He forced his hands to stay at his sides. “Good luck at the new place, Holly.”
The walk back to his house was the longest he’d ever taken.
The next few days were bad.
Holly had never felt so stiff and unnatural around her own son. There had never been anything they couldn’t talk about before. Then again, she’d never tried to talk to him about anything like this.
She did try, once, when they were eating dinner at the kitchen counter. “Honey, I’m sorry about how sudden all this was. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you beforehand about moving to Gina’s. For reasons I’m not comfortable discussing it was really important to me to—”
Will didn’t even look up at her. “Yeah, I know. You had to leave because Alex is in love with you and you’re totally freaked out. Do you really think I didn’t notice, Mom? Or do you think it’s none of my business? I’m just your son. You know, the person who cares more about you than anybody in the whole world.”
He pushed away from the counter and left the kitchen, going down the hall and into the small second bedroom he had moved into.
Holly stared after him, her mouth open. Then she leaned forward and put her head in her hands. So Will knew. Had Alex told him or had he figured it out on his own? Did it matter? Her own son thought she was cold and unfeeling. Plus he absolutely worshipped Alex. In a million years he’d never understand why she couldn’t love his hero.
Well, why couldn’t she? Maybe she really was cold and unfeeling. Alex had told her he loved her, and she might as well have spit in his face.
The worst day of all came when she was looking for a CD in the stack Alex had given her, and found one with a homemade cover mixed in with the others.
For Holly—To Take To A Desert Island.
She sat staring at it for a long time, knowing she shouldn’t open it, and knowing with even greater certainty that she shouldn’t listen to it.
She was alone in the apartment—Will wouldn’t be back for an hour. There was no one around to see her cry.
And she did cry, hugging her knees on the living room floor and listening to Bruce Springsteen and Joni Mitchell and Aretha Franklin and Van Morrison. But when Marvin Gaye started singing “Let’s Get It On,” she turned the CD player off. The pain inside her was like a living thing.
She went to the sink to splash water on her face.
There was no use in crying. It was all over now. It was for the best, she told herself over and over. It was for the best.
If only things with Will could go back to normal.
He did seem to thaw a little toward her the rest of that week. They were talking again, with at least an approximation of their old camaraderie, although Holly suspected that Will was so anxious about his upcoming debut as the Wildcats’ starting quarterback that he would have talked to anybody just to relieve the tension.
Holly was surprisingly nervous herself on game night, both for Will’s sake—although she’d been careful not to let him know that—and because she’d be seeing Alex for the first time since moving out of his house. Of course there was no reason to expect they’d get within twenty feet of each other, but still she’d be seeing him, and who knew how she’d react to that. Her emotions were a lot more unpredictable than they used to be.
The beautiful fall weather had come to an end during the week, with a cold front from Canada sweeping down to remind them that winter was on the way. Tonight felt bitter, with an icy drizzle coming down from the iron gray sky, but the stands were still packed for the home game. No one in Weston, Ohio wanted to miss a second of the Wildcats’ Cinderella season.
Holly found her usual seat in the bleachers, next to David and Angela Washington, and in spite of all her resolutions she immediately looked down toward the sidelines to see if she could catch a glimpse of Alex.
There he was. He was standing facing the field, so all she could see was his back, covered in a thick Wildcats jacket, but it was in that instant that Holly knew the truth.
She loved him.
The moment couldn’t have been less romantic. She was sitting on a grooved metal bleacher seat that was like a block of ice, with the cold seeping into her butt through her jeans, and the object of her affections was fifty feet away surrounded by a bunch of teenaged boys in helmets and pads.
But in the moment of her revelation the cold couldn’t touch her. She loved him. She loved Alex McKenna.
All that angst, all that inner turmoil, and the truth came and sat down next to her at a damn football game.
She didn’t even think about what would happen next. About what she should do now. It didn’t seem to matter. The only thing she was aware of right now was the window that had opened in her heart. The feeling was so strong she thought other people must be aware of it, must be able to see it like a blinking neon sign, but all around her the attention was all on the field, where the opposing teams were just lining up for the opening kickoff.