EMBER
Six months later . . .
Staying away from Bash turned out to be surprisingly easier than I would have expected. Mom’s test came back clean, and she returned to teaching at the high school in the fall. She’d been tested twice since then, and everything still looked good.
And even though her prognosis was excellent, she still wanted to accomplish things on what she was now calling her survivor list. Our time was limited to weekends and holidays. I spoke with my volleyball coach, explaining the situation to her, and since her own mother had dealt with breast cancer, she was happy to let me have some time off here and there.
I couldn’t go to everything; I did miss out on bungee-cord jumping in Las Vegas (which I was very happy to avoid because, while I hadn’t tested the theory completely, I suspected that I was afraid of heights). We did a 5k run to support breast-cancer research. We spent an entire day in a high-end luxury spa in Seattle, being pampered and catered to.
We also spent Thanksgiving in Indonesia, which was strange because my mom had always been so big into traditions, and it was beyond weird not to be at home with a game on and the kitchen smelling like turkey and pumpkin pie. We did find a restaurant serving an American Thanksgiving dinner, only they had substituted duck for the turkey. It was fun experiencing new things, but part of me wished we were back home.
Although if we’d stayed in Washington, there was a chance Bash might have joined us. He had a home game Thanksgiving weekend that prevented him from going out of the country, and I was secretly relieved. I also didn’t have to deal with him at Christmas. His grandparents had missed him and asked him to spend half of his winter break at their house, and the plan was for him to return home in time for the holiday. Doug and Marley had been so excited, hanging up his stocking and setting aside the ornaments with his name on them so that he could put them on the tree himself.
But a terrible blizzard had closed the airport, and he wasn’t able to get back until after Christmas Day.
Then my mom, Lauren, and I left to go to Michigan to visit my mother’s extended family, and a supercharged version of the same storm that had hit Pennsylvania hit us, too. No power for several days, roads impassable. We stayed a week longer than we had planned.
Which meant I had missed the first week of classes. Most of my new professors were understanding and helped me get the materials I needed to catch up.
The lone exception was my biochemistry teacher. After class I’d explained my situation, and he wished me luck and said that he didn’t make notes available for students who failed to show up for class. And that he advised the ones who did respect his time not to share their notes. Which would be to my detriment because things he’d already taught would be on the midterms.
Obviously, I was going to hate that class. I left in a huff, nearly flattening a little blonde woman who had been a witness to our whole exchange as she waited for her turn to speak to the professor.
My next class was college algebra. It was on the easy side as far as math classes went, and it was my one math requirement to get my bachelor of science in nursing. When my mom had fallen sick, I’d decided that I wanted to help other families the way that ours had been helped. I wanted to be there for other teen girls worrying about losing their mom, so I decided to become an oncology nurse. My mom had been so proud of my decision.
It hadn’t been easy, but I was determined. I had much harder classes scheduled for next year, so I thought it would be better to get math out of the way now.
The algebra class was in a large lecture hall filled mostly with freshmen. I settled into a seat near the back, pulling out my laptop to take notes and a pad of paper for working out any problems the professor might put on the board.
“Is this seat taken?”
My heart twisted and turned in my chest as the air inside my lungs solidified.
Bash.
Without waiting for me to respond, he sat next to me. His leg brushed against mine as he settled in, and a lash of electricity burned its way up to my stomach. I moved both of my legs away, not making eye contact.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
It had been surprisingly easy to keep all things Bash related on a low simmer in the back of my brain. Sure, I had twinges where I missed him. That was nothing new—it had been going on for nearly four years. And maybe they were a bit worse since I knew he was so close by. Especially when I was in the athletics building, training or practicing. When I could hear the football team lifting weights next door and knew that he was there, just out of reach.
And sometimes those twinges turned into full-blown I-miss-Bash attacks. It happened mostly when I let myself overworry about my mom. Even after all this time, he was still the first person I wanted to call when things got hard.
But that was only occasionally. For the most part my life was steady. Peaceful. Just the way I liked it.
Alas, all good things had to come to an end.
And I was feeling one of those full-body attacks right now. He was so close, and he had obviously just showered, because he smelled like soap and his favorite brand of shampoo, and it was such an intoxicating and familiar blend that my mouth actually went dry.
“What am I doing here? I’m here for algebra class. Just like you.” He said it with a smirk that on anybody else would have been annoying, but on him was just totally endearing.
It felt surreal to be sitting here, just having a conversation with him, like we’d done it a million times before and would do it another million times. As if we hadn’t spent the last few years not having conversations.
I tried to come up with some clever retort, but I had nothing.
“Hey, Bash.” A tall girl with chestnut-brown hair and an athletic frame sat down on the other side of me, leaning over to say hi to him. She offered him her fist, and he bumped it.
