Page 17 of Things I Wish I Said

I grin. “The type of girl that would order a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake on a date without batting an eye or giving a flying fuck what anyone thinks about it.”

She smiles. “I like that girl. ”

My gaze holds hers. “Me too.”

“Is this a date?”

“Isn’t it?” I shoot back.

Her pouty lips purse. “I guess I wouldn’t know. I’ve only ever been on a few.”

“Bullshit.” There’s no fucking way this girl survived high school with that face, her banging body, and so much talent, with only a handful of dates.

“It’s true.” She nods, and I want to argue, but she continues before I can, and I find myself clinging to her every word, thoroughly enjoying her company in a way I shouldn’t and don’t quite understand.

“First of all, I switched schools just before high school after getting a scholarship to Federal Hocking. It was an all-girls' school, and the entirety of my free time was devoted to either keeping my grades up or soccer. There was no room for a social life, and even if there was, the only opportunity I had to hang out with the opposite sex was during soccer camp. And even though that probably sounds awful to you, I really didn’t mind it. I was so focused on my goals, I figured dating would come later.”

My brows rise. “So you weren’t lying when you said you never had a boyfriend?”

“Nope. I mean, there was this one kid I dated, but it was nothing. Over before it started.” She takes a sip of her ice water then toys with her straw. “Let me guess, you had dozens of girlfriends, all perfect, perky blondes like Hannah. ”

I shake my head because it’s the furthest thing from the truth. “I had a steady girlfriend during my first three years of high school,” I say, sounding more defensive than I’d like. “And even though I don’t date anymore, if I did, Hannah’s not my type.”

She hums under her breath like she doesn’t believe me. “A serious girlfriend, huh?”

I nod, not wanting to get into it, relieved the question sounds more rhetorical than anything. Rachel isn’t someone I liked to discuss. Ever.

“And what about the past year? I’m guessing there’s been no shortage of female attention.”

I shrug. I don’t tell her how many girls I’ve been with since my father died.

I’m not sure I even know. It’s not like I’ve kept a fucking tally. Using women and sex as a distraction isn’t exactly something I’m proud of, so I say, “You can be surrounded by people and still feel alone.”

My cheeks heat the second the words leave my mouth, afraid I’ve given away too much, that she might judge me for it.

“I know the feeling.” Her eyes lock on mine as if trying to read me, and I’m not sure what scares me more: that I’m afraid she can or that she might actually get me in a way no one else does.

I fiddle with the menu, thinking about everything she said.

If she’s telling the truth, then this date matters more than I thought. Every experience Ryleigh has could be the last and I need to make it count .

“Are you really getting a salad?” I ask, changing the subject.

“I would love to order the biggest cheeseburger imaginable and enjoy every bite, but since I got sick, my mom went into this deep dive about food and how it has the power to heal, blah blah blah. So, these days, I mostly stick to lean meats, veggies, and fruit with the rare exception.”

“That’s no fun.” I frown.

“No,” she says with a sigh. “It’s really not, but it’s a small price to pay to ease her worry.”

I lean back in the booth, scowling. It’s not lost on me she’s doing it for her mother and not for her.

I wonder what else she’s doing for others and what, if anything, she’s doing for herself.

I know exactly how it feels to appease a parent.

It’s the whole reason I’m here in the first place.

Just because my father’s dead doesn’t make his influence in my life any less relevant.

A few minutes later, the waiter appears by our table to take our orders. I get something healthier than the burger and fries I really crave, for Ryleigh’s sake, then he turns to take her order.

The first time his gaze dips below the neckline of her tank top, I can’t blame him. Sinclair has an incredible rack. The second time, I want to bust his teeth out.

If Ryleigh notices his blatant ogling, she doesn’t give anything away as she orders, and when he glances my way one last time, I narrow my eyes, jaw tight enough to crack walnuts.

Yeah, that’s right. I see you, fucker.

For all he knows this really is my girlfriend .

I’m still focused on his retreating form when Sinclair brings me back to the present. “So, I was thinking . . . how about dinner before the party? A family meal seems like a good way to grease the wheels of our little scheme.”

“Sure. I don’t think I have a game, so I could make that work.”

“Good. We should probably get our stories straight since you were kind of blindsided at the hospital.”

“Like how we met and stuff?”

Ry bobs her head and takes a sip of her water. “I told her we met at one of the Healing Community meetings, which you already know. They’re these—”

“I know what they are,” I interject with a curt nod. My father had us attend one the week he was diagnosed. Little did I know he’d be on his deathbed two weeks later.

“Oh. Okay.” Ryleigh straightens, and her whiskey eyes bore through me. “So, we met there, exchanged numbers, and started talking.” She shrugs. “Pretty simple.”

