Page 25 of You Say It First

Colby sighed, leaning back on his elbows on the bleachers. It had come out wrong, what he’d said to her, which didn’t change the fact that he thought his original question was valid. He wasn’t a total idiot. He knew he was some kind of small-town novelty as far as Meg was concerned—her very own redneck whetstone, useful for keeping her ideological knives sharp until she finally got over whatever she was so fucking afraid of and disappeared back to wherever she’d come from. It was a temporary diversion, that was all. What did she want him to do, casually drop it into conversation with Jordan and Micah that he spent three nights a week arguing politics over the phone with some rich girl who’d originally called his house trying to convince his dead father to do his civic duty? What exactly would be the point of trying to explain something like that, especially when there was less than zero chance of it turning into anything real?

Not that Colby wanted it to turn into anything real.

He just meant—

Whatever.

Finally, he dug his phone out of his pocket and took the picture anyway, hitting send before he could talk himself out of it. Thinking about trying out for the minors if my illustrious career in box moving doesn’t work out, he typed, figuring if he acted like things hadn’t gone south between them at the end there, maybe she’d forget they kind of had. How’s your night?

He closed out his messages app, though not before he caught sight of the unanswered text from Joanna from that morning. He’d run into her in the CVS parking lot yesterday afternoon, and they’d wound up standing outside her car talking for the better part of half an hour—about her cousin’s bachelorette party and the new Target going in by the middle school, the chilly breeze blowing her cloud of yellow hair in every direction. This morning, his phone had chimed early, while he was getting ready for work: We should run into each other on purpose sometime, Colby Moran. He hadn’t texted back, and he didn’t know why, except for the part where he kind of did know.

A whetstone, he reminded himself, already wishing he hadn’t sent that stupid picture. It wasn’t going anywhere at all.

Dusk fell, the sky going blue and then a deep, velvety purple, a sliver of moon appearing like a thumbnail behind the trees. “We should go camping this summer,” Colby heard himself say.

“What?” Jordan snorted. “Since when do you know anything about camping?”

Colby shrugged. “I could learn.”

“Sure you could,” Micah put in, pulling a plastic Coke bottle Colby thought was probably mostly rum out of his backpack and offering it around. Then, in a deep newscaster voice: “Locals who have no fucking idea what they’re doing torn limb from limb in bear attack.”

“There are no bears around here,” Jordan said.

“Fuck yeah, there are bears around here!” Micah said. Finding no takers for his backpack cocktail, he shrugged, downing most of it himself in one long swig. “Don’t you remember they caught one lumbering around behind the China Star last summer? Deforestation, man.”

Colby tuned them out, vaguely sorry he’d said anything to begin with. He dug his phone out of his pocket in spite of himself to see if Meg had texted back, which she hadn’t. She had her carnival thing tonight, he remembered suddenly—a fund raiser for something or other, which seemed kind of ridiculous considering how much her fancy private school probably cost. Still, she’d sounded so excited about the whole thing that it was hard not to be a little bit charmed by the idea, even if whenever he tried to picture it all he could think about was the last scene of Grease, when they all sing a song and the car flies up into the clouds.

He checked his phone again at the top of the third inning, then again at the bottom of the fifth. “What are you doing?” Jordan asked from the bleacher above him, kicking him gently in the side.

“Buying Bitcoin,” Colby said automatically, shoving his phone back into his pocket and telling himself to stop being such a mopey little pissant. So much for her not remembering they’d argued, he guessed.

“They’re playing like total bitches out there,” Micah complained, turning his cap around backward and scratching his knee through the fray in his jeans. Colby winced, knowing exactly what Meg would say if she heard him talking like that. Casual sexism denotes a lack of creativity, probably, plus some statistic about Mo’ne Davis that she kept in her back pocket for occasions exactly like this.

There was no point in thinking about Meg.

He got some sketchy fluorescent nachos from the concession stand. He talked to some stoners he knew from school. He actually sat still and watched the game for a while, but Micah was right—they were playing like total bitches, or whatever the nonoffensive version of total bitches was, and the longer he sat there with his silent phone heavy in his pocket, the more it felt like some kind of gorge was opening up inside his rib cage, the kind of physical sensation he’d taught himself to stop having after his dad died and didn’t fucking appreciate now. He was lonely, he realized suddenly, as a direct result of having a stunted, long-distance non-love affair with some spoiled princess from the fucking Main Line that was probably over now before it had even started. The thought of it was so embarrassing Colby actually looked around to make sure nobody had noticed, that it wasn’t somehow being broadcast on a neon sign hovering above his head.

“Let’s go, Jakey!” Micah yelled as his brother came up to bat, cupping his hands around his mouth and hooting. Colby blew a breath out and nudged him in the arm.

“Hey,” he said. “You got any of that Coke left?”

“Sure do,” Micah said, offering it to him with a flourish; Colby took a long gulp, wincing at the sweet chemical burn.

“Geez, dude,” Jordan said. “Easy.”

Colby ignored him, raising his eyebrows at Micah for permission before finishing off the bottle.

By the top of the ninth, he was in a truly terrible fucking mood. What the hell was he thinking to begin with, texting this girl a picture of the fucking sunset like he thought he was some kind of twenty-first-century Walt Whitman? They hardly knew each other. She didn’t owe him anything. She was probably out having a life.

Just like he should be.

Colby picked his phone up again, scrolled through his contacts until he got to Joanna’s name. Her text from this morning was still waiting there, calm and familiar as Joanna herself.

We *should* run into each other on purpose, he typed, then gnawed his thumbnail for one second longer before nutting up and hitting send. What are you up to tomorrow night?

Fourteen

Meg

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