Page 5 of Opening Hearts

“I said, ‘what about you?’ How long are you here for?”

Oh, right. “I leave the first week of August. Football practice starts a few weeks before classes.”

“Oh. Where do you go to school?” There was something strange in her voice.

He gave her a quizzical look. “Marycliff University over in Spokane.”

“Oh. Cool. Yeah, I’ve heard of it.” That strange quality was still there, and she seemed stiffer in his arms.

“What about you? Where do you go to school?”

She turned her face away from him and mumbled something that he couldn’t catch.

“What? I couldn’t hear you.”

Her chest swelled under his arms as she took a deep breath before turning her face toward him once more, but she wouldn’t look at him. “I said Hanford High School.”

He froze. High school? She started to squirm in his arms, but he didn’t let her go. “Wha—“ He cleared his throat. “What year are you?”

She stopped moving, but held herself stiffly against him, the only reason she touched him at all was because he still held her back pressed against his chest. “I’ll be a senior in the fall.”

“So you’re seventeen?”

She gave a short nod. “I’ll be eighteen next week.”

He relaxed, his arms draping around her again rather than clamping in frozen dread. She was eighteen, or would be soon enough. That wasn’t so bad. “Cool. I’ll be a sophomore at Marycliff next year.”

She relaxed again against him. “So that makes you …?”

“Nineteen.”

She relaxed some more, the tension leaving her body, resuming the comfortable way they’d been standing before. “Cool. You like Marycliff?”

“Yeah. It’s a good school. I got a football scholarship that covers most of my tuition, so it’s been a good deal.”

“Wow.” Her voice was full of admiration. “No wonder you’re ripped.” She stiffened in his arms again, like maybe she was embarrassed that she’d said that.

He laughed. “Yeah. Between surfing and football I work out a lot. What about you? Do you have college plans for next year?”

She nodded, relaxing once more. “Yeah. My parents really want me to go to WSU since it’s close to home, but I’d rather go to UW.”

“So you’d spend your school year over in my part of the state.”

She chuckled. “Yup. But you’ll be in Spokane, so it’s not like we’d see each other.”

He opened his mouth to say something about maybe meeting in the middle on breaks, but stopped himself. Where the hell had that come from anyway? He barely even knew this chick. “True.”

They fell silent, and Matt wasn’t sure what to say after his almost-blurted-out desire that he’d like to see her again after tonight, after they both left for the summer, going back to their real lives. Even though he’d grown up in Westport, it no longer felt like his real life after just one year of school. The only thing he really missed in Spokane was being able to surf more than just the few weeks he was home in the summer. He’d come home a few times in the spring before the surf got really gentle, but his dad had been annoyed with him, telling him he needed to stay at school and focus on classes and give up his stupid dreams of surfing. The only reason his dad was okay with him surfing as much as he did during the summer was because he got paid decently to teach lessons. Even then, his dad almost constantly told him how much more money he’d make working on a fishing charter. But he couldn’t stomach doing that. Yeah, he’d get to spend all day on the water, but not like he wanted.

When his dad went off about that stuff he mostly just nodded occasionally and kept his head down. Arguing didn’t ever do anything except start a yelling match, and he hated those, hated the confrontation, and hated that even when he was right, he’d lose. Sometimes he’d mention how he’d given his word to Trip, the owner of the surf shop that he taught for, and his dad had raised him to be a man of his word. His dad would grumble a bit, usually something about Trip being a hippie stoner—which wasn’t entirely untrue either—but then drop the subject. For a while. Usually until he saw Matt getting ready to go surfing or coming home after being on the beach. He’d learned to avoid his dad for the most part, which wasn’t too hard since the man worked long hours as the harbormaster, so this summer he’d escaped most of the lectures.

Hannah shifted in his arms, bringing him back to the present. For now he had this girl who he wanted to get to know better, in every meaning of the word. He unclasped his arms from around her, rubbing her arms a few times. “Let’s get your sweatshirt from Elena, then we’ll get a drink and dance.”

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