Page 60 of Dire Straights

“Well, you won’t be,” he said. “I’m staying here all break.”

“You’re not going home at all?”

“I’m not sure I’m welcome,” he informed me, but he didn’t sound particularly hurt or upset by that fact. “One semester of good behavior isn’t enough to reduce my sentence.”

“So you’re going to be alone on Christmas?” I felt lame even caring, but I couldn’t help but ask.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be fine.” He sounded amused, but he always sounded kind of amused. His default tone of voice was smug dick.

“You could come hang out at my house over the break, if you want. My mom wouldn’t mind.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “You know, I’m tempted, since I’m fairly sure the last time you brought a guy back home, you ended up fucking him. But I think I’ll pass this time.”

I scoffed. “Yeah, that offer wasn’t really on the table for you.”

“Are you sure?” He asked. “I’ll follow you around like a puppy and tell you how cool you are, since that’s what you seem to like.”

“Screw you.”

“Oh, we’re going to have so much fun this week,” he crowed, pursing his lips to give me a kissy face. “Instead of bonding with your team, you can bond with me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

But the crushing weight of horror had been lifted, at least. It still didn’t solve the problem of Coach thinking I wasn’t invested. In fact, it would only make that particular problem worse. But that was a problem for future Maddox.

Ren was ecstatic when I told him I wasn’t going. It really drove home how worried he was about my mental health, especially when it came to the team. We spent the night together before he left to go home for break. It would only be three weeks, but neither of us wanted to be apart for even three hours, let alone three weeks.

“I’m really going to miss you, Maddy,” he told me, after we’d exhausted ourselves fucking. Tangled together with me in my sheets, he pressed a kiss into the side of my head, lingering there. I’d wanted to say it, but I knew he would say it first and make it easier on me. He always did.

“I’ll miss you, too. But we can text, like, all the time. And we can talk on the phone at night if you want. Facetime, whatever.”

“Okay,” he said, clearly soothed by my suggestions. “It’ll suck, but we can handle it, right?”

“It’s only a couple weeks,” I reminded him. “It’s not like one of us is going away to war or anything.”

He laughed. “Man, I’m really glad we’re not living in those times.”

“Yeah, I’m having a hard time imagining you in a combat setting.” Tripping over his own feet, or nothing, was a pretty common occurrence for him.

“Definitely not the soldier type,” he agreed. “I’ll never be that kind of guy.”

“I like the kind of guy you are,” I said, my stomach fluttering like crazy when I felt his smile in the dark.

“I like the kind of guy you are, too.”

The first morning of break came and passed. Ren left, and it sucked, but we made more promises to talk to each other every day, which took a lot of the sting out.

I knew when everyone on the team would be getting on the bus, and sure enough, Coach’s phone number flashed on my phone. Declining his call, I typed out a simple message and sent it over.

I’m not feeling well, I won’t be attending the trip.

The message showed as delivered, then read. He called me three more times after that, and left a voicemail. Swiping away the voicemail notification without listening to it, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

REN

THE RIDE HOMEwith Mom was awkward and tense and kind of miserable. She could definitely tell I wasn’t happy with her, and I imagined she probably already knew about the kiss thing with Maddy and didn’t know what to say about it, and so we barely spoke. She asked about my classes and I gave her short, concise answers with very little enthusiasm.

Now, two days later, we’d still barely talked. I’d talked to my dad a bit about school and classes and friends. When he finally asked why I wasn’t talking to my mom, I explained the situation with Gwen and how I’d made it clear I wasn’t interested in getting back with her, but she still pushed and pushed until she ended up putting me in a really awkward position.

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