As I walk across the soft grass, I suddenly realize I’m not the only person in this part of the quad. Someone else is lurking around the base of the tower. I wait, feeling nervous about being out here alone. Now, all those absurd warnings my mother gave me about the buddy system come rushing back. What am I doing out here, all by myself? This is the perfect time and place to get snatched!
I stumble over a thick tree root, my lame leg faltering. I press my back against the trunk and wait. Whoever it is can’t be hanging around long. What are they doing, anyway?
That’s when I see the blue light of a phone cast over their face. My stomach clenches at the sight of Reynolds, leaning lazily against the stonework of the tower. His hair’s wet and his eyes are blank, fixed to the screen of his phone. There’s something wary in the way he holds himself, hand pushed tight into the pocket of his low-slung jeans, shoulders curling inward.
I wonder what he’s doing there, but just as quickly as I ask the question, I know the answer. I’m not surprised that he’s already found someone here to hook up with. I’ve been here for years and no guy has ever expressed the slightest interest in me, but him? I’ve overheard enough bathroom conversations and whispered classroom discussions to know that Sydney and I aren’t the only ones who have noticed that Reynolds is good-looking. Any number of Preston girls would be willing to bear a Devil’s mark from him.
What does surprise me is the sudden boulder of disappointment that crashes into the pit of my stomach.
I instantly cringe away from it, heart twisting, because I refuse—refuse—to find where those breadcrumbs lead me. Even if I were jealous—and even if that night had never happened—it’d be laughable. Embarrassing. Pathetic. Wanting Reynolds is something my thirteen-year-old self would do, because that person was young and stupid and hopelessly naive. The person I am now feels physically sick at the thought of it.
I wait another few minutes before I leave, not wanting to run into him. He lingers around the door, and for a second I think maybe he’s getting stood up. But that idea is heartily squashed when the door finally opens. It’s hard to make anything out except a shadowy figure standing in the doorway, but Reynolds bumps fists with whoever it is. He vanishes into the bell tower a moment later.
I realize my heart is racing as the door closes behind him. I take a deep breath before walking as quickly as I can back toward the stadium parking lot.
One thing nags at me as I reach my parents.
Guys don’t bump fists with a girl.
Who the heck was Reyn meeting?
I wait until it’s late, house quiet and still, to flip through the photos on the memory card slowly, taking in every face, each moment, as if I’m not looking for one photo in particular. Determinedly—almost stubbornly—I take my sweet time clicking the ‘next’ arrow. I feel a swell of jubilation when I find the touchdown photo, a still frame of number 32 just as his hands make contact with the ball. It’s not exactly framed professionally, but it’s clear and crisp, a nicer snapshot of an action moment than I thought myself capable of, and I feel a bright spike of satisfaction.
Crushing it!
I flip through more—Emory, Sydney, Afton Cross, Ben Shackleford—until I reach The One.
The second his dimpled face fills the screen, I almost click back to the previous picture. Seeing him like this feels wrong somehow, like at any moment my parents are going to jump out of the shadows and start asking a whole lot of questions that I’m in no way prepared to answer. It makes me curl closer to the screen as I look at it, not at all unlike I’ve seen Reynolds curled around his lunch tray—a vaguely possessive, shielding move.
It’s a fantastic picture. There’s something strangely guarded in the way his eyes are trained off into the distance. Sweaty hair clings to his forehead in chaotic slashes, and his mouth is parted with his smile, like he’s still trying to catch his breath.
It’s a seemingly perfect mixture of the old Reynolds and the new.
I can only look at it for a few moments before the anxious fluttering in my stomach becomes too much. I close it all out before shooting a wary glance toward my window.
I blame the insomnia—or all the caffeine—for turning me into a nosy neighbor, or at least that’s what I tell myself as I sit here on my bed, watching his dark window for signs of activity. It’s already past midnight and he’s not the only one who hasn’t come home yet. My brother hasn’t returned either.
I check social media, scanning Emory’s account and even Aubrey Willis’, but if they’re together, they’ve kept it on the DL. I yet again restrain myself from seeing whether or not Reynolds has an account. That’s like the isosceles triangle of slippery slopes. But I do scroll through a dozen other accounts of Preston Prep classmates hoping he’ll pop up. He doesn’t, even in the photos from a party where Sydney is claiming to have the time of her life.
I close the laptop and fall back on my bed, sighing.
I drum my fingers against my stomach. FOMO isn’t something I’m used to feeling so acutely. The meds usually dulled those kinds of things. But now it’s just frustratingly, achingly obvious that I’m the only one at home on a Friday night, sitting in my room, creeping on the off-limits neighbor I can barely even manage eye contact with. Jesus, the realization that I need a life has never been clearer.
I decide to risk going down to the kitchen. It’s late enough that Mom and Dad should be asleep. Dad snores like a freight train and my mom has started sleeping with a noise machine. It’s given me a little more freedom to move around at night, but I still play it safe, not even daring to turn on a light to illuminate my way down the stairs, through the house.
At the refrigerator, I open the freezer and stick my head in so that the cool air blasts across my face. I dig out an ice pop and am in the middle of tearing the package with my teeth when I hear a meow at the kitchen window. Firefly’s climbed the flower box and is peering in at me with his shrewd eyes.
“Hey bud,” I say, mostly to myself. It’s not like the cat can hear me. He continues to meow, louder and a touch more obnoxiously than normal. At the door, I pause, because I know my cat. Usually, that much noise means he’s brought a ‘gift’. I ease the door open, just a crack, and look down. Sure enough...
“Ugh, Firefly, are you kidding me?”
Firefly is holding the brown, striped body of a chipmunk in his mouth. I know if I let him, he’ll dart in, probably leaving the thing somewhere horribly inconvenient. Instead, I squeeze out to confront him.
“Let go of that!” I hiss. “Drop the chipmunk!”
Firefly isn’t having it. As soon as I get near enough to grab him, he’s jolting away. I chase him across the yard, grateful that no one’s come home yet, because I can’t even imagine how stupid I look, hobbling around after a cat and his chipmunk. I ultimately pick up a pinecone to chuck in his direction. Predictably, it misses, Emory having clearly sucked all of the throwing talent from our particular end of the gene pool. The yard is wet, coated in slippery dew. I throw another pinecone, which lands close enough to both alarm and piss the cat off. He gives me a surly, betrayed look, as if to say ‘I’m trying to feed you, woman!’
Having done this song and dance before, I know from experience that, half the time, the chipmunks are still alive—just stunned into submission—which means if I can grab the cat, I can probably save the pitiful creature. I pick up one more pinecone and throw it. This one skitters across the driveway, producing a long hissing sound that scares Firefly enough to drop the chipmunk.