BASH
What had I done?
Why had I asked Bethany out on a date? Was it some immature thing where my subconscious mind was acting out, like, If Ember’s over me and can push me off on someone else, then I’m going to show her that I’m in the same place emotionally and it wouldn’t bother me at all for her to go out with one of my teammates?
While I was supposed to be wrestling with the fine art of astronomy, instead I was thinking about Ember and why I’d gone along with her scheme. It couldn’t have been a petty I’ll-show-you situation because Ember had told me months ago at the house that she had moved on. That she wasn’t looking for an apology or an explanation and that she wanted us to be just friends. It was hard to forget the emphasis on the word just.
She’d made it painfully obvious that there was nothing between us. Finding out that she’d had the same phone number she’d had back in high school . . . it stirred up a mixture of nostalgia and regret. It was a good thing she’d never called me after I moved. I probably would have picked up. But she hadn’t called. I’d always assumed it was out of anger. And maybe it was in the beginning, but now . . . now I knew better.
When I’d accepted Coach Oakley’s offer, I hadn’t known that Ember was at EOL. But I did know where her mom and younger sister would be. I knew that I was going to have a way to get in touch with her. And I wanted that more than anything, to see her again. To see if we could be friends moving forward, once I’d cleared the air and apologized for my stupid teenage behavior.
I had to accept that the decision I’d made all those years ago was still the right one.
But even now . . . even after I’d stayed away and reminded myself that we couldn’t be together, I still wanted her. I still felt that spark when we touched. Felt totally enthralled whenever she was speaking and couldn’t wait to hear what she was going to say next. And when she’d talked about doing unspeakable things to the guy in the food court, my mind had wandered into not-suitable-for-work territory.
I liked being with her, hanging out with her. I always had.
And friends was better than nothing. Which I knew for a fact because I’d had nothing for almost four years.
So I was going to have to set her up with one of my teammates. I ran through a mental checklist of who was actually single, and who I would trust to take out Ember.
Only one name came to mind. Once class ended, I pulled out my cell phone and called Todd Woodby. He was the slowest texter I’d ever met, and I didn’t currently have the patience to wait for his response.
Woodby picked up right away. “Yo, what is up, you mother flipper?” he asked.
Coach had a no-swearing rule, and while I was typically fine off the field, on the field was a different story. I got . . . passionate about the game. And I expressed that passion. Forcefully. So I had to come up with some . . . creative means of expressing my frustration, which consisted of substitute words. Which my teammates found totally hilarious and mocked me constantly.
My roommate, Logan, had once told me that whenever we were watching international sports and they started playing the Canadian national anthem, he always felt slightly scandalized since one of my favorite angry expressions was O, Canada! I couldn’t explain why, but saying it angrily was really satisfying.
“Hey, Woodby. So, I have this girl—”
“Woodby likes where this is going already.”
Too bad he couldn’t see me rolling my eyes so hard I almost gave myself a concussion. “Come on, dude. Be serious and just listen for a second. There’s this girl I know, Ember. I want to set you up with her.”
“Oh, yeah? Is she hot like her name?”
I was beginning to rethink this entire situation. Woodby was being an idiot. “If you don’t want to take this seriously, then . . .”
“No, I’m taking it seriously,” he said with a laugh that negated his statement. “Tell me about her.”
“She’s . . .” At that I let my voice trail off. How could I describe Ember and everything that I loved about her to somebody like Woodby?
She had all of what I’d call “the basics” of what attracts you to someone. She was smart, beautiful, funny, hardworking, kind, generous. But then there were the other aspects of her that I adored. She was an athlete, like me. So she got how important that part of my life was. She loved food almost as much as I did, which I’d discovered was kind of intoxicating. She was fun to talk to and always made me laugh. I loved the way her mind worked, the weird things she’d come up with and share with me. She had this, I don’t know, calming presence that made silence comfortable and made me feel better. Especially when things got tough. She didn’t take herself too seriously and always seemed to roll with the punches.
“Ember is a lot of fun,” was what I settled on. “You’ll have a good time.”
If he’d noticed how long my pause was, he didn’t say anything about it. “Woodby’s in. Just tell me when and where.”
“I’ll text you when I have all the details. Talk to you later.”
