Page 40

Hell or High Water

Colt

S wish!

The ball impacts the back of the net effortlessly, from just about halfway up our scaled-down backward field. The field I’d made for her. What a shit turn of events. She got me back out of my head, back on the path to playing again, only for all of this to happen.

Swish!

With a swing bordering on sending my stick flying out of my hands, I chuck the ball straight into the net, the shot clipping the top of the goal before slapping the back of it so hard it sends the frame shaking. For a minute, the faint vibrating of the metal is all I can hear.

‘Top ched,’ says May from behind me.

On a normal day, I’d probably turn so fast I’d risk dislocating my neck. Today, I find any excuse for why I don’t look back at her. I hum in agreement instead.

‘So. Charleston next Saturday.’

May laughs nervously. ‘Right. Our first East Coast team of the season.’

The nerves aren’t a sound I’m used to hearing from her, but it makes sense. Two of her three past years on OKC, the Riders have fallen to an East Coast team in the quarter-finals of the playoffs. The girls have never made it farther than this.

‘Do you think we have a chance, this time?’

‘Don’t really feel like it matters what I think.’ I pick up another ball with my stick, tossing it and catching it back in the head. ‘You’re the captain.’

May says, ‘Sure. But we’re a team. And on teams …’ She walks right up in front of me, impossible to ignore, and sits down, cross-legged, in the grass. ‘We talk. Which I owe to you.’

‘What is there to talk about?’ I throw my stick aside, but I reluctantly sit down, too, running a hand through my hair. ‘You made it pretty clear how this is gonna go.’

‘Doesn’t feel nice, does it?’ The corners of her mouth tip up in a smile, but it’s one of sadness. One that weighs in her eyes and pulverizes my resolve to look at. ‘To be left alone with nothing but a shitty goodbye?’

She’s not wrong.

Well. That’s not really something I can say anything to. I blink, gulp. ‘May—’

‘As terrible as it is … I’m sorry.’ She clears her throat. ‘I shouldn’t have said the things I did without an explanation.’

‘You don’t have to explain anything,’ I stop her. ‘I’ve put you through enough. You have a right to take things easy.’

‘Maybe. But I also have a right to tell you that this fake thing we have going on …’ She gestures between the two of us. ‘This thing is not fake, Colt. It never was.’

Twin flames of relief and nerves fill my chest. I shake my head.

‘You know, I probably would have picked everything up and moved to Boston with you for college if you’d actually asked me what I wanted,’ May blurts.

It feels like someone’s stick just checked me square in the head.

She would have moved with me? To Boston? My parents would probably have rather trodden on hot coals for the rest of their lives than stay in New England. May Velasco would have moved?

‘But you didn’t,’ she continues. ‘You didn’t ask me. You didn’t say goodbye to me, either. Why didn’t you say goodbye, Colt? Huh?’

I remember it as clearly as day. The hallway, the glimpse of May out of the corner of my vision. Of the tears in her eyes, of the pleading. Just like that, fear had taken me over. ‘If I had said goodbye to you,’ I tell her, ‘come hell or high water, I probably would have picked everything up and put it right back in my parents’ house and refused to move to Boston. Just so I could stay with you.’

‘Oh, Colt.’ May’s voice is barely a whisper. ‘Why on God’s green earth did you never, ever tell me any of that?’

‘Is it a good enough answer to say ’cause Dylan Wright was your chambelan ?’

‘Oh my …’ May reaches out and smacks my arm. ‘Shut up. Will you go on and tell me?’

‘Because …’ No time like the present, Colt. Come on.

This is only the bit I’ve waited years to tell her. The tiny little crumb of information that has pretty much defined my life ever since May set foot in my world in that ridiculous pink equestrian jacket. I’ve guarded it with my life, for what feels like for ever.

‘Do you – do you remember when I was stuck on that goal for days? Sophomore year? Close to sectionals?’

May’s eyes narrow in thought, but she nods tentatively. ‘Yeah … How could I forget? You were insufferable. You kept goin’ back there every night. I was about sick of it.’

That last part almost makes me chuckle. I’d spend the evenings after school on the Prosperity soccer field, stuck in a rut, just me and the goal I’d set up on the grass. I couldn’t get that shot, no matter how hard I tried: it was the no-look twizzler.

‘And you remember when you finally got totally sick of it?’ I continue. I’m practically sitting on my hands to combat the nerves.

Thankfully, her face lights up in recognition. ‘I went with you sometime round ten days after you started that desperate quest of yours.’

‘And you got pissed ’cause I’d just stand there,’ I recall with a laugh.

She rolls her eyes, but a wistful smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. ‘Thought you’d be able to make that goal score itself.’

‘Except you said something.’ I swallow hard. ‘About how I wouldn’t know if I’d be able to make it or not if I didn’t try. You said, “Just take the fucking shot, Colt.”’

May hums in acknowledgement. ‘That was one of my finer moments. It was …’ Her voice trails off as her eyes meet mine. I kind of hope she reads me, right then and there. Saves me the nerves that threaten to pull me under when I think about what I’m a sentence from telling her. But I have to do it now. I’ve already put it off five years longer than I should’ve.

