Summer in the City

  “Burned,” Josh said softly.

  I didn’t want his pity. “Burned once, shame on them. Burned twice, shame on me. I’m not letting it happen a third time.”

  “Always by jocks,” he observed.

  “That’s who I’ve always hung out with—till now,” I added.

  “Are poets any better?”

  “I haven’t decided.” I glanced sideways at him. “How did you know Andrew was a poet?”

  “We go to the same school. He’s already famous. Your Mom is a hoot,” he said, changing the subject. “I like her.”

  I laughed. “You’d never know we were related.”

  “Not if you’re looking at the surface,” Josh agreed. “But she has the same determination as you, to do what she wants, and to do it the way she wants, no matter what anybody thinks.”

  I looked at him, surprised.

  “Am I wrong?” he asked.

  “No, I think you’re right.”

  “You’re both passionate players,” he went on. “You just work at different things.”

  “Did you meet Viktor?” I asked, wondering what Josh would think of that situation.

  “He was leaving as we were coming in.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  Josh grinned. “He’s a stud.”

  “I finally asked my mom. He’s fourteen years younger than she is.”

  “Go, Rita!” Josh replied.

  I played with my ice cream spoon. “I don’t trust him.”

  “With you or with her?” he asked quickly.

  “With her.”

  “Because of something you’ve seen? Because of their age difference?”

  I thought for a moment, trying to put my finger on what bothered me about him.

  “Or maybe because you don’t trust love?” Josh added.

  “Answers B and C, plus a gut feeling. Tell me about your grandmother.”

  “Her name is Ellen. She is very tough. And kind.”

  “And?”

  “You want to know more?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “She met my grandfather in eleventh grade. It was—I know you’re not going to buy this—love at first sight. Which probably wasn’t a good thing because she married him and got pregnant instead of finishing high school.

  “He died when my mother was young, and Gran raised my mother alone. It was really a struggle because she didn’t have enough education to get a good job. Then history sort of repeated itself, my mother fell in love in high school, Gran raised the roof, and my mother ran away. She finally came home with a baby—me—and no husband. I don’t remember my mother, because she headed off again right after that. Anyway, Gran raised me so strictly that all the other parents wanted their kids to hang out with me. God help me if I missed a day of school! If I hadn’t decided on college on my own, she would have handcuffed me and walked me there every day. But she’s really a sweetheart. And she’s a total sucker for romances like your mother’s.”

  I smiled. “A lot of people are.”

  “Gran has sacrificed a lot for me. It was just lucky I could get the athletic scholarship and save us some money.”

  “It wasn’t just lucky,” I said. “It was ability. It was hard work. It was exceptional talent.”

  He turned to look at me. “Does it feel that way to you?”

  “No,” I admitted. “No, sometimes I get so nervous about the whole thing, I wish I had never been offered a scholarship.”

  Josh nodded as if he understood.

  “I tried to talk to my dad about it, but I’m his kid, he thinks I can do anything.”

  Josh nodded again.

  “I talked to my coach and she dragged out my stats—as if they mean anything! That was high school! I’m in a different league now.”

  “And so you’re thinking, what if I stink? What if I’ve lost it? What if I never had it? What if my grades go south? What if the athletic department decides they made a huge mistake? What if a kid who didn’t get a scholarship plays a lot better than I do?”

  I laughed. “That pretty well sums it up.”

  “If you’re like me, Jamie, preseason practices won’t help much to settle the nerves. There’s nothing you can do but hang in there till you get to your first real game.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” I said, although it helped just knowing I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  “If you want,” he added, “I can give you my e-mail address before you take off for Maryland. If you start to get nervous or down, you can just e-mail me. Not that I have anything wise to tell you, but I’ve been there.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Want to take a walk and tour this place? We can stop at all the monitors along the way.”

  I smiled. “Sounds good.”

  We made the entire circle of the stadium, dawdling here and there, and returned to our seats in the ninth inning.

  “Where have you been?” Mona asked me.

  “We’ve only been gone for an inning and a half,” I lied.

  “Oh,” she said.

  I leaned closer to her. “That was a reality test, Mona. You failed.”

  She laughed and shrugged.

  Since we had eaten throughout the game, it didn’t make sense to go out and eat afterward. Mona suggested walking the short blocks to the harbor and taking a water taxi ride.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that ever since your date with—since you did it,” she revised her sentence.

  We picked up the boat at the dock near the Harborplace pavilions, and Josh steered me to a section of the taxi where we wouldn’t be looking directly at Mona and Ted. “They may want to kiss without us watching.”

  “I wish they would and get it over with,” I said. “I feel silly, like a chaperone.”

  “I think they’re kind of sweet and romantic,” he said.

  “Then you’ve been reading your Gran’s books.”

  “No, but I have read some excerpts, and in her books they plunge into all-out passion.”

  “Oh,” I said, as if I had never read a romance.

  “What do you read?” Josh asked, laughing. “Stephen King?”

  “Sometimes.”

  The taxi blew its horn and slid away from the dock. I turned to watch the lights of the city slowly spin around us. The dark water was bright with neon reflections and the breeze was warm, almost balmy.

