“Agreed.” My attention has moved to my notebook and I’m devoting all my focus to unwinding the metal coil.
“Then you came to one of my games and we got wings after. And don’t tell me that doesn’t count. We didn’t even sit with the team.”
“I remember,” I say, trying hard to keep the wistfulness from voice, and failing miserably. “You set up a table off to the side, away from everybody else.”
“I wanted it to be nice. I wanted to take you somewhere special, somewhere it could just be the two of us, not a bar with all my buddies. But they helped, remember? Santos brought a candle. Granted, it was one of those big ones in a glass jar. It was, like, vanilla sugar cookie, instead of, like, a skinny candle in a brass holder like at some fancy restaurant, but it was all we had.” He shrugs, like he’s afraid his efforts fell short, and that’s not true at all.
“It smelled good,” I tell him. “And Newman brought flowers, which was sweet.”
“Yeah,” he laughs. “Would have been a lot sweeter if I’d known you were allergic and had him get fake ones. But once we tossed them, it was good.”
“Good? I looked a mess. My eyes were watery and bloodshot, and my nose was red and runny. Ugh.”
His eyes find mine again. “You were beautiful.”
The words are too much, so I duck my head and get lost in the metal coil of my notebook again. “That’s only two official dates. The last one was the party at the hockey house.”
“Right,” he says, packing so much emotion in that word that it takes all my willpower to stave off the memories.
“That’s only three dates, Van,” I say with finality, eager to get back to tutoring because it’s what I know. This walk down Memory Lane with Van is something I’ve wanted to avoid.
But he’s not done. “Nah, you’re forgetting the first one. Before the movies. We sat on the floor of your dorm for an hour while Newman got it on with the girl who lived down the hall. I was still half-drunk from the party I’d been at.”
He’s counting that as a date? “You knocked on my door at one in the morning. You woke me up. I opened the door and there you were, a total stranger smiling like we were old friends and asking to use my microwave.”
“Hey, I had to heat up my Toasty Pocket somewhere.” His smile holds no apology.
“Where did you even get a Toasty Pocket at one in the morning? We didn’t live in the same dorm.”
“I honestly have no clue. But I was hungry as fuck and needed to heat it up.”
We could not be more different. “So, you just started knocking on random doors?”
“Nope,” he says easily. “I picked yours specifically. First, it was close to the room Newman was in. But what really drew me in was your white board.”
“My white board?”
“Yeah, that little sign thing you hang on your door. Yours was all neat and cute. You drew flowers at the bottom and you had different colored markers. That’s attention to detail. I figured if you had your shit that together, you’d surely have a microwaveor toaster oven or whatever. Anyway, it worked out for me. Best damn Toasty Pocket I ever ate. And I got to hang out with you for an hour.”
I won’t admit this out loud, but that was the best night I’d had at school up to that point. I was homesick and lonely and still grieving. My roommate was awful. Earlier that day, I’d thought about ways to convince Levi to let me move back home. I couldn’t sleep that night, so when there was a knock on the door, I answered it, figuring it was a drunken neighbor who’d lost her way. Instead, I got six feet, two inches of hockey hotness. This gorgeous guy wanted to use my toaster oven and since I had nothing else to do but stare at the wall and hope for sleep, I let him in. It wasn’t wise or prudent, but it was fun. And though I should steer us back to his studies, I can’t help but go back to that night for just a minute. “God, they were so loud, remember? I don’t even know that girl’s name anymore. I haven’t seen her in years, but I can still hear her shouting,Fuck me like you mean it, Newman!It was weird on so many levels.”
Van laughs right along with me. “I remember that, too. But mostly, I remember talking to you. I had a really good time that night. Like, so good. Like, I-wanna-keep-doing-this-forever good, you know?”
His words are the dose of reality I need. “But we didn’t do it forever, Van. We stopped. Three years ago. And we’re not the same people anymore.”
"We're not," he concedes. "I'm not. God, Jos, there's so much I've wanted to say, so much to explain, to apologize?—"
I shake my head, cutting off his words. “No. We can't. We're not here to rehash the past. We're here to make sure you pass your classes.”
I’m forcing us back to work before all my inhibitions come tumbling down. It would be too easy to fall back into patternsfrom the past, so I need to remember that my only priority is helping Van pass.
14
Van
Ilook at her, truly look at her. Josie is the prettiest girl I've ever seen, but right now my mind isn't zeroed in on the sprinkling of freckles across her nose or her full, pink lips. There's a somber set to her brow. She’s serious, and I respect that. But does she really think we can act like nothing happened? I just need five minutes—that’s all. Just a chance to explain, to say I’m fucking sorry. To clear the air somehow.
"Josie, we have to talk."
