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Colt

Seven Years Ago

M ay was supposed to be in the barn, where her quinceanera was still in full swing. The drinking and dancing were turned up to a hundred-and-ten, but the birthday girl was nowhere to be found.

I was unfortunately too self-absorbed to notice. I was busy being a dramatic fifteen-year-old guy and moping because May hadn’t chosen me to be a chambelan in her court of honour. She’d chosen Dylan Wright as one of them, though. I guess it made sense. Dylan was starting quarterback on the football team and worshipped the ground May walked on. Great guy.

To be fair, even if she had chosen me, I was self-aware enough to know I wasn’t the party-planning type. But I’d have got my shit together for May Velasco.

At the end of the day, I didn’t care if Dylan was a better waltzer than me. It was the sentiment that mattered. Dylan Wright 1. CJ Bradley 0.

I had just left the barn and hit the dirt path, kicking rocks with my dress shoes, all angsty teenage main character. I’d headed out of the party through the back of the ranch after Ma and Pop announced they’d bring the car around because my kid sister, Savannah, was getting cranky. I was alone in the field.

Or at least I thought so, until I realized that May was out there, too.

I guess she hadn’t let anyone know, just dipped out on a whim from her own party. She had escaped to the lacrosse field her dad made her a couple years back in the fields behind the Velasco family ranch, lines spray-painted in the trimmed grass, goals on either end. She still wore her surprise dance outfit, a tight white blouse with frilly straps and bootcut jeans, paired with her shiny gold county barrel-race champion belt-buckle. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her boots, brown ones with butterflies across the front. Her black hair was perched precariously on her head in a very curly half-up, her crown and makeup and fake eyelashes still in place. The lacrosse stick in her hands, completely ignoring the long bedazzled acrylic nails she must have had done not too long ago, May swung. The ball went flying from the head of her crosse with a swoosh, and then the satisfying whack when it hit the back of the net. She turned to me slowly, cognac-coloured eyes probing, crossing her arms as if to say, ‘Well?’

‘Wanna join?’ she asked.

‘Sure.’

Hesitantly, I stepped forward on Oxford wingtip-covered feet that were not nearly as agile as hers, adjusting my tie awkwardly. She tossed her stick my way, and I grabbed it as she rifled through her bag for another. My hands were literally clammy with nerves, and the slick metal of the stick threatened to launch itself right out of my slippery grip. Yeah, I feared this girl. We’d been at each other’s throats since we started playing in the same town. But fear was definitely not the explanation for my state at the moment.

‘I’ll probably go in there again in a minute. Just needed to … clear my head, I guess.’ She nodded, a nervous little head-bob, fidgeting with the brand-new gold pendant she’d just got earlier that day at the start of the party: an elaborate cursive M in a heart with scalloped filigree edges. ‘I’ve never been much of a dancer.’ And then she did something entirely weird, and she said, ‘Do you think I binned that zapateado ? My baile sorpresa ?’

For my part, I tried and failed to do my darnedest to hide my shock, and I replied totally honestly. ‘You care what I think?’

May looked about as shocked as I was. ‘That’s a question?’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Whatever,’ she said with a scrunch of her nose. ‘Guys never get it.’

I opened my mouth to say something – anything, at that point – but then immediately closed it again. Instead of some witty comeback, I answered her question.

‘Even if you binned the dance,’ I said, ‘you looked really good doing it.’

Her response was a ball thrown at me. I moved my stick to catch it.

‘You suck.’

‘Thanks.’

I could’ve sworn she smiled, a spark of light dancing across her glossy lips, even if it was just a little. ‘I appreciate it. But I think I’m better at this.’

‘Good thing I can agree.’

‘Oh, for sure. Because I’m glad I got out here before your parents made you join the open dancefloor.’

‘Come on, that’s mean.’

‘Best of five. Winner gets to shit on the other one’s dance skills.’

‘God, clear your head, May.’

‘Shut up!’ She threw another ball at me, and I caught that one in hand, an eyebrow raised.

‘ You suck,’ I retorted. ‘Stop chucking those at me, I have two now.’

‘Or what?’ She mirrored my expression, planting her stick in the grass, a hand on her hip. At that time, at least, we were literally eye to eye. Her stare bored right into my head, and I realized we’d moved much closer to one another. I could smell her expensive perfume, make out the little lacelike edges of her pendant. ‘What’ll you do about it, Colt?’

Man. I look back and think that things would be so different if I’d put my fear aside and done exactly what we should’ve about it. But I was a dumb teenage boy. So I did the only thing I knew, instead.

I reached around May blind, my eyes still on her, flicked my stick towards the goal, and sent one of the two balls she’d launched at me flying straight into the net. The sound echoed in the night, the kind you could hear even over the party raging on in the barn.

‘I’ll have you play that best of five, probably.’ I cleared my throat, holding the second ball out to her.

Something in her face flickered for a moment. It could’ve been the terrible floodlights going out for a millisecond, or May trying to blink a hair out of her face. But I swear, I saw something .

‘Let’s do it.’