EMBER
It was the day of our double date. A blind date for me since Bash hadn’t even bothered telling me his friend’s name so that I could stalk him on social media, like a normal person. Thankfully Bethany had emailed me her notes from class, which I thought was cool of her, given that Bash could have called off the date at the last minute (something I might or might not have been praying for all day) and I would still have what I wanted out of the bargain. Without paying the price. Instead I was going to have to go out with whatever rando Bash had chosen.
I was at home in my apartment lying on the bed in the room I shared with Ximena. Like always, she was off at the library because she said our place wasn’t “conducive” to studying. She wasn’t wrong.
Knowing I had nothing to wear and that my other roommate Deja would, I ventured out into the main living area. If Ximena was our resident bookworm and lover of all things academic, Deja was her total opposite. She never met a gathering she didn’t like or a boy who wasn’t interesting. She was our in-the-know fashionista and a whiz in the kitchen, where she was currently making something out of leftovers in the fridge that smelled divine. She played volleyball because it gave her unlimited access to college parties and college men, which were her two best events. But she fed me, which made her my favorite.
I’d only chosen to share a room with Ximena because she was never home. If she did come home, it was under the cover of darkness, long after I’d gone to bed. She would leave before I woke up. That was her story whenever I talked to her at practice or at training. I wasn’t sure whether or not I believed her. But it didn’t really matter since I basically had my own room.
Our final roommate, Molly, was like having a guy living with us. To say she was a slob would have been underselling it. For example, I don’t think she’d done a load of laundry the entire year. She didn’t seem to believe in it. Instead she believed in leaving her clothing on the floor long enough so that it somehow cycled from dirty to clean again. Showering also seemed to be somewhat optional. Things none of us had realized until we moved in with her. We loved her to death, she was our teammate, but Deja kept threatening to forcibly hold her down in a shower and to clean all her clothes while she was out. Molly would then yell about how Deja better not disrupt her system, and I usually left the apartment before things got uglier. Anyway, Molly spent much of her time playing whatever new game had come out on her Xbox and was the only girl I’d ever met who could eat and drink me under the table.
“I need to borrow a shirt,” I told Deja.
“Occasion, location, people attending.”
Trying not to sigh since I needed her help, I said, “A blind/double date, movie theater and a restaurant, I don’t know which one, and it will be this girl Bethany I know from class, and two guys from the football team.”
She stopped stirring the food in the pan and stared at me. “What do we say about football players?”
Molly piped up from the other room. “Football players are just for fun, not for boyfriends!”
“That’s right.” Deja nodded in agreement. “They’re not relationship material. You take them to the club for fun and then you leave them there. This is the problem with most athletes—no guy spends time getting six-pack abs to date just one girl.”
Even I had to concede that she was a little bit right. I liked an athletic build and a broad, well-defined chest. I still had very fond and pleasant memories of Bash’s. But it could mean trouble. I was a case in point.
“Speaking of men who can’t date one girl at a time, did I tell you I caught Fisher cheating on me?” Deja poked violently at her stir-fry with a spatula.
“Already?” At the look on her face, I shifted gears. “I mean, oh no. That’s terrible.” Like we all hadn’t seen that coming. Even Ximena knew it was doomed to failure. Fisher had quite the reputation. “Did you beat him up?”
“I considered it, but I just broke up with him instead.”
Good. “I’m sorry that you guys broke up.” It seemed like the appropriate thing to say.
Molly had wandered into the kitchen, looking for something to eat. “I’m not sorry. Fisher was the worst. I think we should throw you a party to celebrate.” When she reached into Deja’s pan, Deja smacked Molly’s hand with the spatula.
“Don’t worry,” I told Deja while Molly gave up and went through the fridge instead. “There are plenty of Fishers in the sea.”
“Men. Can’t live with them,” Molly announced, having settled on some slices of bologna as her snack.
I waited for her to keep talking. “And?”
“Nothing. That was the end of my thought.”
“Easy for you to say.” Molly had been in a serious relationship with the same guy since she was twelve. They planned on getting married. He was in college in California, and I’d met him a couple of times over long weekends when he’d come up to visit Molly.
I wondered if Ximena was dating anyone. I should ask her the next time I saw her. Which might be weeks from now.
Deja turned off the heat and set the pan to one side. “Come on, let’s go find you something to wear.”
I followed her into her room and sat on her clean, made bed. Molly’s half of the room looked like the city had claimed it as a new dumping zone.
