Page 42 of The Cadence

“Hello, Calla,” he said to me, and then I stopped dead.

“Where’s your beard?” I demanded.

“What?” He put his hand to his face. “You know, you’re right. Someone must have made off with it today at practice.”

“Will Bodine! You didn’t tell me that you were going to shave,” I accused him, and I walked closer to get a better look.

With a face like his, it was really a dirty shame to cover it with hair.

I couldn’t stop myself from touching his cheeks, with just the tips of my fingers. He slowly smiled as I did.

“What do you think?”

I thought that he looked so handsome that it was going to be very, very hard not to make the first move. In fact, I realized that my mouth was drifting closer to his and I stopped myself.

“I think you look amazing,” I told him. “I liked your beard but I love you without it.” No, wrong. Wrong! “I like you a lot without it,” I corrected myself.

Will didn’t blink. “Good. I got tired of it and I wanted a change.” He hesitated and then added, “I also saw that doctor today, the one the team physician recommended. So that’s another change, I guess.”

“That’s a very good change. I’m very glad you did that,” I said, and then I put both my palms on his cheeks.

“I thought you would be. I know I’m supposed to go for myself, and I am,” he told me. “But there’s also you, Calla. I should be better for you. You don’t need someone who’s a basket case.”

“You are not a basket case!” I said immediately.

“Look around you and think about the things you’ve accomplished.

Even with all your athletic talent, you couldn’t have done it if you weren’t also smart and disciplined.

Back when you were living with your parents, you had your goals laid out and…

” I stopped. “I’m sorry I brought them up.

On the way home, I was thinking about the day you graduated and what happened with your mom. ”

“Were you?”

I nodded. I remembered what he had said after he’d finally driven me home that night, straight into the wrath of my grandmother.

I hadn’t called or texted her because I knew how upset she was going to get, so I had let her imagine the worst instead—it had been a terrible decision, but I was only fourteen.

“You saved my mother,” the eighteen-year-old version of Will had told me. “You saved her.”

“Anyone would have,” I had answered.

“I’ll owe you for that, for life.”

It was almost the same thing he said to me now, seven years later. “I owe you, always.”

And I repeated what I’d told him back then, which was that “owing me” was total bull. “You don’t, but if you feel like you need to square things up, then the best way to do it is to be happy. That will make me happy to see it.”

“I’m working on it,” he answered. “I’m working on my mother, too. Miss Mozella is helping me.”

I pulled back a little to stare at him. “What?”

“She also felt like she was in debt, but to me this time. Because of the lawyer,” he explained, and I nodded.

I had assumed that the fees for the expensive legal assistance for her son were coming out of Will’s pocket, but he had refused to admit to it and she said that she’d been sworn to secrecy.

“She’s going over to my mom’s house to help her pack.

And I’m paying her,” he added. “I told her that putting up with Ophelia Bodine’s behavior definitely also warrants monetary compensation. ”

“They’re packing together? Your mom agreed to move?” I was very surprised.

“I had to put my foot down,” he said, and took my hand to pull me closer again.

“I paid off the mortgage on that house a few years ago but I’ve also been taking care of the day-to-day expenses.

I told her that I would continue to pay her bills but that now, it was conditional.

She has to move to a smaller house that’s more manageable, and where there are no memories of everything that went on in our family.

They only drag us down. And she has to get away even farther sometimes,” he continued.

“She needs to travel to places where no one knows that the Bodines used to own half of Atlanta, a few thousand acres of the Republic of Texas, and whatever else they managed to steal and then piss away.”

“They owned all that? Holy Moses.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with her, though, and it doesn’t have anything to do with me.

We have no reason to be proud of the past or ashamed of how much the family has diminished in the present.

I’m also not responsible for their sins, like when my great, great, great-uncle closed a mine. With miners in it.”

“Will!”

“Rescuers managed to dig them out. I told you that my history was bad,” he said. He pulled me even closer so that I stood between his knees, and he put his chin on my shoulder. “That therapy stuff isn’t very fun. It tired me out more than when I go on training runs.”

I directed myself to focus on his emotional well-being instead of the fact that his body was pressed to mine, instead of how good he smelled, and instead of how his breath gently ruffled my hair.

I didn’t pay attention to how one of his hands curled around my hip and the other slowly rubbed my back.

Emotional well-being. In order to help with that, I hugged him in return. I could reach around him but only because my limbs were long. I flattened my palms against his hard muscles.

“If you’re tired, it must mean that you’re working hard,” I said. My voice sounded a little quavery. “It’s exercise for your mind and spirit and I could see why you’d get exhausted.”

