Page 31

Top Ched

Colt

O nce the team washes up after trophy presentation and photos, it’s straight back to formal wear for us as we hit the Riders’ victory banquet. Multiple plates of all-you-can-eat buffet later, we head home full, content and exhausted, May and I back to the house together.

I pull the truck onto the driveway, and May stifles a yawn. ‘I’m going to go change and get to bed, Colt.’

‘Yeah – wait.’ I almost forgot. And with the end of the regular season, the Riders off to playoffs, I don’t think there’s any better time for this. I swallow hard. Nerves? I’m definitely nervous. ‘Can you follow me really quickly? There’s just something I wanted to show you.’

‘Oh?’ She moves to grab her duffel, but I hold out a hand and take it for her. She doesn’t look nearly as tired as she did a moment ago.

I lead the way around the side of the house, unlocking the fence to the backyard. We have one of those yards that stretches on and on, until you hit a dip where a little pond sits. Closest to the house is my mom’s garden, farther out the stretch that we always used for family Thanksgiving football games. I flick on the floodlights attached to the back patio, and they light up the brand-new lacrosse field.

Lacrosse field is a loose term for it. It’s far from perfect, but I tried my best. Mowed it all, bought nets, sprayed the white lines on the grass, midline, face-off circle, the X, all the things.

‘Holy … shit.’ May’s jaw goes slightly slack. ‘What is this?’

Still in pantsuit and heels, she jogs straight onto the field, right to the circle. ‘Did you make this?’ she calls, arms raised. ‘Colt! This is beautiful !’

I’ve seen May happy before – after games, with a trophy in her arms, when she’s with her family or her horses – but this is different. I’ve never seen her weightless the way she is when she does a full three-sixty, taking in the makeshift field. She looks my way with the broadest smile on her face, her eyes creasing happily, and she gestures dramatically to the nets, the pitch of her voice rising excitedly. ‘GOALS! You got goals?’

‘Yep.’ I grin with a shrug. ‘Seeing as the last set got launched into space.’

‘Wow.’ May grabs the ball I’d left in one of the nets. ‘Well, bring the sticks! Come play!’

I grab her sticks from the bag, but those last words – come play – are like trying to swallow a big-ass painkiller. The joy I feel at watching her light up starts to fall away, because I can’t. I literally can’t play, and I don’t know what to do about it, because May Velasco is asking me to join her for a round on the field I’ve made for us. May, who has practically defined every stage of my life even more than the game has. If I say ‘no’, it will prove her right. It will prove that I never cared enough.

I kick myself when I watch the smile slowly fall from her face, too. She doesn’t deserve that. It’s not something she needs to worry about, now or ever.

‘Oh, Colt.’ Her shoulders slump, and it kills a little part of my heart. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …’

‘No, um …’ I shift my grip on the sticks. I know I’m going to be shit, but I don’t want to ruin this for her. ‘It’s okay. Only way out is through, right?’

A crease of worry forms between May’s eyebrows, but she nods. ‘Just … try and clear your head.’

A small, wistful smile tips up one side of my mouth. ‘You were better than me at that, you know. Every chance you got. First place you’d go was the field.’

She shakes her head with a tiny scoff. ‘I was flighty. The way I’d just disappear to play … my parents hated it.’

‘Disappear’ was about accurate. But May was one of the first people I knew who truly found their place in the game – found solace there. Maybe that was why when I fell for her, I really fell for lacrosse, too.

‘It was easier when we were younger, wasn’t it?’ I pass May her stick before heading to a big backyard bin off to the side to grab mine. ‘To just play, clear your head?

May laughs at my quip. ‘Everything was easier when we were younger. Lacrosse was easier. Responsibilities were easier. It was easier to …’

She stops herself, a shake of her head.

‘Easier to what?’

‘Nothing.’ May gestures to my stick with hers. ‘How’s it feel?’

‘Foreign,’ I say. That’s the best word for it. Ever since August, every stick, even my own, has felt like an unfamiliar face.

