No more dinners with Rhett. Not even for free food. No more flirty glances. No more ogling his bod. No more.
* * *
That lasts about forty-eight hours. For some reason everyone is in a goofy mood at practice on Tuesday and even Coach is laughing at us.
"Okay, you kids, let's call it a night. Go home. Do homework. I'll see you tomorrow." She shakes her head and leaves. The rest of us aren't quite sure what to do, so we stand around for a minute and then it's like we're kids and school is out for the summer. We normally have practice for another hour, so this is nice.
"Wow, a whole extra hour in my day, what a luxury," Tobi says, grinning. "I think I'll use it to, oh, I don't know . . . study! Yeah, that sounds like an awesome idea!" She slings her bag over her shoulder and crosses her eyes at me.
"Why couldn't I have picked a cake major that didn't require so much thinking?" she asks me.
"Because you're going to save lives?"
She snaps her fingers.
"Right, that."
We both laugh and I gather my stuff. Rhett is doing that thing where he hangs around, and I can feel that he wants to talk to me. Things have been awkward between us on the mat for the first time since we met. I couldn't seem to stick my easiest stunts tonight, and my body is sore from falling and being caught so many times.
I don't want to talk to him about the other night. I'd rather shove it in the darkest recesses of my brain and forget that it happened. If I'm forgetting stuff, I'd also like to forget about those other little moments we've had when I swore he was going to kiss me. Or I was going to kiss him. Either way, kissing was going to happen.
I have to focus. I'm going to use my spare hour to do just that. So I rush past Rhett and head for my car. I don't have time for him.
* * *
A few minutes later I'm at my laptop with my fingers hovering over the keys. All I have to do is type in a name. Just her name. Two words. I can do this.
I can't count how many times I've been in this same position and ended up shutting my laptop and giving up.
Not this time.
I put in the first letter.
R.
And a second.
E.
My hands are shaking. I stop and then freaking Google tries to complete my thought for me. No, Google, I'm not looking for the Red Sox, Reddit or a Realtor.
Rebecca. That's who I'm looking for. Rebecca June Cooper. My birth mother. I know nothing about her, other than her name and that she gave birth at Maine Medical Center. I was worried that she might have gotten married and changed her name, but I found more than a few Rebecca Coopers in Maine and one Rebecca J. Cooper. I couldn't look further than that to social media accounts, or other public records, and I haven't been able to since. Every time my hands would seize up, or I'd delete her name, or someone would interrupt me, or I would just plain freak out.
I know she's out there. I know she isn't dead. I made sure to check death records. She's alive and she's in this state and so am I.
I close my eyes and take a breath and type in her name again, letter by letter.
There she is. Or at least I think so.
A Facebook page.
Below that a few newspaper articles and then the results go off to other Rebecca Coopers in other states. I don't care about those Rebecca Coopers.
I click on her Facebook page, but she has everything set to private. I can only see her profile picture and cover photo. I enlarge her profile picture, but it's just of a flower. A poppy. Looks as if it has an Instagram filter on it, but I didn't find an account for her. Her cover photo is the view from the top of a mountain. I bet it's Acadia National Park.
Nothing else. No pictures of her face. No details. Nothing.
Dead end. I'm almost relieved. I don't know what I'm going to do when I see a picture of her face.
I've thought about her so many times since I found out. Does she look like me? Do I have her eyes? What about my personality? Is it anything like hers? How old is she? Where does she work?
And the most important question: Why did she give me up?
I have no details about that. Other than that she was nineteen when she gave birth to me, which could be an explanation, but that's not enough. I need to know.
I need to know or else I can't go on with the rest of my life. That first night I found out, I got no sleep. I turned everything over and over in my head, and by the time the sun came up, I made my decision to come here.
So far, I haven't regretted it. Much.
I get up and head to bed again. At this rate, I'm going to feel like complete shit tomorrow, but there's nothing I can do about that.
I close my eyes and try to quiet my thoughts.
Where are you, Rebecca Cooper?