Page 2

TWO

lorenzo

“The Phantom finally opens up the patio tonight.” Cash reracks his barbell and sits up from the weight bench, his bare back leaving a damp spot on the vinyl. “Five-dollar beer pitchers. Who’s in?”

“Obviously.” Reeve slides his hands through the sides of his blond hair, which has just been cut into a fade. “Gotta show off this hair.”

The three of us are in Shafer’s newly renovated football gym, which sports row after row of shiny red equipment, floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the indoor practice field, and a giant Shafer Red Phantom logo looking down on us.

The gym is unusually quiet, these early weeks of summer before training camp the best time of year for those of us who prefer to work out without a crowd.

Unfortunately, my lifts are limited to lower body at the moment.

“Since when doesn’t the Phantom open the patio until school ends?” I ask over the clank of metal on metal. “I thought they did that the first day it hits sixty degrees.”

“They redid the whole patio this spring.” Cash turns to me, the diamond studs in his ears catching the sun. “Where you been, man? God, you need to get out more.”

“And you need to put on a shirt,” I say, watching him halfheartedly wipe his sweat marks off the bench. Reeve grunts in agreement. “Anyway, tonight’s not the night. I’m seeing Dr. Halpert this afternoon, and if the news is good?—”

“Which it will be,” Reeve says. As quarterback and captain, he’s not in the habit of being pessimistic when it comes to the team.

I nod and sit down in the leg-press machine. “If it is, I’m not risking screwing up my body this summer.”

Cash scoffs. “Yeah, a couple beers and your leg might fall right off.”

“We all know what a summer patio and drink specials do to your lightweight ass,” I tell Cash. “I don’t need to be tripping over you sprawled on the pavers.”

Cash smiles sheepishly. “Wasn’t it a girl that tripped over me, anyway?”

I finish my set before I answer. “Yeah. Her name was Alli, and she was my girlfriend. Ring a bell?”

Cash looks dumbfounded, then laughs. “Oh, right.” With junior year behind us and weeks before football camp starts, Cash is in his prime.

Other than football season, there’s nothing my best friend loves more than summer, when he can spend all morning in the gym, all afternoon in the sun, and all night chasing girls.

Reeve loads a set of bright red weight plates onto a barbell. “Lor, if you’re cleared to get back to full workouts and practice, all the more reason to celebrate. Come on, man, you’re such a fucking hermit anymore.”

“No, all the more reason to stay inside until I’m forty and done with football.”

“Good luck with that,” Reeve says. “I’ll help you out by fucking all those girls who show up to the Phantom wearing their Rossi jerseys on Saturday nights.”

I get up from the machine and grab a spray bottle of disinfectant to wipe it down. “Thank you for your service, Dalton. I’m out of here.”

“Bedtime for Grandpa Lor?” Cash asks.

“Physical therapy, asshole.” I nod and turn to go. “Keep up the reps, boys.”

I rinse off quickly in the locker room, then head down the hallway of the football facility to the trainer’s room. I’ve practically spent more time in this room the last four months than I have in my own bedroom. The fact that this might be my last session puts a little pep in my step.

Until I walk in and see White Bread getting his ankle taped.

Brad White—better known in my mind as White Bread—is our long snapper and has been my teammate going on three years now. And up until this month, I almost liked the guy.

“Rossi. Hey, man, what’s up?” he asks, raising his arm so I have no choice but to return his fist bump. “How’s the shoulder?”

“I’m about to find out. Doctor’s appointment after this.”

“You’ll be cool. You played half a season with a broken hand and still managed to set a couple records.”

I look for a reason to be annoyed by this bit of cheerleading but can’t get there. “Yeah, hope so.”

It’s just us in the room, plus a trainer over by the door, talking on his phone.

I pick up a set of exercise bands and start warming up, trying to keep my distance from Brad without making it obvious.

My mind wanders to my doctor’s appointment.

I shouldn’t jinx it by thinking about how to celebrate if Dr. Halpert tells me I’ve fully recovered from my shoulder dislocation, but I’ve been following doctor’s orders like my life depends on it.

I promise myself I won’t drink, but maybe Ruby and I can make a celebratory meal together.

She’ll need it after the day I’m guessing she’s having.