Deja went through her clothes one by one, considering each before moving on. “So is this just dinner and a movie, or is it a date date?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Usually where your hands and mouths end up,” she said with a wink.
“It’s not a hang. It is, like, officially a date, I think.”
“A date on a school night. You know that’s serious. Who are you going out with again?”
I deliberately hadn’t mentioned any names because Deja had a brain with its own personal filing cabinet where she kept dossiers on every man on campus. “I don’t know my date’s name.”
“And the other guy?”
She also knew when other people were lying. It made it difficult for her flavor of the week to cheat on her, but they kept trying. “Bash.”
Deja stopped, turning slowly on her heel to stare at me. “Your Bash? Your ex, Bash?”
Of course. It wasn’t bad enough that she had probably already gathered intel about exactly what kind of date he’d be and how good of a kisser he was, but she also remembered that night two years ago when we were at our first away game and I’d been really missing him and had broken down and told her most of the story.
Frankly, I’d been hoping she’d forgotten.
No such luck.
“Yes, that Bash. We’re trying to be friends now.”
“But dating your ex’s friend . . . that’s just ex adjacent. More of the same.”
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe not. I don’t even know who it is.”
She gave me a superior look. “You know my stance when it comes to exes.”
I did. There was no forgiveness and no forgetting, and striking an ex out of her life would often mean his social group as well.
She was going to run out of people to date really soon.
“Hanging out with your ex is like failing a test you had all the answers to,” she informed me as she pulled out a black blouse. It had slightly puffy sleeves and gathered in right under the chest. It was adorable. “But if you’re going to put yourself in the line of fire, you might as well have the right uniform. Try it on.”
I yanked off my T-shirt and slid on the blouse. The material was soft and warm at the same time, and there was a delicate embroidery around the neckline. It was perfect. “I’m not going to war.”
“That’s not how I remember it. Didn’t you tell him you loved him first?”
“So?”
“You never pull that trigger until you’ve been fired upon!”
Fisher had been a World War II buff and it was the only explanation for all the fighting imagery. Or else she was really mad at him for cheating on her and was considering some unsavory methods of dealing with said anger.
Problem was, I didn’t hate Bash. He wasn’t a jerk or a liar. He hadn’t cheated on me. He was someone who had once made my life feel like an actual fairy tale.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I told her. “Bash and I are totally over. Not only has that ship sailed, it sank and is sitting on the bottom of the ocean. And eighty-five years from now, somebody in Hollywood is going to make a movie about the wreckage.”
“As long as there’s no feelings. Especially of the tingly kind.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the tingly feels were still in effect when I was around Bash. Even though I tried my hardest to ignore them.
Fortunately, she didn’t push me and instead asked, “Do you need help with your makeup?”
“I’m good.” Deja’s makeover would consist of fake eyelashes and enough contouring to make me look about twenty pounds thinner, but I didn’t feel like it. There was a time and place for serious killer makeup, and then there were times when you wanted to be able to blink and touch your own face if you felt like it.
I thanked her for the loan and was about to leave when she stopped me. “Are you sure you don’t have an ulterior motive for tonight? Hanging out with Bash again?”
My heart started beating so hard. If I’d been strapped to a lie detector machine, I would have failed. And considering Deja was basically the human version of it, I settled on a facsimile of the truth. “I don’t want there to be a reason other than we’re trying to be friends.”
She studied me carefully and then nodded once, as if dismissing me. Taking the win, I ran into our shared bathroom and started fixing my hair and my face.
But the silence was giving me too much time to consider what Deja had asked. Did I want something more from Bash than friendship? I’d have to be a real glutton for punishment to try and go down that road again. He’d made it pretty clear that he wasn’t interested in me like that. Because touching my not-flat stomach and curvy hips had sent him running for the hills.
Or was it that I’d told him I’d loved him? When I thought about that night, it was always easier to assume that I’d repulsed him. Because that was conceivably something I could change. One of my resolutions this year had been to lose ten pounds. I only had sixteen more to go.
But if he didn’t love me? If I’d scared him off? If he’d run away because he’d never felt that way about me?
There was nothing I could do about that.
It was a really depressing thought.
And it wasn’t even like I could give it the old college try and flirt my way back into Bash’s heart. Our relationship happened because he thought it was cute I was committing a felony. The last boy I tried to flirt with before him was back in kindergarten, and I peed on the jungle gym just to impress him.
My flirting skills had not improved much since then.
I considered canceling. Even pulled my phone out of my pocket. And I might have done it had our doorbell not rang.
Bash. Mr. Ten Minutes Early Is Late.
