7

“Luke, what…is…?” Her mouth hung open and she had her arms crossed. She didn’t look as happy to see me as I was to see her.

I zipped out of the pool in my sopping-wet clothing. My heart pounded. I held my arms out as water drained off of me. I wanted to hug her, but that was clearly out of the question. “Andrea, what are you doing here?” I had to have had the hugest smile on my face.

Charli joined me on the cement, her clothes also drenching the surface of the concrete.

“Luke, who’s that?” She stared at Charli with a pointed expression.

Before I could get my mouth open to utter one word, Charli moved past me toward Andrea. “Hi, I’m Charli. I’m going to be his new sister.”

“Charlie?” She looked at me with accusation pouring from every inch of her face.

I think I might have still been smiling at her. It just seemed hilarious, her being jealous of Charli. And I was completely ecstatic to see her. Was she jealous?

“This is Charlie?”

“Yes, Charli with an i,” Charli supplied. She so wasn’t helping this situation.

“You never told me Charli was a…”

“Female,” Charli broke in again. “I get that a lot. It’s part of going by a more masculine-sounding name, but I am so not a Charlene.”

I stepped in front of Charli. “I never had a chance to explain. You haven’t been exactly great at communicating lately.”

“And neither have you, evidently.” Dressed in a flowing pink sundress with a white sweater and her green eyes flashing in the bright sun, she looked beautiful…and angry.

I just wanted to wrap her up in my arms and kiss her.

Charli poked her head around the side of me. “You really don’t have any reason to be mad at Luke. Like I said, he’s like my brother.”

Andrea eyed me, not Charli. “You really have been negligent, Luke Ryan, with your news.”

Charli now stood beside me.

“Hey, why don’t you give us some privacy?”

“No problem. Mom and I are going for a bike ride down to the beach anyway. And I will get that sketch done of you, Luke, before I leave. I promise you that.” She pointed as she playfully admonished me.

I reached for Andrea’s hand, but her fingers slipped through mine, fleeting like the breezes surrounding us. Yeah, she was mad. I heaved out a deep breath and led the way toward a table with an oversized umbrella. She took a seat in a chair under the umbrella, but before I had a chance to squish my soaking backside into another chair, she was out of her seat again.

“You know what? I’m leaving. I don’t think I can be around you anymore.” She curved toward the gate.

I grabbed her hand, but she wouldn’t turn to face me. “Andrea, where are you going?”

“I have Aunt Georgia’s car.”

“You haven’t even explained what you’re doing here. How are you here?”

She stood straight, her shoulders back.

I kept hold of her hand.

“It was a surprise.” I could hear the flutter of tears in her voice.

“Well, I’m surprised. Now come on, talk to me.” I rotated her around.

Tears were creeping down her cheeks.

“Hey, don’t cry.” My clothes were still way too wet or I might have hugged her.

“What do you expect?” She whipped her hand from mine and wiped her tears away in a swift, jerky movement.

“I expect you to trust me. Charli is Heather’s daughter. Yes, we’ve been spending time together, but it’s mostly been because we’re both bored and our parents want us to get to know each other since we’ll be related soon. My dad asked Heather to marry him the other day. I would have told you, but I haven’t been able to get ahold of you. You know, if anyone has a reason to be upset here, it should be me.”

“You? What did I do?” Her arms crossed.

“You didn’t do anything. That’s kind of the problem.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Andrea, you’ve been so focused on your music that I’ve hardly had a minute with you even with all the technology available to keep in touch. If we can’t do it for less than a week, how do you think we’ll be able to do it next year…or maybe even this year?”

“What do you mean, this year?” Her watery eyes stared into mine.

“Dad has suggested I move in with him. I have a better shot at a scholarship to UCLA if I do.”

“But you keep saying you don’t even want to go to UCLA.”

“I don’t. I mean, I don’t know.” I didn’t know? I knew I couldn’t do that to Mom. Not really. Why had I even brought it up?

“Are you going to move in with him?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I rubbed a hand through my damp hair. “It doesn’t seem as if I have a lot to go back to.” I said this under my breath, but with Andrea standing so close to me, she heard every word.

She took a staggered step back as if I’d struck her. “I’m sorry I haven’t been available, but it’s been a stressful week. That’s why I’m here…well, I also have an audition at USC Thornton School of Music tomorrow.” She broke eye contact and looked down to her clasped hands.

“So”—this time, I crossed my arms over my chest—“this visit wasn’t even about me, was it?” As I took a step nearer to her, all the negative emotions I’d been carrying for days came pouring to the surface. “I think you’re too busy to be in a relationship.” My closed hands gripped into fists. Why was I so mad? I should be trying to patch things up. This was only making things worse.

She raised her chin. “And what if you do make the UCLA baseball team or any other competitive college team? Will you have time for me?”

“I’ll make time. You’re that important to me.”

“You say that now, but will you? It’s hard. Trust me.”

“Yeah, it is hard.” I wiped my hands down my face.

Why were we fighting like this? We’d never had a real fight before.

“Why do you have to be this way? Why can’t it be easy like it’s been with…”

“With whom? Charli? I thought she was like a sister?”

