“Are you here for the net?” I asked.

I was aware of how he hadn’t moved since I jumped to my feet. He was still on the floor, and I got a glance in before I panicked, just quick enough to see my roll sitting on his jean’s zipper, right where a whole other type of bread was.

Ahem.

I made every effort to change my thoughts, because I could feel all the sexual-themed questions coming, and with my history with this guy, I did not want to take that on.

He grunted, finally standing up. “That’s all you’re going to say to me?’”

Well…what else was there?

I mean, besides the fact that for all the crap I took from Keith about “dating” my guy friends, I hadn’t dated any of them. Yet, this was the one guy who actually came close to entering that zone. The dating zone.

That’d been Grant.

And no one knew. No one.

They just knew he’d been my best friend for six summers in a row. They didn’t know we’d kissed on the hanging bench my last summer here, and we’d held hands on the walk to my car—right to where I had it packed with all my belongings. We drove our separate ways, and that was the end of our summer.

Grant went north four hours to finish his last year at college, and I went south to meet Damian. Life took a turn after that—a big, fast, and dramatic turn, and sometimes I felt like I’d taken that turn so fast, my car had rolled in the ditch and I’d never woken up.

My throat suddenly had an STD. There was burning, more burning.

“How’s Damian?” Grant asked.

We were going serious right off the bat.

“If everyone started using shiitake as a curse word, would we switch things and call them shit mushrooms?”

He snorted, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “You’re exactly the same.”

No, Grant. No, I wasn’t actually. I was very, very different inside, but it was all covered up in lame questions and stupid jokes because I couldn’t admit the truth or I would collapse. That was the real Charlie, and I clamped her down because I couldn’t even handle her myself.

“Well…” His voice lilted with sarcasm. “I’m engaged. Do you give a shit?”

I looked up at him now, finally. His eyes bore into me, and I swallowed.

“Yes,” I whispered.

I rolled my eyes at myself. I wasn’t a meek and timid mouse, but that’s what was coming out. Coughing, I hit my chest with a fist and exclaimed, “I mean, yes, I do.”

Oh, Lord.

It came out booming now. All I had to do was throw my arm out to the side and it would be as if I was announcing the Seattle Thunder’s starting lineup.

His lip twitched.

That relaxed me. My lungs weren’t so shriveled up.

“Congratulations.”

His looked at me and lowered his head, seeming to study me. After a moment, he shook his head. “Yeah. Okay, kid. You and I can do our dance later.” He gestured around us. “Boss wanted this cleaned up and the net taken down. I’ll handle it.” He nodded to the cage. “You need to count everything in there.”

The cage was just what it sounded like: a small room set in the corner with two large doors, but only one was used to enter and exit. The other one had been cut in half. The bottom had the door handle. It could swing open and closed, but the other section of the door had been taken off, cut in half again and glued over the top so it looked like half a concession stand.

Years ago, it had looked rough, but they had made it look better. It looked like an equipment room any top-notch facility would use now. The budget had been good to this place.

Heading in, I switched on the light. The cage had been organized. All the balls were in place, the equipment in its spots. I scuffed my foot over the floor. Even that had been cleaned.

“Grant, you did this?”

He’d just cleared the screen door, but hollered back through it, “Nah.”

Grant wasn’t a liar, so that meant Mary had done it.

I yelled back, “Thank your mom for me, please.”

He raised a hand in response, crossing the first of the two courts.

I got myself to work, and I was kneeled down behind a partition, going through the second rack of hockey equipment, when I heard the first voices. They came closer and closer, and I couldn’t move.

Grant had left twenty minutes ago, so no one knew I was back here. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a breath. Meditation, bitches. I’d need to become a namaste maestro by the end of these three weeks, but Reese Forster wasn’t here.

I whispered that to myself, over and over again. I hoped fervently it would give me some form of bearing so I wouldn’t get swept up in the craziness.

“—gotta call the woman and check in.”

Yes. I recognized that voice. I’d heard it from locker-room interviews, but I wasn’t going to name the Cruskinator. If I did, I’d be nutso.

I wasn’t going to be nutso.

Someone else responded, “You have a four year old, right?”

“Yeah. He’s such a little punk—”

He sounded so fond of his kid.

The Cruskinator kept talking, but the word rascal did it for me.

I could rattle off his stats for four years in a row—not the last four years, but a few years before that—yet hearing him call his kid a rascal grounded me.