“What up, Sabrina? Hey, have you met Ember? She’s . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked at me, obviously not sure what to say next. “An old friend.”
Sabrina had a bright smile, and she gave me a little wave. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
My brain had immediately flipped into jealous-girlfriend mode. Who is this woman? Is she dating Bash? Why is she so pretty? Does he love her?
“Sabrina’s on the team and is completely awesome. Coach just recruited her to be our starting kicker. And she’s already killing it,” Bash said.
“Wow. That’s really impressive,” I said. I didn’t want to give her any cool points, but even JUCO football teams were highly competitive. Very few women got football scholarships.
She shrugged. “I love the game. And EOL is actually going to let me play, unlike my last school.”
The professor at the front of the room held a stack of papers aloft. “This is the study guide for your first test, which will take place in two weeks. Come down and grab a copy!”
“I’ll get them for us,” Bash offered, running down the steps to reach the teacher’s table at the front of the hall.
“Are you two dating?” Sabrina asked. Ruh-roh. Was she in jealous-girlfriend mode, too? She didn’t look envious. Just curious, her expression honest and open.
“No!” The word exploded out of my chest. “No. Nope. Definitely not. No.”
“So that’s a maybe, then?” she teased, and given her sense of humor, I could see why Bash thought she was awesome.
“What about you?”
“Me and Bash?” she asked. She raised her eyebrows briefly, as if considering. “We’re not. Could we? No. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great guy and is one of the few in my career who hasn’t tried to harass and/or hook up with me. But I learned a long time ago to never date teammates. It gets messy.”
Bash chose that moment to return, and I thanked him for getting me a copy of the study guide. His long fingers brushed against mine . . . and I dropped my paper. Which slid across the floor and under the seat of the student in front of me. Humiliated, I tapped on her shoulder and asked if she could return it. I didn’t need to look at Bash to know that he would be grinning.
Other than the current embarrassment, the strange thing was how normal this all felt. Yes, I was totally aware of Bash’s body and its proximity to mine, the heat pulsing out of him that beckoned me closer, the way his clothes strained against him, as if they could barely contain all that muscular hotness. But other than that, I was just sitting in a class that I apparently shared with him, and it was . . . okay.
“How are your other classes going?” Bash asked.
I filled him in on my delayed return, and since I was still upset about it, the story about my biochem professor’s refusal to let me have any notes from the first week came tumbling out. Both Bash and Sabrina made sympathetic noises and threw in a couple of “that sucks” for me.
“If you need help catching up in here, I have a friend named Jess who is really good at math. I could get her number for you,” Bash said.
Another her? Crazy Jealous Girlfriend Brain returned. Who is this Jess? Does Bash like her? What did he mean by friend? How hard would it be to destroy her?
The professor called the class to order, and while I was still totally distracted by all things Bash, I did manage to listen and even understood some of what he was saying. But they must have gone over some of the concepts the week prior; I wasn’t quite getting everything. I didn’t know about this Jess person, but I could go to the athletic department’s academic adviser, Keilani, and have her point me in the right direction for some minor tutoring.
Bash held his pencil against his lips. His very masculine, delicious lips, if I recalled correctly. Firm and perfect. Bash was good at a lot of things, but he’d been a genuine All-American at kissing.
His gaze caught mine, and I quickly looked away, feeling the heat rising to my cheeks. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just put Bash squarely in the Friends and People I Don’t Get to Date categories?
Class finally came to an end, and I’d only fantasized about climbing into Bash’s lap and kissing him four times, so I was counting that as a win.
“I’m heading over to the Smithson to grab some lunch,” Bash said, naming the student center that held our food court. “Do you guys want to join me?”
Yes. The word crashed into the back of my lips so hard I had to purse them shut to keep it from escaping. I shouldn’t want to go, but I did.
“Sure!” Sabrina said, standing up and sliding her backpack on.
Bash also stood. “Ember?”
My throat was inexplicably tight. I swallowed and then coughed. I was not one to turn down food, ever. But I’d had enough Bash nearness for one day. “I have some other stuff to do.”
“Okay. See you around.”
I watched him and Sabrina leave, my stomach curling up when she nudged him in the arm and he let out a laugh at whatever she’d said. Sighing, I packed up my own bag, careful to slide the laptop into its protective case.
As I headed out of the classroom and into the bustling hallway, I felt a tap on my left shoulder. I turned around to see someone who was like the photo negative of me. Petite, blonde, expensive clothes, and a smile that made it look like she was perpetually happy. She looked like the kind of girl who had a pet unicorn and a goblin bodyguard at home. She literally smelled like cupcake frosting. It was making me hungry.
Then I realized she was the same woman I’d seen in my biochem class after the professor had reprimanded me. “Can I help you?” I asked.
“You can, actually. I have kind of a strange proposition for you. Can we sit?”