Offside

  The light in the room was dim, and the clock on the nightstand said it was twenty after eight. I was warm and comfortable, and the smell all around me was just glorious. I couldn’t describe it, but I could definitely name it—Rumple. It just smelled like her. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply before opening them again and focusing on what was around me.

  Nicole was on the floor with a reading lamp beside her along with a bunch of books and papers. She kept going back and forth between one of the large textbooks and a notebook, where she furiously scribbled notes and then to a worksheet. Every once in a while, she would stick the tip of the pen in her mouth and nibble the end of it. As I shifted in the bed, she looked up at me.

  “Hey,” she said quietly.

  “Hey,” I replied hoarsely. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hi.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes at all.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Dying…empty…dead…revitalized…cold…warm…unsure…

  I didn’t know, so I just shrugged.

  “Hungry?”

  I shrugged again.

  “It’s getting late,” Nicole said quietly. “Do you want to call your dad and let him know where you are?”

  I shook my head.

  “He might be worried.”

  “He’s not,” I said. I didn’t think Dad had ever really worried about me in the way she meant. He’d be pissed if I wasn’t at my next practice or if I didn’t show up for a game, but it was Saturday, and I wasn’t missing anything. I didn’t think he would be too concerned with my workout schedule right at the moment. It did make me wonder, however, what her dad would think of me being here in her bed.

  Shit.

  “Is your dad here?” I asked, my eyes going wide with a bit of panic, now that I was thinking about exactly where I was—in the sheriff’s house, in his daughter’s bed.

  And he had a gun.

  “No.” Nicole bit down on her lip to keep from smiling. “He’s on a fishing trip. He won’t be back until tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” I relaxed again. My vision blurred into the pale off-white pillowcase. I inhaled again, letting the scent of her overcome all my other senses for a moment.

  “Don’t you want to go home?” Nicole suddenly asked.

  I shook my head emphatically.

  “You really should.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Her blue eyes looked over me, and I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her everything, but I knew I couldn’t. How do you say that on this day—of all days—going home is the very last thing I want to do? How do you explain to someone how much your own father hates you? How much he would prefer that you had died on this day instead of her?

  I would have preferred it that way, too.

  “I’m not going home,” I said. “I can leave though. I don’t want to be…in the way.”

  “You’re not,” she said. He voice was still soft and warm, and I was reminded of my dream, which was odd. As much as I remembered everything else, I rarely remembered my dreams. “But I do think your dad would want to know where you are. He has to be worried—”

  “Trust me,” I said. I licked my lips, feeling how dry they were. I hadn’t had any water or anything to drink all day. “He’s not worried, and he’s not looking for me.”

  She seemed to contemplate this for a while.

  “Do you want to stay here?” she asked.

  My heart started beating a little faster.

  “Can I?” My voice was just barely above a whisper.

  She nodded and put her pen down on her notebook before looking up at me again, her brow furrowed. She collected her legs underneath her and gracefully stood without using her hands for balance. She took two steps toward me and sat on the edge of the bed. She reached out and ran her fingers through my hair, and I closed my eyes to the feeling.

  “Will you tell me about her?” Nicole asked softly as her hand traced around my ear.

  I looked up at her, staring into her eyes and searching for something though I didn’t know what. No one ever asked me about my mom, which was probably because almost everyone in the town had known her. I never talked to anyone about her before, and I realized I actually wanted to tell Nicole about her.

  “She played the piano,” I told her. I tucked my head back into the pillow. “And she wrote plays. She wrote musicals and even wrote the music to go with them. None of them were really popular or anything, but lots of different theatre groups performed them. Everyone always liked what she wrote.”

  “I’d like to see some of them,” Nicole said. I looked back up at her.

  “You would?”

  “Yes, I would.” She smiled a little, but it didn’t last.

  My mind swirled around and tried to come to terms with…well, with everything. I was having a really hard time just not staring at her. I was trying not to think too much about how I was in her bedroom, lying on her bed with her hand touching me, and how her dad apparently was gone until morning.

  “She really liked plays, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that why you can quote Shakespeare?”

  I nodded.

  “She loved Shakespeare,” I said quietly. “She’d read it to me all the time. When I was little, we would act some of it out with the other kids in the neighborhood.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “It was.” I found myself smiling a little as I remembered a kid from down the street. I couldn’t remember his name, but he was so funny when he started singing the Hamlet lines he had heard on an old episode of Gilligan’s Island.

  My eyes closed again as her hand trailed lines through my hair. Her fingers were warm, and I could feel exactly where they touched, even when she didn’t take the same path every time. I opened my eyes again and found her looking down at me. I didn’t understand her expression, and I wondered if she was regretting her decision to let me be here with her.

  “I can really stay?” I asked for clarification and also to give her an out if she wanted it. I didn’t want her to want it. I didn’t want to leave.