During our conversation I’d managed to make it back to my dorm. I put my key in the lock, but to my surprise, Logan was in our room. I hadn’t seen much of him lately as he was either in class getting ready to graduate, with his girlfriend, Jess (they’d been together since Coach Oakley had lifted his no-dating rule), or training in the weight room or out on the field. At the end of next month he’d be going to the NFL Scouting Combine, and he was trying to get in as much training as he could before he went.
He had wanted to put in a good word for me and see if he could get an invite for me as well, but I told him maybe next year before I graduated. My father hadn’t gone to college, so it was always really important to him that Marley and I graduate. I wasn’t going to let him down, again. Even if playing professional football was my dream.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Did that girlfriend of yours finally come to her senses and break up with you?”
He let out a short bark of laughter as I dropped my backpack onto my desk. “You’re hilarious. No, she’s on her way over. But I have a test this week, and I’m attempting to study in what little time I have.”
“Have fun,” I told him as I flopped onto my own bed, still wondering whether or not this double date was a good idea.
Logan put his book down. “What’s going on with you? You look like you need to talk. You have but face.”
“Did you really just call me a butt face?”
“No. You have the I-want-to-talk-about-my-feelings-but-I’m-a-man-so-I-can’t face.”
I probably should have been surprised, but ever since Jess came into his life, he’d been super in touch with his emotional side. I had mocked him for it on more than one occasion. “You should know all about that face.”
“Yeah, I might have originated that face while I was busy being ‘just friends’ with Jess. Come on, lay it on me. I owe you.”
He did owe me. Not only for all the feelings talks I’d endured previously from him, but also because the only reason he and Jess were together now was that I’d protected him and his secret. While I’d fought off my natural inclination to tease him endlessly for doing something so stupid as falling in love with the coach’s daughter back when all dating had been declared off-limits, I’d also wanted to protect him and keep him at school. And on the team. He loved playing almost as much as I did. Not to mention that he was a big part of the reason why we’d won the junior college national championship. Logan had probably been the most excited of us all when Coach allowed the team to start dating again.
“There’s a girl named Ember. We met our junior year in high school, and I fell for her hard and fast. We dated for months, and somehow in the midst of that, my dad and her mom met and fell in love and eloped.”
“Uh-oh.” I had his full attention now. “I think I can guess where this is going.”
“That’s where it went. She moved into my house, and my dad told me to steer clear. He didn’t know we were together because I’d never told him. He had been heartbroken over my mom leaving him for a long time, and I didn’t want to hurt him by telling him how in love I was. Anyway, I saw that he had a point. That odds were Ember and I wouldn’t work out, and it would make it awkward for the rest of our families. About three weeks after her family moved in, I realized that the only way that I could stay away from her was to move out. I asked my maternal grandparents if I could come live with them, and that’s what happened. My dad was sad, but he didn’t try to stop me. I think he knew why I was doing it. And it sucked, and it was hard, and I missed her, but I did it. Anyway, it was probably the most mature decision I’ve ever made.”
“Definitely.” He nodded. “I can vouch for that.”
“Shut up, man. I was trying to do the right thing. For me and for her.”
“I’ve heard the road to hell is paved with girl intentions.”
I chucked one of my pillows at him while he laughed. He sat up, tossing my pillow back. “Did you ever tell her that’s why you moved out? Does she know?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not sure. How could she not, though? It was pretty obvious.”
“Just because we think stuff is obvious doesn’t mean other people perceive it in the same way. Maybe that’s something you should share with her. And how did I not know any of this about you? You’ve always seemed like a bit of an oversharer.”
“There’s things I share because I don’t really care about them and it doesn’t matter who knows them.”
“But Ember’s different?”
She was. “But we’re just friends now.”
“Ha. Tell me something I didn’t invent and fail miserably at,” Logan said.
“What? It’s true.” I had to make it true. I didn’t want to lose Ember again. She was too important to me.
“Yeah, that’s what I spent months telling myself, too. It’s obvious that you still have feelings for this girl.”
He didn’t get it. “This isn’t about breaking some rule of Coach’s. This is about my family. I mean, I don’t think of her as being part of that, but I don’t want to do anything that would wreck things for my dad and my sister.”