“Like when you’re on the final set of biceps curls,” he suggested. The last time I’d worked out, he’d stood behind me and put two fingers from each his hands beneath the weights I’d been hefting, which had made it a lot easier.

“Exactly,” I agreed. “It means you’re accomplishing something.”

“Good.” He leaned back, away from me, and smiled. I could see that expression very clearly, now that his beard was gone. “I’m glad you like the idea of Miss Mozella stepping in with my mom.”

“I do,” I agreed. “Why didn’t you tell me before, though?”

He looked at me and I suddenly felt like there was more distance between us, even if our bodies hadn’t moved.

“You don’t have an obligation to share every detail,” I added. “It just seems a little funny since I know them both.”

“I’ve usually acted on my own,” Will said.

“Like how you used to want to be alone to think about things and work out a problem.”

“Yes, and then I would try to come up with solutions alone, too. I could have talked to you first. I should have.” He paused. “I also wonder how much I should tell you, if it matters anymore.”

“What does that mean? Tell me about what?”

“Miss Mozella knows, because she’s mentioned it to me,” he went on, and I still had no idea what he meant. “I don’t want to have secrets from you. That’s another problem I’ve been thinking about.” He paused. “I had offered money.”

“What?”

“I had offered to give your grandma money. Not as a loan but as a gift. I said that I could set up a monthly payment if she wanted, or I could have handed over a lump sum. She said no and she was offended, like I was trying to pay for her silence or pay her to soothe my own conscience.”

“What?” I asked again. “She said no?”

“The last time I saw her in person, she was very angry at me, and I don’t think she ever got over it.”

That last time had been the day of his graduation, when he’d driven me home so late and I’d shown up at her house in different clothes—his—because I’d gotten soaked in the shower and then messy as I’d cleaned.

I remembered getting out of his car and hitching up the giant sweatpants as my grandmother stood and watched, looking horrified under the yellow glow of her porch light.

“What did he do to you?” she’d asked, her voice breaking, and nothing that either of us had said was sufficient to ease her mind.

She had finally accepted that Will’s mother had overdosed and nearly died instead of watching her son graduate from high school, but she had been furious at him for bringing me into that situation and furious with me for being crazy enough about him that I’d gone along with it.

She’d told him that he wasn’t allowed to talk to me, not ever again.

“No, ma’am, I won’t,” he’d promised. “Goodbye, Calla.” I had gone inside to cry and I’d been furious with her for a while, but she hadn’t relented. When I’d finally realized that she was acting out of love for me, I had let go of the anger because I’d needed that love so much.

“She was always worried,” I explained. “She was afraid that my life would end up somewhere bad, like her son’s had.”

“And she believed that I was the vehicle to take you there. I don’t blame her,” he said quickly. “She spent her life hearing about the Bodines, and I was the fruit of that poisonous tree.”

“But she knew you,” I told him. “She knew how you had been coming over to help me and to help her, too. You tore down that old fence in the back yard, you—”

“Nothing I did mattered compared to you,” Will broke in. “You were the most important thing to her, and she thought that I was threatening your welfare and your happiness. Of course she didn’t like me, but I wish she’d taken my money anyway.”

“We could have used it.”

“When I found out that she had lost her house and that you had nowhere to go, I almost went out of my mind. I should have been there, physically, and then I could have…I don’t know what I could have done, but there was something.”

“You don’t owe me,” I repeated. “No matter what I did that day for your mother, you never owed me for it.” I remembered him saying it, though, the same words over and over as he’d finally driven me home to my angry and fearful grandma.

“How am I ever going to repay you for this, Calla? Thank you,” he’d told me. I remembered his hands clenched around the steering wheel and how he’d shaken his head, as if he still didn’t believe what had happened that day.

“My grandma would probably have tried to shoot you if you’d come around,” I added now. “And I had made that dramatic declaration.” I felt myself heat with embarrassment. “You probably didn’t want to get involved with someone who used to be in love with you.”

“You used to be in love with me,” he echoed. We looked at each other and again, I seemed to feel the distance widen. It was my chance to make another move—I wasn’t going to stick my hands down his pants, no matter how much I might have wanted to, but I could have said something.

Will could have, too, because if he felt a different way now…

This house, so far off the country road and with neighbors literal miles away, was much quieter than where I’d lived with my grandma.

The silence between us stretched unbroken for what felt like miles, too, and then I stepped back and walked up the stairs to my bedroom.

Maybe I was a coward, but at least I was a coward who didn’t have another broken heart.