  “You can stay,” she said with a nod, “on one condition.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, as if I wouldn’t agree to absolutely anything she requested. That knowledge didn’t stop me from being a little worried about what she wanted though.

  “You have to eat something,” she said with a completely serious expression. “I have the feeling you haven’t eaten all day.”

  I smiled a little and nodded.

  “I made Mexican,” she said, and I watched her cheeks turn a little pink, and she bit down on her lip again. “Do you like enchiladas?”

  I laughed through my nose, trying to hold it in, but it wasn’t quite working.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I do.”

  “Mexican rice and beans?”

  “Definitely.” As if I needed an exclamation point, my stomach rumbled in appreciation of the whole idea. More amazing than the return of my appetite on this day was the realization that I was also strangely relaxed in her presence.

  Shakespeare’s words flooded my head: “Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.” Somehow, Nicole had managed to calm my mind.

  Now how did she do that?

  CHAPTER 7

  PENALTY

  Damn.

  Nicole could cook.

  Maybe I just hadn’t eaten anything really homemade for a long time, but the Mexican feast she concocted was the best thing I could ever remember eating. When she had said rice and beans, I assumed it would be from one of those boxed dinners, but she had obviously made everything from scratch right down to using fresh chili peppers.

  It was phenomenal.

  Even though my head didn’t seem particularly interested in food, my body clung to the taste and feeling of the warm sauces and vegetables. I filled my stomach with three helpings along with extra rice.

  “When did you last eat?”
Nicole asked with a smile as I shoveled in the last of my third serving.

  “After the game,” I replied.

  “There was a game today?”

  “No,” I said, “last night.”

  “So I was right—you didn’t eat all day today?”

  I shook my head.

  “No wonder you’re so hungry.” She smiled.

  “I think it’s just that good,” I replied.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll box some of it up, and you can take it home.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  For a moment, I thought about the kind of questions having homemade leftovers in our refrigerator would spark. Dad seemed to have no problem with getting Nicole to do my homework, but I had the feeling he would consider cooking, crossing some kind of line.

  “Probably not a great idea, really,” I said.

  “That’s a pretty quick change of mind,” Nicole remarked.

  “Well…” I said, my mind racing to come up with something plausible, “if my dad saw it, he’d want to know where it came from. Your dad does work for him, and he might end up mentioning it. You know…”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she agreed. She started putting the leftovers away and gathering up the dishes. I grabbed our plates off the table and took them to the sink. She didn’t have a dishwasher, so I dried everything as she washed it. My head was starting to fog up again—images of Mom danced around in my head, cooking and washing dishes while I sat at the table eating warm cookies from the oven or just reading the comics from the newspaper.

  After the dishes were put away, Nicole asked if I wanted to watch TV or something. We sat on the couch in the living room, but I was barely able to keep my eyes open as she flipped through channels, trying to find something worth watching. Something about sleeping away most of the afternoon actually seemed to make me feel more tired than I would have been if I hadn’t slept at all. Though it was only ten-thirty on a Saturday night, and I had slept for at least four hours already, I was wiped out.

  “You should go to bed,” Nicole said. She turned off the TV and led me back up the stairs. She poked around in a tall, narrow closet in the hallway and came out with a green toothbrush still in its package. She also handed me a little tube of travel-sized toothpaste and a purple washcloth. “Do you need anything else?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I blinked a few times as the day started over again in my head. Mechanically, I went into the bathroom, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. I looked into the small round mirror and tried to figure out just who was in there. I didn’t get any answers from my reflection, so I tried to tame my hair a bit, failed, gave up, and went back to Nicole’s room.

  She had changed into sweats and a T-shirt and was typing away at her computer. She glanced up at me and bit down on her lip and then clicked with her mouse a couple more times before shutting the thing down. I stood in the doorway, not really sure what I should do. Nicole looked agitated. I wondered if I had done something to piss her off again, but I couldn’t come up with anything.

  “Is something wrong?” I finally asked.

  Nicole gave me a tight smile.

  “No, not really—just feeling a little guilty.”

  “Guilty?” I asked. I had no idea what she could have been feeling guilty about.

  “Yeah, well…” she took a deep breath and blew it out of her mouth. She stood up and motioned for me to get into the bed. I obliged, and she sat down next to me.

  “Tell me?” I asked quietly as I settled back down on her pillow. She took another breath and started playing with her fingers before she started talking.

  “I’d been feeling really sorry for myself all day today,” she said. “I talked to my mom last night, and she was telling me about all the things going on with her and her travels, and I was just pissed off about being here and not there with her. I really miss her.”

  She turned her head back to me.

  “But then I found you,” she continued softly, “and I realized that my complaints were kind of trivial compared to yours. At least I can call her…or send her an email.”

  “Why don’t you just text her?”

  “I don’t have a smart phone,” Nicole said. “I have a regular one, but all it can do is make phone calls. I stick with email.”