“I’ll admit, it’s kind of a weird spot to be in, but it’s not like you’d be the first person in the world this has ever happened to.” He paused, as if considering whether or not he should say the next thing. “How often do you think about her?”
“What?”
“Just from personal experience, I’ve found that when you think about somebody constantly, when they’re on your mind first thing in the morning and the last thing you think about before you fall asleep at night, either you’re in love or dealing with some incredible heartache.”
Both. It was both.
“Wow, that was deep for me, don’t you think?” he asked with a laugh, going over to the mirror above his dresser to fix his hair.
“Yeah. Very uncharacteristic. But I was serious about the friends thing. I have to find a way to make this work. I mean, she told me she’s over it. And she must be, since she’s setting me up with someone else.”
“Really? So you think that’s proof?”
“It seems that way to me.”
There was a knock at our door. “Let’s ask Jess, shall we?”
I tried to say, Don’t drag Jess into this, but it was too late. He greeted his girlfriend with a seriously thorough kiss because they were in a perpetual quest to finally take that gold medal in the PDA Olympics. They were literally joined at the tongue these days.
“I’m still in here. I didn’t leave, just so you guys know.”
Jess broke the kiss off, sheepishly saying, “Sorry. What’s going on with you guys? Did I interrupt something?”
She made herself comfortable on Logan’s bed, and he sat so close to her that they were basically conjoined twins.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing,” I said, right as Logan launched into a summarized version of what I’d just told him.
When I shot him a dirty look, he said, “What? I don’t keep anything from my girl. And we need a woman’s perspective. Do you think she set him up with someone else because she’s over him?”
“It’s hard to say without knowing her. But I think we’re in a pretty strong either/or situation. Either she doesn’t have feelings for you and is completely over you and has set you up with someone because of those non-feelings, or she does have feelings and knows you can’t be together so she’s making you off-limits to herself and encouraging you to date other people. I know how hard it is when you’re falling for someone but can’t date them.”
“Then how come you didn’t encourage me to date other people?” Logan asked in mock outrage.
“You weren’t allowed to date anyone at all, and even if you had been, I still wouldn’t have set you up with anyone. Because I wanted you to keep playing football, and you couldn’t have done that with two slashed Achilles’ heels.”
Apparently amused at his girlfriend’s jealousy and empty threat, he kissed her on the nose. They were so saccharine sweet it made my teeth ache.
“I set her up, too.” I’d forgotten to mention that earlier.
“With who?” Jess asked.
“Woodby.”
“Dude, mistake,” Logan said with a grimace. “Woodby’s a good guy. I mean, he tries too hard to be funny and wants to convert us all into vegetarians, but he’s decent.”
“Why is that a bad thing?” I only wanted the best for Ember.
“You should have set her up with somebody like Johnson. That guy’s an a—idiot,” he quickly corrected, “and she’d definitely never go out with him again.”
“Yeah, but Johnson would never keep his hands to himself, and then I’d have to kill him, and I am not getting kicked off the team for it because I’m pretty sure that’s one of Coach’s rules. Thou shalt not kill.”
“You’re confusing him with the Bible,” Logan said. “Which is a common mistake, given Coach thinks his rules were handed down from on high.”
That made Jess giggle. She murmured something to Logan, and I was getting more grossed out by the minute.
“Just so you know,” I informed them, “neither one of you has been any help.”
Jess made a sad face at me. “I’m sorry. I wish I could do more. Maybe you should introduce us, and I can get to know her better and find out why she’s doing this.”
That idea had some merit. “She was saying that she’s a little behind in algebra.”
“Perfect! Send her to the math lab, and I will get to the bottom of this.”
“I like when you get to the bottom of things,” Logan said as he nuzzled behind her ear.
“I’m going to go and . . . vomit somewhere that’s not here. My innocent eyes can’t take any more of this,” I announced, grabbing my keys and my phone before I left them to whatever shenanigans they had planned for the day.
I was going to keep telling myself that I thought they were disgustingly sweet and that nobody should have to witness it, but I suspected the truth was that I was more than a little jealous of what they shared.
And I wanted it for myself.
But not with someone like Bethany.
With Ember.