Page 12 of Past Tents

“Oh, fine. Laugh. But I never said I was a runner, so it still doesn’t make sense for you to know concussion stuff.” She searched around her but didn’t seem to find what she was looking for. “Did I have a bag with me?”

“What kind of bag?”

She looked behind her on the cot, but it sat just as empty as it was a minute ago. “My gym bag. It has my purse in it. Did we leave it on the field?”

I studied her face for signs I missed something. Maybe it wasn’t such a mild concussion after all, because she wasn’t making sense. “I never saw a bag. Do you remember holding a gym bag while you were sprinting around the track?”

She blinked as though shuffling off the confusion and scooted off the cot, rising to her feet. “Right. Of course not. I left it in my car. That’s what I meant.”

“Are you sure you feel okay? Do you have someone who can keep an eye on you tonight, make sure you don’t need anything?”

She waved a hand. “I’mfine. I told you I was fine. You just scrambled my brains with all your inappropriate concussion knowledge.” She started again for the door.

“Alexandra.”

She stopped. Turned. “You don’t need to use my full name. ‘Ally’ will do just fine.”

I liked saying her full name. I knew she didn’t use it, and I’d always thought of her as Ally, but seeing her injured had brought out a stern, possessive side of me that wanted to lay claim to her well-being by hearing her gorgeous given name on my tongue.

“What was that, anyway?” In all the hubbub of getting Ally onto her feet and sending my track team captain off with instructions to finish up training for the day, I hadn’t asked why she’d hurdled past my team in the first place. Sometimes faculty members used the track to work out, but generally not during team practices. And Ally was never among them.

“What?”

I pointed in the direction of the track. “You out there trying to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

“I’m Wonder Woman. Didn’t you get the memo?” she said dryly.

“Wonder Woman had an invisible plane. And a lasso.”

She shrugged. “I heard you were having tryouts.”

“Uh-huh. You didn’t make the cut.”

She stared back at me with her large blue doe eyes and offended pout. “Wow. Give a girl a chance.”

It was my turn to stare back. I could wait her out. I taught high schoolers, for fuck’s sake—I was made of patience. Finally, she rolled her eyes.

“Fine. I was trying to make a big entrance before telling you some stupendous news.”

“Stupendous? This sounds serious. Did someone tell you I’m being fired or something? Stupendous like that?”

“Clay, of course not.” She glanced around the room, thinking. “Though it would be a good new tradition to sneak up on people when they are being fired.”

“Yeah, except I can’t remember the last time anyone was fired around here.”

“Exactly, so why was that your go-to thought about why I’d come dashing around the track to find you? Glass half empty, are we?”

She had no idea. We’d known each other for half our lives but we didn’t reallyknoweach other. There had always been parts of myself I didn’t share with the people closest to me, and she and I were more colleagues than friends. I never saw us as anything more than that. At least, that was the lie I’d had playing on repeat in my head. And it would continue playing until the end of days.

It was how things had to be. I was broken in ways I didn’t want Ally to understand. I felt certain there were pieces of me that would never be fully mended. Any fantasies I harbored about the two of us were simply that—fantasies.

“I’m a closet optimist.”

“Ha. I think you can do better. Your life looks pretty rosy.”

Again, she knew nothing about my life. That’s why we remained colleagues rather than crossing the barrier into friends. Friends would ask questions and expect answers from other friends. I wasn’t willing to go there with her.

“So your grand entrance was supposed to be more like a bucket of water dumping on my head when I walked into a room?”

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