“She is. I didn’t mean her exactly, but I don’t know if I can keep up with you like this forever. I mean, this is the career you are working toward. You say you came to see me, but you came for an audition. It was just convenient to hit two birds with one stone. I always feel like I’m in second place.”

“I used language my father would understand. Otherwise, he would have never allowed me to come.”

“Whatever, Andrea. Admit it, you were happy I left over vacation. It gave you the freedom to prepare for your concert without me in the way. It didn’t bother you one bit.”

“That’s what you think?” Her lower lip quivered, but she didn’t drop her chin or look away. “Well, then maybe we should break up.”

“Well, maybe we should.” No, I didn’t want to break up! What was I saying? “Is that what you want?”

Tears zigzagged down her face, making a trail. Her lips pouted as if they held something back. She nodded her head, and then she dashed for the pool gate.

I took a step to stop her, but then paused. What was the use? She wanted to break up. When one person in a relationship wants to break up, you break up. I should have known things would go this way by the way she’d been treating me all week. Maybe we just weren’t meant to be together after all.

~*~

The ball whizzed toward me. I bent my knees and swung. Crack! Bat connected with ball and it hurtled toward the fence.

“Good one, Luke.”

Jake and a couple of the guys from last year’s baseball team had joined me at the batting cages—my stress releaser.

Another ball pitched my direction just as my phone rang. I jumped back out of range and signaled to the next guy in line to take my place as the ball crashed into the back fence. Handing off my bat, I jogged to the exit, removed the helmet, and grabbed the ringing phone, hoping it might be Andrea and yet knowing it wouldn’t be. No, it was Amy Appleby, Andrea’s best friend.

“Hello, Amy.”

“Luke, you jerk, how could you break up with Andrea?” I paused a few feet from the guys and rested back against a wall.

“Wait, it was her idea.”

“Andrea loves you. She would never break up with you. What did you do?”

“What did she say I did…wait, she loves me? Did she tell you that?”

“She doesn’t need to. It’s in every look and every word coming out of her mouth. Her brain is consumed with you. I’m surprised she can still play piano with how in love she is with you.”

I sucked in a breath and let it go. “I don’t know.” I dragged a hand through my sweat-dampened hair. “Sometimes even if people care for each other, they aren’t meant to be together. It’s just getting too hard.”

“Luke, life is hard. But the important things in this world—the valuable things—are worth working for. Andrea is worth it. Do I actually have to tell you that? You are the guy who asked her out to homecoming like four times. Why are you giving up so easily this time?”

The guys were all looking at me as if they knew what was going on. “I gotta go, Amy. When you see Andrea, tell her I’m sorry.” After ending the call, I replaced the phone in my pants pocket. A pain ached in the center of my forehead and continued all the way down to my chest cavity. We broke up. Andrea and I were no longer together. I was still trying to wrap my head around it and realize it was true and not just some horrible nightmare.

And since Amy had called me, that meant Andrea had told her. She was telling people. That made it more real than anything. This had to go down as the worst Christmas break I’d ever had. I mean, yeah, it’s great Dad and I seem to be on better footing in our relationship, but other than that—the worst!

I said goodbye to my friends and jumped on Dad’s bike that I’d borrowed for the ride two miles down the road to the batting cages. A single tear rolled from the corner of my eye to my ear. I swiped the moisture away. I’d been fighting it all week, but all of a sudden, I was praying as I pedaled. Lord, I’ve been struggling all week and I think it’s safe to say I’ve finally hit rock bottom. I’ve been angry, and I’m not exactly sure why. Instead of coming to You in my time of trouble, I was avoiding You. That was wrong and probably the reason I just haven’t been right all week. I need some peace of mind. Some clarity for my future wouldn’t be too bad either. More than anything, I need to understand what just happened between Andrea and myself. This can’t be the end. Over. Forever. Are we supposed to be together, or is holding on just going to cause more pain? Help me figure out what I can do to make this right.

I’d been missing Andrea all week, but right now I missed her more than ever. I just wanted to hear her voice, which tempted me to call her, but I didn’t. She probably wouldn’t answer anyway.

My conversation with Amy played over in my mind. She was right. I was giving up too easily. Just like my dad. When things got hard, he ran away. Why was I doing the same thing? Did I want to be like him?

Even if I couldn’t talk to Andrea, there was one thing I could do to be close to her. I remembered her journal. After making it back to the condo, I ran to my room and opened the closet door where I’d stashed the journal. Then I brought it with me to the bed.

A few minutes later, I smiled, reading her words.

“I know You can work miracles, and really I’m not asking for one, but please…” Or, “Really, if I could ask for anything, it would be the ability to freeze time. Then I might actually get everything done.”

But it was when I got to this passage that it all really got to me.

“Today it isn’t about me. It’s about Luke. He’s having such a hard time, and I don’t know what to do for him. All I can do is pray.” That was back in October when she found out about Monica and the hard time Mom and I had been having with Dad.

I closed the journal and pressed it against my stomach as I shut my eyes. What would I do without her? I must have been out of my mind to let her break up with me. Amy was right. Andrea wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t pushed her to it.

Time to do some real praying and getting into God’s Word, because that was the only way I could make this right.