Page 35

35

SCARLETT

A distasteful expression scrunches onto my face as I bump the refrigerator door closed with my hip after grabbing a bottle of water.

An unpleasant pang expands behind my chest while I glance at Lane. He’s in the living room, sprawled out on the couch, moping. There’s something playing on the TV in front of him, but he’s not watching it. Not even looking at it. He’s just got his eyes fixed on a blank corner of the room, glazed over, gloominess radiating from him.

It’s no mystery why he’s in the mood he’s in. The Black Bears have had a pretty bad last couple games. There’s been a morose atmosphere pervading the whole house for the last two weeks, but no one’s more weighed down with it than Lane.

As team captain, I’ve come to realize how much he internalizes anything that goes wrong with the team. How much he foists every letdown and imperfection onto his shoulders and considers them his own personal responsibility. And that’s even if he’s blameless in the problems facing them.

So it doesn’t help that, yeah, Lane’s own performances during their last three games haven’t been up to his usual standard.

It’s Friday night, and everyone else is out doing something. Tonight is the least freezing it’s been since I moved here, so I bet downtown Cedar Shade is buzzing right now.

“Just gonna mope around all night?” I ask Lane, fed up with standing by and watching him wallow in this slump.

But he’s wallowing so hard he didn’t even hear me. His face is still blank, his sparkless eyes fixed on the empty wall.

I roll my eyes and round the couch to the other side of him, plopping down and making a point to engage my whole body weight to jostle him into awareness of his surroundings.

He gives a little start. Noticing that I’m looking at him expectantly, he grunts, “Huh?”

“Just gonna mope around all night?” I repeat, my words a bit more pointed this time.

His lips carve downward. “I’m not moping.”

“Oh, yeah, this ,” I sprawl my limbs on the couch and do an over-dramatic imitation of his blank, depressed expression, “totally isn’t moping.”

A spark of satisfaction flickers inside me since my impersonation draws the slightest twitch to Lane’s lips. I’ll take any fraction of a smile I can get from him in this mood, even if it’s only about one-one-thousandths of one.

I push up from the couch and stand in front of the TV, blocking the view. His eyes follow me, one of his brows arching questioningly.

“You don’t even know what you’ve been watching ,” I make quote signs with my hands around that word, “for the last ten minutes since I came down here.”

His forehead furrows in challenge. “Sure I do.”

And this is why I stood in front of the TV. I fold my arms. “Oh, yeah? What is it?”

“Uh … Seinfeld?”

I roll my eyes and step aside.

With the screen in view, the lines in Lane’s brow still don’t smooth. “What am I watching?” He tilts his head at the view on the screen of a stylish woman in a beautiful French countryside.

“Emily in Paris,” I answer.

“Really?” His eyebrows bounce. “Must have auto-played because Tuck’s been watching it.”

I roll my eyes again, grabbing the remote and turning it off. I drop back down onto the couch.

“So, I’ll ask again. Just gonna mope around all night?”

“I’m still not moping,” he lies. “And what about you? You have any big Friday night plans? Going out with Chris again?”

I have a twin reaction at the hostile way he spits out Chris’s name. There’s a twinge of annoyance because what right does he have to get all protective and growly over me going out with a guy, considering he’s the one who forfeited any right he may have ever had to be jealous over me a year and a half ago?

But there’s also a fluttery feeling in my stomach. A satisfaction I know I shouldn’t feel when I see the ways his eyes darken at the mention of the guy who took me out two weeks ago.

“I’ve told you, like, three times, we’re not seeing each other again. We just didn’t click.”

His eyes do that darkening thing again, his lips flattening with a kind of suspicious skepticism. “Didn’t click, huh?”

I nod. “That’s right. And you still are moping.”

Lane pulls a big breath through his nose and lets it out in a heavy sigh, like he’s been caught out. “My shoulder hurts, that’s why I’m in a bad mood.”

I’ve seen Lane walking around with a bag of ice pressed to his shoulder for the last two days, so I know it’s not a total lie. It’s a deflection, sure, but at least he’s not pretending he’s all good.

“Any, like, stretches you can do for it?” I ask.

He rolls his shoulder, and I try to ignore the tugging feeling low in my core as I notice the rounded, boulder-like shape of the muscle when the sleeve of his t-shirt pulls tight against it.

“Not really. Honestly, when I have this kind of shoulder pain, going for a swim helps. But obviously, none of the campus pools are gonna be open at this hour.”

My brow leaps with excitement. This is perfect.

I push up from the couch, grabbing a throw pillow while I do so and launching it at Lane, hoping to nudge him further out of his catatonic state. “Get up and get dressed,” I order.

Lane looks at me warily. “Why?”

“Special mission,” I wink.

“That look in your eyes worries me.”

“It’ll pull you out of your mope. You’ll see.”

He continues to eye me skeptically for a beat, before heaving a sigh and pushing up from the couch. “As if I could say no.”