Page 71 of The Cadence
“Where’s your beard?” I demanded.
“What?” He put his hand to his face. “You know, you’re right. Someone must have made off with it today at practice.”
“Will Bodine! You didn’t tell me that you were going to shave,” I accused him, and I walked closer to get a better look. With a face like his, it was really a dirty shame to cover it with hair. I couldn’t stop myself from touching his cheeks, with just the tips of my fingers. He slowly smiled as I did.
“What do you think?”
I thought that he looked so handsome that it was going to be very, very hard not to make the first move. In fact, I realized that my mouth was drifting closer to his and I stopped myself.
“I think you look amazing,” I told him. “I liked your beard but I love you without it.” No, wrong. Wrong! “I like you a lot without it,” I corrected myself.
Will didn’t blink. “Good. I got tired of it and I wanted a change.” He hesitated and then added, “I also saw that doctor today,the one the team physician recommended. So that’s another change, I guess.”
“That’s a very good change. I’m very glad you did that,” I said, and then I put both my palms on his cheeks.
“I thought you would be. I know I’m supposed to go for myself, and I am,” he told me. “But there’s also you, Calla. I should be better for you. You don’t need someone who’s a basket case.”
“You are not a basket case!” I said immediately. “Look around you and think about the things you’ve accomplished. Even with all your athletic talent, you couldn’t have done it if you weren’t also smart and disciplined. Back when you were living with your parents, you had your goals laid out and…” I stopped. “I’m sorry I brought them up. On the way home, I was thinking about the day you graduated and what happened with your mom.”
“Were you?”
I nodded. I remembered what he had said after he’d finally driven me home that night, straight into the wrath of my grandmother. I hadn’t called or texted her because I knew how upset she was going to get, so I had let her imagine the worst instead—it had been a terrible decision, but I was only fourteen.
“You saved my mother,” the eighteen-year-old version of Will had told me. “You saved her.”
“Anyone would have,” I had answered.
“I’ll owe you for that, for life.”
It was almost the same thing he said to me now, seven years later. “I owe you, always.”
And I repeated what I’d told him back then, which was that “owing me” was total bull. “You don’t, but if you feel like you need to square things up, then the best way to do it is to be happy. That will make me happy to see it.”
“I’m working on it,” he answered. “I’m working on my mother, too. Miss Mozella is helping me.”
I pulled back a little to stare at him. “What?”
“She also felt like she was in debt, but to me this time. Because of the lawyer,” he explained, and I nodded. I had assumed that the fees for the expensive legal assistance for her son were coming out of Will’s pocket, but he had refused to admit to it and she said that she’d been sworn to secrecy. “She’s going over to my mom’s house to help her pack. And I’m paying her,” he added. “I told her that putting up with Ophelia Bodine’s behavior definitely also warrants monetary compensation.”
“They’re packing together? Your mom agreed to move?” I was very surprised.
“I had to put my foot down,” he said, and took my hand to pull me closer again. “I paid off the mortgage on that house a few years ago but I’ve also been taking care of the day-to-day expenses. I told her that I would continue to pay her bills but that now, it was conditional. She has to move to a smaller house that’s more manageable, and where there are no memories of everything that went on in our family. They only drag us down. And she has to get away even farther sometimes,” he continued. “She needs to travel to places where no one knows that the Bodines used to own half of Atlanta, a few thousand acres of theRepublic of Texas, and whatever else they managed to steal and then piss away.”
“They owned all that? Holy Moses.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with her, though, and it doesn’t have anything to do with me. We have no reason to be proud of the past or ashamed of how much the family has diminished in the present. I’m also not responsible for their sins, like when my great, great, great-uncle closed a mine. With miners in it.”
“Will!”
“Rescuers managed to dig them out. I told you that my history was bad,” he said. He pulled me even closer so that I stood between his knees, and he put his chin on my shoulder. “That therapy stuff isn’t very fun. It tired me out more than when I go on training runs.”
I directed myself to focus on his emotional well-being instead of the fact that his body was pressed to mine, instead of how good he smelled, and instead of how his breath gently ruffled my hair. I didn’t pay attention to how one of his hands curled around my hip and the other slowly rubbed my back.
Emotional well-being. In order to help with that, I hugged him in return. I could reach around him but only because my limbs were long. I flattened my palms against his hard muscles.
“If you’re tired, it must mean that you’re working hard,” I said. My voice sounded a little quavery. “It’s exercise for your mind and spirit and I could see why you’d get exhausted.”
“Like when you’re on the final set of biceps curls,” he suggested. The last time I’d worked out, he’d stood behind me and put two fingers from each his hands beneath the weights I’d been hefting, which had made it a lot easier.