“What about your cancer? I probably need to know your backstory there.”

“Right.” Ryleigh exhales a ragged breath, and I can tell how much she hates talking about it based on her pained expression.

“I’m not really even sure when it started, but it’s like one day I noticed my chest was tight when I played, like I couldn’t take a deep breath.

I’d get winded easily. Tire out faster. I noticed this especially off the field any time I took the stairs.

It got to the point where I’d need to take a minute to catch my breath on the field.

For someone they once called The Missile, that was unheard of.

But I’m stubborn. I gave a million excuses for it—allergies, food, hormones, stress—and pushed on, ignoring it.

Until I couldn’t anymore, and I passed out during a game.

I’d been feet from scoring a goal and went down like a domino, face first in the grass. ”

“That must have been scary,” I say, imagining if the situation were reversed.

“Oh, it was a blast,” she deadpans. “I was mostly pissed I missed the goal.” She chuckles a moment, then adds, “Actually, I don’t remember a lot of it, but my mom?

She was scared as hell. Paramedics rushed the field.

They took me off on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over my face as they carted me into the ambulance.

My coach probably thought it was one of those rare cases where kids go into cardiac arrest from an unknown murmur or all that bullshit.

So when I was diagnosed with stage two lung cancer nearly forty-eight hours later, we were shocked.

I mean, what are the odds? A teen who never smoked a cigarette a day in her life. It all seemed . . .”

“Unfair,” I finish for her.

She stares down at her hands, and her throat bobs. “That is what I call bad luck.”

Fuck luck. It was a cruel twist of fate.

My stomach churns at her story—the unfairness of it all, the surprise and shock—they hit a little too close to home and catapult me right back to the time before my father was diagnosed.

No one ever expected his stomach pains were on account of cancer.

He’d dealt with indigestion and digestive issues his whole life, so he’d pop a couple antacids and call it good.

Even when he was suddenly diagnosed with diabetes and struggling to control his glucose, he thought nothing of it.

If anything, it was a reason for his fatigue, a by-product of his love of sweets, and nothing more.

He was wrong.

And despite the shitty survival rates of pancreatic cancer, he was diagnosed far too late for the doctors to do anything but ensure he spent his last weeks as comfortable as possible.

I swallow over the lump forming in the back of my throat as a familiar wave of sadness crashes over me. Being here, listening to Ryleigh’s story, is every bit as hard as I imagined it would be.

Suddenly, I want to flee. I don’t want to listen to this. It’s too much. Too damn hard. Yet I hear myself asking about her treatment anyway because what the fuck else am I to do? I agreed to see this through, and I won’t back out now.

“And your treatment?” I manage.

“They started with immunotherapy, but I didn’t respond well, so they jumped on the lobectomy.

It was eight weeks' recovery, and then I started aggressive chemotherapy. They were hoping to kill the remaining cancer cells while I was hoping to keep playing soccer.” She laughs dryly.

“I quickly discovered I couldn’t. I was far too weak.

Maybe if I hadn’t just had surgery. Maybe if I had more time to train my lungs without the cancer still eating away at them, I would’ve succeeded, but .

. .” She shrugs. “The rest is history. The first round of chemo was a failure, so they started me on a second round—a different drug. This one was six cycles. I continued to barf my brains out while saying sayonara to my hair and the love of my life. It’s been fun times. ”

I take her in, unsure of what to say. No one deserves the hand she was dealt. My father sure as fuck didn’t, and someone as young and full of promise like her didn’t, either.

I scrub my hands over my face, trying to steer my thoughts to safer waters because I know I have about two seconds before I conjure an image of him I don’t want to remember. The one I’ve fought so damn hard to forget.

My legs shake. My hands twitch to swipe my keys off the table and leave.

I want to drive back to the baseball field or the batting cages.

I want to crush a ball so fucking hard it silences my thoughts.

I want to lose myself in the game. Run until my lungs scream and my legs give out.

And when that doesn’t fucking work, because all it’ll do is remind me of him, I want to call Dustin and get the biggest bag of grade-A weed I can find.

Then I’ll park somewhere alone and roll the biggest fucking blunt I can manage and smoke that shit until the images fade, until I can breathe again without this unbearable pain in my chest.

“You know what the worst part is?” she says, slicing through my thoughts.

I exhale, not sure I want to know. “What? ”

“I know I should be hellbent on fighting for my life. Treatment, healing, getting better, and staying positive should be my main focus—but without soccer, everything feels impossible. I’m this shell of myself, this alternate version of me that doesn’t make sense, like a ghost, still here but already gone.

Because who the hell is Ryleigh Sinclair without it? ”