to ask why she was driving so slowly, but she ignored him. How could she help him so her dad could keep his job?

“So, you used to be a good receiver?” she began, trying to smooth her tone so it didn’t shriek “I need you to be better so my family isn’t destroyed!”

He looked out the side window. “I still am,” he said, in a voice that was less convincing than anything she’d ever heard.

“Uh-huh?” She left it hanging there.

He shook his head. More to himself than to Avery.

“What do you think the problem is?” she asked.

“I. Don’t. Know,” he muttered under his breath. Then he looked at her again. “If I knew, don’t you think I’d fix it?”

Good point. Her brain ran through the options and landed on one she knew something about. “Why did you move schools halfway through the season? My…” She was about to say “therapist said” but swallowed the words. “If something bad happened, it can affect your muscle memory, the way your brain works—everything, really.”

He stared at her.

She snatched a look at him, but he looked interested instead of annoyed. So tentatively, she began to tell him what Dr. Roberts had told her after her mother had died.

“When something really bad happens, you can forget how to do the things you do every day. Even things like how to start a car. You brain is too busy processing other things—the bad stuff—I guess. But you can feel depressed and anxious and forgetful and even feel physically ill. It’s all normal, but you have to give it time to work its way through.” For her, the worst had been over within about eight months. Waves of sadness still washed over her sometimes, though, but the numbness and tears and tiredness had gone.

“You sound as if you know what you’re talking about,” he said in a soft voice. “Look, I’m really sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He’d shifted in his seat so he was facing her, as if he was trying to gauge how she was reacting to his apology.

Reflexively, she reached over and put her hand on his arm to reassure him. “It’s okay, really. You had no way of knowing.”

He flashed a smile, and she went to remove her hand, but the friendship bracelet Lexi had given her stuck on his sweater. It snagged and pulled a thread. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she said, trying to get herself free while still watching the road. “Hang on,” she said, flicking on her turn signal with the same hand she was steering with.

She pulled over and cut the engine and then put the overhead light on to see how she could get her hand back.

“It’s okay—it’s just a sweater I keep in my bag…” he began. “Look, I’ve got it.” He pulled the bracelet in one direction, but it didn’t come free.

“It’s okay, I can just…” She bent her head closer to his arm and then looked up at him to get him to move his other hand because, come on, guys were shit at that kind of thing.

He had bent over, too, and now their faces were like a couple of inches apart. She should have jerked away, but the humor in his eyes tightened something inside her stomach, something she didn’t even know was loose, and she hesitated. They looked at each other for some long-ass seconds until the expression in his eyes slowly changed to something else.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

Oh God, he thinks I want to kiss him.

Oh God, I think I do want to kiss him.

Lucas’s eyes roamed her face for a second, but then he seemed to shake himself out of it. In a second, she realized that he was breaking out of that weird moment, and she dipped her head toward the clasp on her bracelet at exactly the same time as he did.

Their foreheads banged together with a dull thunk.

“Ow,” she said, her hand flying up to her head. The movement jerked Lucas’s hand toward her, and he pulled it away just before it hit her square on the head, too.

Her bracelet broke, and it fell to the floor of the car between her legs.

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” Lucas said, rubbing his own forehead. He shook his head. “You know, I just shouldn’t be in any kind of polite company.” He slumped in the seat and looked out of his side window.

All at once, Avery remembered why they were there. That she had basically asked if he’d suffered from some trauma, and he hadn’t denied it. Her heart ached that somehow she’d managed to make him feel worse than he had when he got in the car with her. “Don’t worry—I’m not at all polite company. Fuck off. See?”

Even though he was faced away from her, she could tell he was smiling by the rise of his cheek.

“Shit crap. Shit crap ass.” She shrugged. “I mean, I’m just not sure you could find anyone in Hillside less polite than me,” she said.

It worked. He laughed. “Sorry I broke your bracelet,” he said.

“Well, I think we can agree that we both broke it, so don’t worry. Lexi can make me a new one in about ten minutes.” In truth, she knew that Lexi would be thrilled to hear about what had just gone down in the car. Not that anything had. But Lexi would still be able to talk about it for a whole evening, no doubt.

“I should go,” he said, opening the door.

“No. I can drive you. I absolutely swear I won’t stick any part of my body to you again.” Wow, that hadn’t come out quite the way she planned. “I promise,” she added, a little lamely.

“Seriously, it’s okay. I can walk from here.” He got out and shut the door.

What had she done? The universe had brought him back into her life, into her car. She couldn’t let him walk away. She opened the window.

“Open your eyes!” she half shouted.

It stopped him in his tracks. “What?” He looked around as if he were about to walk into something.

The lamplight made his eyes shine. She wanted to look at him a second longer, but she only had that second to help him. “Open your eyes when you see the ball. Look at the air around the ball, imagine your hands there, and then keep your eyes open as you catch it.” She was parroting what her father used to tell Colin when they played catch in the backyard. But she’d seen it work.

“Sure,” he said with a half-hearted wave.

Anger flared at his wild dismissal of her attempt to help him. Was he brushing her off because she was a girl? “Who are you, anyway?” she said as she put the window up again. Rude! She took her foot off the brake and coasted around in a giant U at the lights where she’d first set eyes on him about five hours previously. Where did he get off being rude to someone who was just trying to help?

She didn’t look back as she drove away.

And then she did look back.

He was standing in the lamplight staring at the ground. She looked at the road again and then back in the mirror. He was looking up at her, watching her go.

Her butterflies returned. Had she just nearly kissed him? She swatted the butterflies back into larvae and vowed not to think about his eyes. How his eyes had changed from laughing, to…something else. How his gaze had slowly dropped to her mouth… Stop it.

As she took the road toward her neighborhood, she flashed another look in the rearview.

He was still standing there, still watching.