This is what I wanted. Keeping a toe in field hockey. Prolonging the good parts of Sudbury High. But a part of me is missing. The Gregg part. Tonight was my first match he didn’t watch and I can’t deny the difference it made in my game. I scanned the stands too many times. Missed a couple of key passes that Coach reamed me for. It wasn’t my best night.
When the bus returns to school, I decline invites to the after-party. I tell my teammates I’m not feeling great and hope they’ll accept that as an excuse for why I played like shit. I have to get my head straight before the next game so I shower in the locker room and head straight to Gregg’s.
It’s just after seven when I pull up to his house, see his enormous green truck in the driveway. The garage’s spotlights burst on, interrogating. Cowardice rattles within me. I want to turn around, drive far away, but then I am trapped by Mrs. Slicer’s Suburban pulling in behind me. Within seconds, Mara and Quinn, Gregg’s youngest sisters, scramble out of their seats and run toward me.
“Zee Zee!” Mara yells, scaling my side to perch on my hip bone. Quinn, a year older, pretends to be too mature for such nonsense. She is dressed in a peach tutu and ballet flats, her fire-red hair slicked into a severe bun.
“Zephyr, how nice to see you.” Mrs. Slicer bookends her hands on my cheeks and leans in for the kiss. Her lips stay on my brain for a second longer than I think a kiss should last, but it’s always been like this. Like she’s trying to press her love right through me. “You are looking as gorgeous as ever.”
“So pwetty.” Mara burrows into me.
“We’ve missed you around here.” Mrs. Slicer turns to the SUV, opens the tailgate. “Gregg tells us your team’s competing in the playoffs. Congratulations.”
I hope that’s all he told her. “We’ve got a great team. We won our first game in the series. Today, in fact.”
She pops her head out from behind the back of the car. “Today? But Gregg’s been home since school let out. Did he know you were playing?”
I shrug. It’s the question I’ve come here to ask. That, and to apologize for kissing Alec at the rink—something I’d never wanted Gregg to see.
Mrs. Slicer looks confused. “He must not have known about your game.” She shakes her head as if to clear it. “Things have been so nuts around here planning for Anna’s wedding that we’re all a little off.”
Anna. The older sister Gregg got but I always wanted. “I get it.” I slide Mara off my hip. “Let me help you.” I throw a bag over each shoulder and take the third and fourth bags in my hands.
“I hewp too.” Mara squeezes a stray box of Frosted Flakes to her chest and runs inside.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Mrs. Slicer says, but her tone betrays how much she appreciates the help. It’s no small gig buying groceries for a family of eight. “You can just set them down in the kitchen. Slice is probably in his room. Head on down.”
I do. I slip off my grocery bag garments and head to the lower level of the house. The floor with the enormous game room, double doors out to the pool, and Gregg’s bedroom at the far end. His door is closed. I stand in the hall, my heart pounding against my rib cage. I squeeze my eyes shut, think of Waxman’s, the way Gregg hugged me so hard he lifted me from the ground. I think of his kiss and it seems dreamlike. Did it really happen?
But of course it did, because we are left dusted with a layer of ash from the fallout.
I call up my nerve. “Come in,” Gregg says in response to my knock.
I open the door slowly and he plucks his earbuds free as he registers my presence. His face falls. Plummets. Bails and leaves the stratosphere.
“What’s up?” Gregg stands but doesn’t extend his customary invitation to sit on the edge of the bed.
The bed, where we played countless hands of gin rummy and talked our throats sore. The bed is now a line between us, dividing what used to be and what is.
“I missed you today.” The words are out before I can think if they’re the right ones.
He runs his fingers through his thick mass of strawberry hair. “Yeah.”
I take him in, his straight shoulders, serious height, and the constellation of freckles across the bridge of his nose. Any girl would be crazy to complain about a kiss from him. But I’m not any girl. I’m his best friend.
He turns away, winds his earbuds around his iPod and places it on his desk. I can’t see his eyes when he says, “So you’re kissing Alec now?”
“God, Gregg. I’m so sorry about that.” I should have taken more control of the situation. Stopped Alec before Gregg had any chance of seeing us together.