Page 15 of The Cadence
“Who is your best friend?” he countered, and I had an immediate answer.
“My grandma. She was the best friend anybody could ever have. She listened to me and tried to help me, she was fun to be with and she taught me things. I wish I’d known her forever and not just when I moved into her house for high school.” We’d only had one major issue between us, and he was buckled up and seated next to me.
“Here.” The flight attendants had previously halted the food and drink service because of the turbulence, but they had managed to pass out some nuts and Will handed me a napkin that had come with those. “I didn’t think to bring a box of tissues.”
“I have something in my bag but I’m afraid to start digging in there, that stuff will fly around—Will,” I broke off, and involuntarily grabbed his arm again.
“This is rough air. It should smooth out soon.”
I nodded and hoped he was correct. Other people were crying and the captain had made several more announcements to apologize for the difficult trip. He had reminded us to remain calm and that the plane was designed for this, that we would be fine. It hadn’t stopped a group prayer, though.
“My best friend is my roommate from college,” Will told me. “We got placed together as freshman and then we chose to live together for the next two years because we got along so well.”
“Is he like you?”
“What do you think I’m like?” he asked. He didn’t seem to care that I was still holding his forearm.
“I think you’re smart and quiet, but also determined and…” I paused as I thought. “Well, I don’t know how to say it. I mean that you stick to your word so people know that you’re trustworthy and dependable. I sound like I’m talking about farm equipment but I mean that in the most positive way.”
He looked at me for a moment. “Those are very nice things to say about me. I think you’re the same.”
“Smart and quiet?” I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I do try to be a person that other people don’t have to worry about. I know that I can take care of myself, which you had forgotten.”
“What?”
“Even if I had stayed a few nights in my car, I would have worked it out,” I explained.
“Now you don’t have to,” he said.
“Tell me more about your friend—oh, Holy Moses!” It had turned out that the woman across the aisle screamed really loudly when she got scared and that scared me even more. I closed my eyes and listened to Will.
“DeSean is also very hard-working and serious when he needs to be. But he’s a little…I guess he’s looser than I am. We had some arguments about the piles of dishes in his room, for example.”
“But you still like him.”
“Yes, because I can get pissed about not having any clean plates in the cupboard but still know that if I ever needed him, he would always stand up for me.”
“That’s a real friend,” I approved. “Does he play football, too?”
“He did, but he didn’t make it to the pros. He has a job now, and he has a wife and a son. He sends a lot of pictures.”
“Can I see those, too?” I found it soothing to look at the cute baby and the beaming woman who held him. I scrolled through all of those and then studied the images of the house again, and Will didn’t care that I took his phone and kept going through it. I was curious about the new place that I was going to live, but I was curious about him, too, this person that my grandma’s friends had called a stranger. They were right, I reminded myself.
When I went way back in the cameral roll, I found several images of him with a woman. She was very, very pretty and had a wide, gorgeous smile, like a model. I moved to a picture of her in a cheerleading uniform from the college that Will had attended. She was even more beautiful than his girlfriend from our high school, and Carlee had gone on to semi-fame as a contestant on the dating showLove Beneath the Waves. I had watched her in every episode as they all wrote on waterproof whiteboards instead of talking (due to the scuba gear). Everyone looked great in their bathing suits.
“Is this your girlfriend?” I asked, holding up the phone so he could also see the stunning cheerleader. The plane shook and Ithought I heard a crack. I closed my eyes and the group prayer started again.
But then the air seemed to smooth out. I took a cautious breath and slowly released it as Will glanced up from the papers he was reading. “What are you looking at?” He studied the picture. “She used to be my girlfriend. Nicia and I dated for a while.”
“Not anymore?”
“We sometimes see each other when I have games in Alabama.”
“Did she move there to be with you when you got drafted by the Rackers?” I asked.
“We lived together after college,” he acknowledged, “but when I got traded, we decided to end it. She had a career and friends, so she stayed.”
I looked at her face and wondered whose decision that had really been. Had it been mutual, and she hadn’t wanted to leave her life in Alabama? Or was it actually that he hadn’t wanted her to accompany him to Michigan? In any case, I doubted that she’d been smiling when they broke up, like she was in these pictures.