  She nodded over to the computer, and I wondered if that was what she was doing every night when I saw her at her window. I felt her hand brush through my hair before she stood up.

  “I’ll be on the couch downstairs,” Nicole said, and she started walking to the door. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Nicole?” I called out. My stomach and chest tightened up. “Will you stay with me?”

  Her eyes narrowed a little. I knew how my request must have sounded, and I didn’t mean it that way. I didn’t want to be alone. It was strange because I had always been alone on this day and never really thought about it before. But now I just wanted Nicole here.

  “I swear I won’t try anything,” I told her. “Nothing at all—I promise.”

  “You want me to lie down with you?”

  It was too fucking ridiculous for words, and I wondered why in the hell I thought she would consider it. I nodded anyway, figuring it wasn’t going to be any worse. If she said no, she’d still be on the couch, and she was going to do that anyway.

  Except it would be worse, because it meant she’d said no.

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to actually remember seeing her say the words for the rest of my life even if I would continue to hear it forever. The next thing I knew, she was sitting on the edge of the bed again, but this time she was pulling the blankets back and tucking her feet underneath them.

  I scooted back to make room for her and followed every movement with my eyes as she lay down beside me and placed her head next to mine on the pillow. I watched her gather up her hair with her hand and hold it to the back of her neck to get it out of her way. I saw the way she meticulously smoothed out the top blanket until we were both completely covered and how she kept glancing down—away from my face—as she settled in.

  I had never been in a bed with a girl before. Locker rooms, backs of school buses, behind bleachers, backseats of cars, yes, but never in a bed. It felt really strange but not in a bad way at all. What was particularly weird to my mind was that I wasn’t the least bit turned on, though looking back, it was probably at least partially due to the date. My mindset was not exactly normal. Regardless, the whole situation wasn’t the least bit sexual. It was warm and comfortable and safe.

  Tentatively, I reached out and found her waist. I watched her eyes widen a little as I wrapped my fingers around her back and pulled her a little closer to me. Her expression remained wary.

  “Is this okay?” I asked. Again, I felt everything inside my body tense, waiting for the rejection.

  “It’s okay,” Nicole said, and she placed her hand on the top of my arm, near my shoulder. It was almost as it had been when we were dancing at the banquet.

  With my head back on the pillow and the warmth of Nicole’s body lining up with mine, I closed my eyes. Visions in my head paraded through again—blueberries, gloves, police car, fear, pain—but when I flinched at the memories, Nicole’s hand was there, running over my skin and up into my hair. She stroked my head, and as the long-ago images of September twenty-third scrolled through my head for the final time that day, I opened my eyes.

  Her eyes were on mine, and she offered me a small, sad smile. My fingers tightened on her skin, holding her closer as my mind memorized everything it could see. When I closed my eyes again, the day repeated, ending with visions of deep blue irises and a feeling of warmth and security.

  I woke from the most peaceful sleep I could ever remember having.

  Enveloped in her scent, I slowly opened my eyes as I turned up my mouth in a smile. My nose was buried in her hair as Nicole lay with her back against my chest. My arm was still woven around her, and her
arm lay on top of mine with her fingers gripping the back of my hand. I closed my eyes, inhaled through my nose, and then blew the breath out of my mouth.

  Tilting my head a little, I opened my eyes and tried to get a look at her sleeping face. The angle wasn’t really right for it, though, so I looked down her body instead. My fingers twitched against her skin where the hem of her T-shirt had ridden up a little, and I tried not to pay too much attention to how her breasts were rising and falling with her slow, steady breathing.

  Go away, morning wood…

  There was light coming through the window, and I realized it was pretty late in the morning, at least by my standards. At first, I felt a wave of panic, but I pushed it back. For one thing, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. For another…

  Well…

  Whatever might happen because of my missed morning run, it would be worth it just to stay here a little while longer.

  I closed my eyes and settled back against the pillow, content to just listen to her breathe and enjoy memorizing the feel of her body along mine. Every once in a while, I would move my fingers, just to feel the electric tingle I got when my skin touched hers. Her hair was tickling my nose, but I didn’t move.

  As much as I might have wanted it to, I knew it wasn’t going to last forever.

  The numbers on the clock went by far too quickly as I absorbed the feeling, the sight, and the smell of her all around me. Eventually Nicole stirred, tickling my nose some more as she shifted and stretched her neck against the pillow. From my angle, I could see her eyes flutter open, and I felt her grip my hand as she turned around to face me.

  Even with sleep in her eyes and a yawn on her lips, she was beautiful. Her hair was scattered all over the place as if it were some crazy, wild animal that had been attacked by first-year beauty students, and she was still the most gorgeous sight I had ever seen.

  I just stared at her, taking it all in, until I realized what I was doing.

  “Hey,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. I looked away from her eyes quickly but couldn’t stop myself from looking back.

  “Hey,” she answered. She smiled slightly. “How are you?”