“What about you, Luke? Anything going on this weekend?”
My weekend plans had mostly revolved around whether or not Holly was in my life. If she was, we usually did things together. One of the advantages to living in the Bay area was that there was always something to do. Because Holly was a bartender, she got to listen to her customers talk about all kinds of stuff, and occasionally one of them would mention a place in town or an event we hadn’t yet heard about, like a wine festival or something. She would find out the details, relay them to me, and we would usually go check it out for ourselves. When she wasn’t in my life, I became kind of reclusive. I might go to a movie or a baseball game alone every now and then, but I often found myself hanging out at home, reading mostly. There was always a book or two to be reading. I usually had three or four going at once.
“No plans really,” I said, picking this as the time to begin eating my salad. I remembered that April had given me Dubliners to read, so between bites of lunch I added, “I will probably just do some reading. Have a book I have been meaning to get into.”
“Oh yeah, which one?” Jessica asked.
“It’s called Dubliners. James Joyce.”
“Sounds good,” Dave Hart, the boys’ gym teacher, said. “Is it new?”
Dave Hart had probably not read a book in his life, unless it was about how to build muscles faster. And even then he probably had to have someone read it to him. Dave was great though, so I resisted the urge to make him look like the literary fool that he was.
“It’s new to me,” I said, and he nodded like he completely knew what I was saying.
“Where’s April?” Jessica asked. “She’s not sick, is she?”
“No, she’s here,” I said. “Well, not here right now. She went to meet her husband for lunch.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” she answered. “I couldn’t get my husband to leave work and meet me if I was having a baby.”
We all knew Jessica’s husband, so we laughed with her despite knowing that she was probably right.
“Oh, Luke,” Ken said from down the table. “I was meaning to ask you if you were going to the Rays game tonight?”
“No, I hadn’t planned to. Why?”
“A friend of Beth’s at work gave her two tickets, but we can’t go because her parents are coming in tonight. You are welcome to the tickets if you’d like them.”
I almost said “thanks, but no thanks” before he was finished talking, but then I stopped myself. I hadn’t been to see a game since the arrival of Marco Batista to the club, and thought it might be fun to go watch him in action. Plus, I had nothing to do until Holly got off work.
“Sure, I will take them. I mean, as long as you are sure you are not going to use them.”
“If I snuck away to the game while her parents were here, Beth would have my head. The tickets on are on my desk. I’ll bring them by your room later.”
“Thanks, Ken.”
The rest of the afternoon continued on as slowly as the morning had. Only I had no relief or distraction from either Holly or April, other than the brief few minutes Ken came by to drop off the tickets for the Rays game. I still hadn’t seen April, but she had said she would be busy teaching and I knew that was why I hadn’t heard from her. Holly was probably taking a nap before work, or dealing with more of her brother’s drama.
I went back and forth between looking at the pictures Holly had sent earlier, to planning out what I was going to say to April. I was going to make it short and sweet and get right to the point. I needed to do it right after school let out too. I knew that if I waited too long to do it, I would probably chicken out.
Don’t over think things, I told myself. You know what you need to do, just do it. Don’t worry.
I didn’t have to keep replaying what I was going to say in my head. If I did that, it would end up sounding like a script instead of what I wanted it to sound like, which was genuine concern for April, and wanting to do it because I had both of our best interests in mind.
So, I stopped thinking about it, and let my mind return to Holly and her “matching panties.” I needed to see her. I didn’t think I would be able to wait until she got off work.
Whatever, I knew that wasn’t true. I could wait. Whenever people said something like that, it was always an exaggerated lie. I could wait until she got off work, but I didn’t want to.
As if on cue, like she was reading my mind, Holly sent me a text.
Hey, sorry. Was finishing up an exam.
It’s okay :-) What time do you go in tonight?
I’m going in around 5 tonight. Was going to be 4 but didn’t know how long the exam would be, so I got the hour covered.