His jaw tightens. “I’m not even talking about that. I’m talking about us. The fact that I’m done with us.”
I close my eyes for a breath. Gather myself. “If you break up with me now, I will survive. It will hurt like hell, but I’ll come out stronger on the other side. Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” he says, but he’s lacing our fingers together the way we used to, sophomore year. He leans forward and rests his forehead on our knuckles, squeezing so tight it almost hurts. “That’s exactly what I want.”
A shock of pain shoots through me as he strengthens his grip. I pull my hands away. “You don’t mean that. You’ll feel better after you get some rest.”
“I do mean it. I’ve never meant anything more. You should go, Sharp.” He won’t even look at me now. “You should get out while you can. Come out stronger on the other side.”
I reach to guide his face back toward me, but he turns away.
“I love you, Jake. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me too.”
He looks up, eyes swimming. “If I say it, will you go?”
He won’t say it. He can’t. As rough as things have been between us lately, he wouldn’t lie to my face. Not Jake.
“Yes,” I agree. “If you say it, I’ll go.”
“I don’t love you anymore,” he says, his eyes hard.
“You’re lying,” I say, and even knowing I’m right doesn’t make the hurt any less.
“Grow up, Sharp,” he says. “Did you really think this would last forever?”
I had wondered, and the thought makes me sick. Because now, as much as it hurts to leave, I can’t imagine spending one more minute with the shell of a person in front of me. Ever since his injury, I’ve been trying to help him, fix him, change him. And that’s my own damn fault.
I’m almost gone when I hear his voice behind me, flat and defeated.
“There’s no staying on top of the pain, Daphne. You can tell your patients that someday. They’re better off learning to love it.”
“Goodbye, Jake,” I say, wiping my cheeks. “I hope you find something to love besides your own pain.”
I feel the bitterness and the bite of the words as I speak them, but I mean them, every one.
After the breakup, it’s Seth who stands beside me at Junior Warriors every Saturday for a month, getting the kids to line up and showing them the drills. It’s Seth who loads the balls and takes the Rodriguez boy to the locker room to get cleaned up when he loses a tooth.
Once the kids have gone home on their last Saturday, Seth and I are sorting the tiny, sweaty jerseys into mesh bags when our hands touch, just for a second. Maybe it’s all the static of the kids taking them off and the jerseys brushing past each other, but I swear there’s an actual spark. I’ve known Seth as long as I’ve known Jake, but is this the first time we’ve actually touched?
I shake it off and we go back to sorting the jerseys, joking about who has to take them home and wash them.
“My mom buys organic detergent,” he says. “They’ll come out smelling like vinegar if we wash them at my house.”
I narrow my eyes. “Your clothes never smell like vinegar.”
I take a step closer, just to be sure, and then I’m breathing him in. Neither of us worked up much of a sweat helping the kids, but still, I’m surprised how good he smells.
“Contraband,” he tells me, waggling his eyebrows to let his blue eyes bring me in on the conspiracy. I wonder if it’s a move he picked up from Jake, or if I’m imagining Jake everywhere he doesn’t belong. “I smuggle in the real stuff so I won’t smell like salad dressing. True story. And no, I’m not using my secret stash on kid jerseys. The Chapman kid barfed on hers.”
“Okay,” I concede. “We’ll wash them at my house, but you have to help.”
Seth brings the jerseys in, turning them all red side out before tossing them in the machine. There is something sexy about a guy who not only does his own laundry but actually cares about it. Especially when you’ve watched him be patient and fun with kids four Saturdays in a row. Especially when you can see the curve and cut of his muscles under his worn Nike T-shirt.
While the washing machine runs, we sit at the kitchen table and catch up on our calculus, working through the problems together. The only weird thing is that it’s not weird at all. When the buzzer sounds, Seth slides his hand over mine, and a little shock runs through me. “Stay put,” he says. “I’ll get the jerseys in the dryer if you figure out that derivative.”
Forty-five minutes later, the derivatives are solved and we’re on to Dickinson for AP English when the buzzer sounds again and the jerseys come out of the dryer, soft and warm. I pile them on top and start to fold.
“I’m impressed,” Seth says.
I try not to roll my eyes. “That I know how to fold laundry?”
“No,” he says. “That you can fold the laundry right here. Our washer and dryer are always covered with crap, so I have to fold my laundry on my bed.”
I have never in my life thought about Seth Cooper’s bed, but I feel my face threatening to flush. I search for something to say, but I’ve spent too much time with these boys, and all I can hear is Kolt’s voice in my head saying, “Please don’t let folding secret scented laundry be the most exciting thing that happens on Seth’s bed.”
Seth grabs a jersey and gives me a little side-eye and a smile. Is he blushing? As we fold, I wonder why I’ve never really noticed