  I was tired of talking—not tired of being with Josh—just tired of gabbing, and happy to ride along with him from stop to stop, watching people get on and off. The wind kept plucking strands of hair from my sagging French braid. When the boat shifted directions, I saw Josh reach up quickly to brush my hair out of his face, then he realized what it was and dropped his hand just as quickly, as if to say, no problem.

  “Sorry,” I said, catching hold of my hair and whisking it around to the other side of my face.

  “It’s not bothering me,” he replied.

  I leaned forward, curious, trying to see his eyes.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  “I was wondering what color your eyes are at night.”

  “The same color as they are during the day,” he replied.

  Still, I leaned closer.

  “Unless there’s a full moon, of course, and the wolf in me starts emerging. But you’ve seen that already.”

  “Your eyes are a funny color.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “They’re hazel,” I continued, “but sometimes they get a gold light in them. It’s a warm, golden light, except when you’re angry, then it’s a flash, like lightning. I saw it the first day, when I checked you and kept you from scoring.”

  He looked sideways at me, but under lowered lids, so all I saw were his dark lashes.

  “Never mind. It was a dumb thing to wonder.”

  And it was an especially dumb thing to say. It sounded like I was fascinated by his eyes, or something. Which I was, but that wasn’t something you told
a friend. I turned my attention to the guy steering the taxi, studying him as if his job were the most interesting thing in the world. Then I felt Josh’s fingers under my chin. Barely touching my cheek, he turned my face toward his and gazed into my eyes.

  “Have I answered your question?” he asked after several seconds—or minutes—I was too mesmerized to know.

  “Um…yes. Even at night, their color’s, uh, like our lake in Michigan, where our cabin is, green and brown with a soft shimmer of sunlight.”

  He blinked, then said, “As long as I’m not getting my shot checked.”

  “Exactly,” I replied, and turned toward the shoreline. I was glad that the taxi was approaching the dock.

  We disembarked and, although Ted was the driver, Josh and I led the way back to the parking garage. I turned around once and saw Ted and Mona holding hands as they walked. I thought about the way Andrew liked to drape his arm around me. Ted probably wanted to do that, and Mona would have welcomed it, but there was something touching about the way he had simply taken her hand, the way he treated her carefully, as is she were a treasure.

  Josh and I climbed into the backseat and watched Ted fumble with the CD player, try to find his parking ticket, and frown at the pulsing bell that went off because he had forgotten to buckle his seat belt. When the music came on, I recognized it, but couldn’t remember the singer.

  Mona turned to Ted. “That’s Nat King Cole,” she said, smiling. “My grandmother owns every recording of his.”

  Ted pushed a button and the track changed. A song I knew from a movie came on. “Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa,” the guy crooned.

  The air inside the car was warm and smelled of Mona’s perfume. I stared at Josh’s knees, which, like mine, were jutting into the back of the car seat. When I glanced sideways at him, I caught him looking at me, that is, at my necklace. It took all my restraint not to reach for it self-consciously. I remembered how Andrew had fingered the beads, and yet I felt Josh’s eyes on my throat in a way I had not felt Andrew’s fingers.

  Josh glanced up and met my eyes briefly. “It looks pretty on you,” he said, then turned away. “Can I put down the back window, Ted?”

  “Sure.”

  He rolled it all the way down and let in city sounds, which mixed with the romantic music. We were silent the rest of the way home.

  Chapter 21

  Some mornings, usually at the beginning of basketball season, when I’m still working on conditioning, and at the end, when we play game after game in tournaments, I wake up feeling as if I have not moved an inch since falling asleep the night before. My arms and legs are made of lead; even my pinkies are heavy. Other mornings, usually when I have lots of tests or papers, I wake up with my body ready to move, but my head still deep in a dreamless fuzz, and I stumble around like a sleepwalker.

  Wednesday morning, I felt as if I hadn’t dreamed a dream or moved a muscle since the moment I’d laid down. For all I knew, I could have died overnight. I felt like Sleeping Beauty must have after a hundred years. Which meant I was late for my warm-up run with Mona.

  “Come on, come on,” Mona urged me, having already circled the track once and antsy to take off again.

  “Excuse me, but I was kept out late last night,” I reminded her. “Don’t expect me to be energetic, just because you’re high on the caffeine of love. Why don’t you do another lap while I stretch?”

  Mona looked me over. “You’re hurting, girlfriend.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I hope you remembered to put on clean underwear,” Mona said, just before taking off on her lap. “You’re still wearing your necklace.”

  I reached up to touch it, and suddenly my mind cleared, as if a little alarm clock had gone off inside me. I remembered the way Josh had gazed at the necklace lying against my neck, the way his eyes had felt resting on me.

  After several more stretches, I joined Mona and we started one of Stonegate’s cross-country routes.

  “Did you have a good time last night?” she asked.

  “Yeah. How about you?”

  “I had a spectacular time.”

  “Good.”

  “He is so great, Jamie.”

  I nodded.