‘May, I-I guess I didn’t take your advice.’ I let out a bitter laugh, one that’s more upset at myself than anyone else. ‘I got scared instead of taking the shot. You were my closest friend, man. I didn’t know if you would look at me like I was an idiot when I told you I couldn’t even bring myself to say bye to you because that’s how terrified I was of screwing up our friendship. Because May, I kinda didn’t realize just how much I needed you until that damn plane took off. And when the stupid wheels left the ground …’ My throat stings, my vision going blurry. It’s as unfamiliar to me as timidity is to May. ‘That’s when I realized I’d fallen for you. Now, granted, I’ve clearly taken a couple hard falls in my life, some more kneecap-ending than others …’

Now it’s May’s turn to stifle a laugh, but her eyes look a lot like mine feel. Full of tears.

‘… but I’ve never fallen as hard as I did when I sat on that plane and looked out of the window. Out at where I was leavin’ you behind.’

‘Just take the shot,’ May echoes her own words quietly, and we share a tentative smile. ‘God. You must be great at giving those pep talks to the Woodchucks before games. Have you ever moved your team to bawling before?’

‘Once or twice.’

She chuckles, shaking her head, and bats a tear from her cheek. ‘You’re a character , do you know that? With this – this dialogue about wheels? Colt, wheels? Where do you get this?’ May looks up, a hand to her forehead, and then back to me. ‘Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?’

‘For what?’

‘ All of this.’ May does some wildly vague waving of hands. ‘So everything that we did this season, to … to pretend—’

‘Maybe we were supposed to be pretending,’ I put in. Another tear trickles down May’s cheek, and I reach over, thumb it away. She doesn’t stop me. ‘But damn if I wasn’t faking a thing.’

She grips my hand, gives it a squeeze. ‘Can I tell you something insane ?’

I nod.

‘I think I’ve stopped hating you. But I’m still jealous.’

Wait. Jealous?

I probably have the blankest look on my face as I regard May, and things begin to come together. Starting with that sting of envy in her voice when we’d sat and talked out on the porch after the tornado. ‘You were jealous?’

She nods. ‘You moved so easily. Went pro so easily. Left it all behind so easily. So yeah. I guess you could say I was jealous. You still move so easily, you know. I’m still jealous.’

‘You’re …’ I trail off as the pieces start to float together. I’m positive May can probably see a lightbulb going off over my head. ‘So you do have lacrosse dreams.’

‘I guess. You remember all the stuff we used to shoot shit and talk about. I guess at some point I really wanted to play box, you know, for Team USA or in the Olympics or something. But that was before the weather. And before the ranch. That,’ she says, the word a punctuation mark that abruptly ends a moment of hope, ‘is for the ones like you. The ones who have the courage to do whatever it takes to chase their dreams.’ She shrugs, and that little shrug, the gesture of giving in, breaks my heart. ‘I appreciate everything you did, you know, Colt. To keep this narrative up all season. But I suppose, at the end of the day, declaring won’t be on the cards for me.’

May Velasco is supposed to be nothing short of a quickly burning fuse. Always running hot. Refusing to back down from a fight. That’s May.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she puts in with a raised finger, scattering my thoughts. ‘I’m never not going to be upset about it all. At least to an extent. But … I recently had someone tell me that as much as I need to give myself space to hate you, I need to give you space to make amends.’ May props her chin up on her hands, and she gives me this smile that’s distilled with regret. ‘All those years, I was so caught up in resenting you that I forgot to stop and look at you. Really look at you. At how well you’ve done for yourself, Colt.’ When she leans back, the smile on her face this time is no longer just sad. It’s still melancholy, but it’s layered with something new – pride. She’s proud of me. ‘I used to play in makeshift fields behind farms with you, CJ Bradley, and you’re a Major League Lacrosse captain now.’

My heart swells with the look in her eyes, that of admiration, but it falls when I grasp the implication of her words. That she’ll live out her days watching. That she’ll never become a Major League Lacrosse captain.

‘I’ll make sure you enter that draft,’ I try, my voice weak. ‘Know that I’ll do that shit for you.’

‘How will you make sure I enter it?’ Her smile falters slightly, and when it returns, it’s forced, her eyebrows drawn upward. She looks tired. Resigned. ‘You won’t be here.’

She’s not wrong.

‘You’ll leave again.’

Yeah, I’m leaving again. I don’t know when I’ll be back. If I’ll be back. I’ve already overstayed my time off.

I scratch the back of my neck awkwardly. ‘Training camp starts—’

‘In two weeks. I know. We watch the MLL.’ Maybe it’s supposed to be teasing coming from May, but it comes out dejected. ‘If we win the quarter-finals, if we move on to the semis … you won’t be there.’

‘May—’

‘Colt. You won’t be there if somehow, some way, we win the damn thing.’ She uses her palms to wipe the last of the tears from her cheeks. Erasing the evidence. ‘And you won’t be there when I make the decision. So …’ She sniffs, pushing herself to her feet. ‘Maybe the way I left things earlier in the week was for the best. You know?’

‘May – no. There’s no way.’ My words come out running together, feverish and desperate. I take her hands in mine when I stand up with her. ‘Please, May. We can’t just be right person, wrong time for the rest of our lives, can we? How do we live with that?’

May pushes herself up to her tiptoes and presses a kiss to my cheek. ‘Still such different destinations,’ she whispers, her hair brushing my skin. ‘You’ll have to live with your destination. And I with mine.’

She picks up her stick from beside us. I watch her retreating as she heads back up to the house through the sliding patio door.