“So what’s your summer looking like?” Brad asks, deciding for some reason that of all the empty spaces in the room, the one two feet away from me is the perfect place for him to stretch.

“I’ll be on campus. Hopefully I’m cleared to return to full practices, and then I don’t plan to do much but practice and work out. Senior season, right?” This line is pretty much universally appropriate in any conversation with any football player right now.

“Fuckin’ right,” Brad says. “I’m heading back to Cali for a week but, other than that, chilling here and trying to enjoy summer before camp starts. This time next year, it’s on.”

“Yeah. Real life.” Brad doesn’t have much of a shot at the NFL, but I could see him in sports broadcasting or something like that. The dude loves to talk. And I guess he’s not bad-looking.

Brad leans a little closer, and a smile passes over his face. “So your friend Ruby’s pretty cool. Did she tell you we’ve been hanging out?”

I straighten up to put some distance between us and focus my gaze on the blue band in my hands. “She mentioned it.” Like eighty times.

“So you’re cool with me talking to her, right? She said you guys have been friends since you were little kids.”

“Cool with me.”

He glances over at the trainer, who’s still on the phone, then back to me. “So nothing ever ... you know, happened between you guys, right?”

An honest answer to that question would require a long, complicated explanation that White Bread isn’t entitled to.

I shake my head. “It’s never been like that between us.

” Except for that one brief minute when it was exactly like that between us.

It would be so easy to sink this thing between him and Ruby.

One word—one look—and he’d get the message that I can’t stand the idea of him groping my best friend.

He’s not even halfway worthy of her, and if I cared about him at all, I’d warn him Ruby gets bored of most guys in a month.

This snoozefest will be lucky if he lasts two weeks.

But I don’t care about him. I care about Ruby and the way she can’t help but smile when she says his name. “Go for it.”

His face relaxes. “Cool.” I wonder whether he has any other adjectives in his vocabulary.

“So summer’s gonna be pretty chill around here, huh?

” There we go— chill. I knew you could do it, White Bread.

He launches into a monologue about how pumped he is for a chill summer and how he’s glad I’m—you guessed it— cool with seeing more of him since he and Ruby have plans to hang out all summer.

I pretend not to hear the question in his voice on that last point.

I watch him as he talks, because even though his face is as bland as white rice, it’s still more interesting than the drivel coming out of his mouth.

For the life of me, I don’t get what Ruby sees in this dude.

Not for the first time, I think about how I ended up here, scouting out Ruby’s crush like this.

“Lorenzo!” Sara’s voice rings out. I turn around to find my trainer striding into the room. “Why are you chatting when you should be stretching?”

I turn away from Brad. “Yes’m,” I say with a tight salute and launch myself into an enthusiastic chest stretch.

Sara rolls her eyes. “If I was a man, you’d be doing that without a hint of sarcasm.”

“How does one stretch sarcastically?”

“You should know.” She pats the therapy table. “All right, hop on. How’s it feeling today?”

“About the same.”

“Are you doing the exercises?” She bends down so she can see my face. “Every day?”

“Yes, drill sergeant. Every morning and every night. I think I’ve exhausted the entire Netflix library, trying not to die from boredom midway through my eighteenth set of shoulder push-ups.”

Sara starts guiding me through some range-of-motion movements. “You haven’t had any pain? When are you seeing your doctor?”

“Today.”

“Good. Well, let’s get you moving.”

Off the table and moving through my usual routine, I furrow my brow, pretending to be absorbed in my eightieth rep of cross-body stretches, but I’m listening to Brad’s conversation with the other trainer.

He talks a lot and way louder than he needs to.

He keeps trying out these jokes that I swear are ripped straight from a stand-up comedy special I saw last month, but his delivery is terrible. Total cornball.

Ruby must be playing him for shits and giggles. This fool is the last guy on earth I see her going for. But maybe that’s it; the guys Ruby usually dates have gotten her absolutely nowhere. Maybe she’s finally changing up her game? I turn my back and try to tune out everything but my exercise.

My session is almost done when Brad thanks his trainer and nods at me. “See you around, Rossi.”

I wave and leave it at that, not wanting to lose count of my reps.

“Good luck getting the okay from your doc. Keep me posted, yeah?”

“Sure, man. Thanks.” Okay, so he’s a pretty decent dude. Still ... total white bread.