How had I forgotten his ridiculous punctuality? Deja let him in, and I heard their voices as they introduced themselves.
I hurried up and put on the last of my lip gloss. I tugged on a pair of black boots and zipped up the sides. In the living room I found Bash charming my two roommates. Molly had even paused the game, and they were both looking at him like he had multiple women’s volleyball national championships in his pockets. I couldn’t blame them. He was looking ridiculously hot.
I grabbed my coat. “Hey. You ready to go?”
“Yeah.” Was it my imagination, or had his eyes lit up when he saw me?
I told my roommates I’d see them later, and on my way out I heard Deja say, “Girl, don’t fall on any grenades tonight.”
Bash gave me a confused look, but I got the gist of what she was saying.
“Grenades?” he repeated.
I just shook my head as if I hadn’t understood her, either. I wasn’t about to tell him what was going on.
It was weird to be walking alongside him but not able to touch him. Why did he have to smell so amazing and be so pretty?
Life was seriously unfair, and the universe was stupid.
“How’s your healthy eating resolution going?” he asked.
Was he as uncomfortable as I was? That was a random question. “I’ve only had one piece of cake today, so I’d say it’s going okay.”
“One piece?” He said it like he didn’t believe me.
He had good reason not to. “If you don’t cut the cake, it’s still technically just one piece, so I’ve only had one piece of cake today.”
“I don’t think you can count it as a resolution if you never actually keep it.”
“No,” I protested. “I’m resolved to do it. That doesn’t mean that I will, just that I want to. I’ve decided that, like with gifts, the thought should count.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how that works.”
“I don’t need to be mocked for my culinary choices.”
“Hey, no mocking from me!” He held both his hands up, like he was surrendering. “I, too, had one slice of pizza today and one brownie.”
How could he always make me laugh even when I was ready to get all indignant on him?
We reached a four-door sedan I didn’t recognize. “Did you borrow it?” I asked.
“Yeah. From one of my teammates.”
“We can take my car, if you want.” I regretted the words the moment I said them. I had way too many memories of driving around with Bash in that car.
Of making out with him in the back seat of that car.
The look on his face made me wonder if he was remembering the same thing. “No, it’s okay. I’ll drive.”
I put my hand on the door, and Bash called out, “Wait!” He ran around to my side and opened the door for me, bowing as he did so. “My lady.”
Shaking my head, I got in and let him close the door behind me. A few seconds later he got in on the driver’s side. He started the car up and let the engine run to warm up the inside of the car. It was seriously cold outside.
He asked, “Are we still on for our post-game recap tomorrow night?”
I recalled him mentioning something about it, but I’d thought he’d been joking. Because, no. The word was no. It was such an easy word to say. N. O. No. I didn’t even have to open my mouth all the way to make the correct sounds.
And I was trying to say it. It probably would have been good for his ego to be told no every once in a while. In a way, I was helping him prepare for real life if I refused him.
Then he had to go and add on, “You know, so we can compare notes and see which one of us did the best job of setting up the other.”
Oh, it was so on. Bethany had to be better than whomever Bash had chosen. “Yeah. I’m totally going to win. Speaking of, you never did tell me who I’m going out with.”
If he said it was Dalton Johnson, I was going to punch him in the throat.
“His name is Todd Woodby. He can be a little goofy, but he’s basically a good guy. You might like him.”
“I might like him?” I repeated. That sounded bad. Nobody knew me as well as Bash had. How could he not know whether or not I’d like a specific guy? “Is this where you tell me he’s okay and/or average as a person? It’s not really a ringing endorsement.”
Bash put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking spot. “I don’t know what kind of guys you like.”
You. I like guys like you.
Even though I didn’t speak, Bash apparently felt the need to keep defending himself as he pulled out onto the road that went toward the main campus. “For all you know, he might be the love of your life, and when you look back on tonight, you’ll be like, ‘I was the luckiest duck, and it’s all thanks to my excellent friend Bash.’”
“Quack, quack,” I told him, my eyebrows furrowed.
“I didn’t know you could quack sarcastically.”
“Have you not been paying attention?” I asked him. “I do everything sarcastically.”
“That’s not true. I’ve seen you do lots of things with a totally open and sincere heart. I used to love that about you.”
I was so glad that his gaze was focused on the road and he couldn’t see my reaction, because there was no way I could have hidden the tears that sprang up in my eyes, how I couldn’t quite calm down my breathing. My throat felt thick and my heart too heavy for my body.
Bash always could see me. The real me.
Grenades. Exploding grenades everywhere.