  “The way he listens, the way he laughs.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s funny.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s thoughtful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s gorgeous.”

  “I know.”

  She stopped dead and turned to me with a pained look.

  “What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Who are you talking about?” she asked back.

  I replayed our conversation in my mind and searched for the right answer. “Uh, Andrew?”

  “Are you falling for Ted?” she asked.

  “No, of course not, I thought you were.”

  “You’re confusing me, Jamie. The tone in your voice a minute ago…”

  I was confusing myself, because while she was describing Ted, I was picturing Josh.

  “I’m still asleep, Mona,” I said. “You talk and I’ll just nod.”

  Reassured, she started running again and I matched her pace.

  But I wasn’t asleep. I was in another world, an unfamiliar world. My mind kept drifting back to the night before with Josh.

  Then the little clock that had beeped in my head ten minutes before suddenly rang like an all-out alarm of a security system, warning of someone breaking and entering. Circling the field where the middle school boys played lacrosse, I saw Josh. He had tossed his camp T-shirt on top of his gym bag near the sideline where we ran, and was alone on the field, running, faking out imaginary defenders, slamming the ball into the goal.

  Mona must have seen my reaction. “We could just circle the field for a while,” she suggested slyly.

  “Why would we want to do that?”

  “To enjoy the scenery,” she replied.

  “I’ve seen a guy without his shirt before.”

  “Have you seen Josh without his shirt?” she asked, smiling.

  “A jock’s a jock.”

  “Not always.”

  Josh saw us then. He stopped a moment and nodded in our direction, his hands still cradling with the stick.

  “Good morning, gorgeous,” Mona called.

  “Good morning, Mona,” he replied. “Jamie.”

  I waved. I felt like a fifth grader experiencing her first crush. This couldn’t be happening to me, I thought. I won’t let this happen to me.

  “Let’s cut over to the baseball diamond, Mona.”

  I couldn’t wait to start the morning camp, to get myself back on track. But even as I explained, demonstrated, corrected, and encouraged my girls, Josh’s face kept rising in front of my eyes like a pop-up ad on a computer screen.

  Oh, God, I prayed, please don’t let me be falling for Josh. Please, please don’t let me be falling for another jock.

  “Miss Jamie?” my Energizer Bunny said, waving her hands in front of my face. “Miss Jamie, hello?”

  “Sorry, Camille.”

  I stayed late to talk to some of my players, and if they had wanted to stay till one o’clock, that would have been fine with me, but their mothers eventually came for them. At twelve twenty-five, both wanting to see him and not wanting to see him, I walked slowly to the dining hall. I had lost my appetite and considered spending lunchtime somewhere else, but the trained athlete in me figured that discipline was the answer to insanity. Besides, if I didn’t show up, people would start asking questions.

  As I approached our table, I saw that there were already eight people sitting down. Perfect, I thought, no room for me.

  “Here she comes now,” I heard Sam say, and someone turned around. Andrew. He gave me a dazzling smile, a smile that, if flashed into a camera, would have made the hearts of girls across the U.S. race. But mine, perversely, beat with a dul
l thud-thud.

  “You’re wearing my necklace,” Andrew observed proudly.

  The eyes of everyone at the table went straight to it, so I assumed Josh’s did, too, although I was careful not to look in his direction.

  “It’s beautiful,” Caitlin said admiringly. “You’ve got good taste, Andrew.”

  He sat back in his chair, smiling. “It’s easy to dress a beautiful girl.”

  Jake let out a mock “Whoa!” and Todd said, “I prefer to undress them,” which made everyone laugh.

  “Of course,” Andrew said, smiling, “that comes afterward.”

  I wanted to rip off the necklace and throw it at him. What was I, his mannequin? “Andrew, could we talk outside?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, rising from his chair. “Don’t you want something to eat? Let’s have a picnic.”

  “Just a Coke,” I said, striding toward the soda machine, forcing my legs to slow down and take smaller steps. I had to maintain some kind of dignity in front of the others. “I have a lot to do to prepare for this afternoon’s camp,” I told Andrew as I pulled the cold can out of its slot. “I’ll walk you to your Jeep.”

  “Wait. Let me get a copy of the poem I brought you,” he said. “It’s on the table.”

  Poem? It was then that I saw my camp buddies holding up sheets of paper and pointing things out to one another. Andrew had brought his poetry to my camp? He had sat down and passed out his writing to people I knew? I felt like he was invading my life.

  “It’s a poem about you,” he said, and my feet froze to the dining hall floor. I was not going within a mile of that table!

  “Why don’t you go gather up your poems?” I suggested. “I’ll wait here.”

  “It’s just one poem. I made copies.”

  Oh, God! I thought, and headed for the door. He caught up in the courtyard with the picnic tables. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To the parking lot, remember?” I said, walking fast. “I’m sorry, Andrew, but I didn’t know you were coming, and I have a lot to do.”

  “Shall I read the poem to you, or would you prefer to read it quietly when you’re alone?”

  “What’s it called?” I asked.

  “The Kiss.”

  “I’ll read it when I’m alone,” I said, and kept walking.