‘That’s because – may I?’

I nod. May puts her crosse down and adjusts my grip, her small hands over my bigger ones, and glances up at me with a reassuring smile. ‘How about now?’

Now, my eyes can’t move from her, and man, something absolutely unreal happens when she gives me that smile of hers. That warm fireplace, blanket in the cold, telling you everything is going to be alright, even when it feels like you have no way out. My hands are warm against the stick, and it moulds to my grip, the same way it has since I was a kid – the way it hasn’t felt since my injury.

‘Better,’ I manage to whisper, and she pats my hand.

‘Good. Let’s play.’

The ear-to-ear grin May sports as she shucks off her high heels and places the ball in the head of her stick, lined up at the face-off, is contagious. A warmth envelops my chest, and we meet in the middle with our crosses, on eye level.

‘Ready?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’

‘Go!’ She pushes her stick against mine with a giggle, and suddenly, I push right back. Instinct takes over, and I manoeuvre upwards, getting the ball to shoot up before landing in my net. From the midline, I run, and I swing my stick once I’m within scoring range, whipping the ball right into the goal. The whack of the net, the sweetest sound, echoes in the backyard, and for a moment, that’s all I can hear. It’s silent except for that sound. Triumph.

‘DAMN!’ whoops May, stick in the air. ‘You know what that was?’

She jogs up to me, grinning broadly, and she shakes me by the shoulders, cheeks pink with excitement, mascara-rimmed eyes wide, repeating, ‘You know what that was, Colt?’

‘Fuckin’ top ched.’ I laugh as she just shakes her head in disbelief.

‘A goal . Your goal.’

I’d still be concentrating on the goal if May weren’t here with me, but the light giddiness in her voice – decidedly not a part of the anger I’ve provoked in May for the past weeks – is all I can home in on. Her hair falls across her face in sheets of straightened dark brown so close to black that it reflects the light from the porch. She takes my face in her hands, locks her eyes with mine. ‘You are phenomenal .’

That’s all I want her to know. That she’s phenomenal. That every time our paths collide, she changes my life. That when I left, it tore a gash right through my heart, and that the gash is only healed again when I’m with her.

Her nose almost brushes mine, how close we are. Her laughter fades and her smile turns to wide-eyed surprise, mirroring me. My hands rest on her hips, our lacrosse sticks long discarded in the grass. She exhales a shallow breath, her gaze flitting to my lips and back up to my eyes, and damn if that doesn’t drive me crazy.

‘What are you doing, May?’ I whisper, each word a plea against her cheeks. ‘What are you doing to me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she murmurs, and her fingers move to lace behind my neck. ‘I’ve had the same question for you.’

So this is definitely not fake. This is definitely not for the crowd of zero people watching us right now. Definitely not like just hours earlier, as unbelievable as that was. What is it, then? Is it real?

We don’t get to find out. The patio door slides open with a squeak so loud they have to hear it the next neighbourhood over, and Ma’s voice yells, ‘Who’s that in my garden?’

May presses a hand to her mouth, the moment well and truly over, and stifles a laugh that escapes anyway. My mom throws on her glasses, squints, and says, ‘Oh! Just the lovebirds. It’s one a.m., Colt! Let May get to bed, will you?’

I wince, groaning loudly so I can make sure she hears it. ‘MA!’

‘CJ brADLEY! BED!’ she shoots right back. Well, apparently my years away from home haven’t changed anything for her.

‘Bummer.’ May extremely casually disentangles her arms from around me, adjusting her duster jacket. ‘Guess it’s time for bed, CJ Bradley.’

I’ll never know how she does it. The simple switch-up, like she didn’t just activate every neuron in my brain, and I definitely – definitely – saw something light up for her, too. It was clearer than day this time.

She yawns as she walks back across the field, barefoot, snagging her heels and stick on the way, and then, as if it’s an afterthought, turns back, shooting me a smirk. ‘Night, top ched.’

Man.