Page 7 of Overtime Goal
“Yes.” I was too loud, so I lowered my voice. “Why else would it have bothered me? If we’d done it before…” My heart thumped because it was pretty clear Harpy had figured out what I was talking about, and it would be obvious who else was involved. “If we’d done it before, I don’t think this would’ve been a problem.”
Silence stretched so long I started bouncing my knees. When sweat ran down my nape, I reached back to wipe it off.
“How did you feel about it?” Harpy asked. “You said you overreacted. Does that mean you were okaywhileit was going on?”
“Definitely. It was the next day when I flipped out.”
After giving me another long look, Harpy stood. “How about a drink? Iced tea, water, soda. We have beer too.”
“I could use a beer.”
“Be right back.”
He brought back two Sierra Nevadas and handed one to me. I gulped half of it right away.
“It can shake us when we do something out of character,” he said. I stayed quiet, so he went on. “Riley, anything you tell me stays between us. I don’t even tell Luca about team business. The other person involved was Logan, right?”
“Shit. I can’t…” I huffed. “Yes.”
Harpy set his bottle down on a table. “Has this just happened? I know you two hung out on the trip.”
“It was about a month ago.”
“He’s probably confused too, and afraid of hurting you. Logan’s older than we are, and he doesn’t have trouble speaking his mind. I think he’d tell you what he’s thinking if he were only concerned about himself.”
That made sense. Logan wasn’t the biggest talker on the team, but he wasn’t shy. “We have to discuss it,” I said. “Yesterday, he shut me down hard, so what should I do?”
“Try to help him feel more comfortable. If he’s concerned about you, and I bet he is, you need to let him know you’re ready to talk. He’ll be less likely to open up if he thinks you’re only bringing it up for his sake.”
“What if he tries to shut me down again?”
Harpy narrowed his eyes, then reached for his beer. “I don’t know how much of this you heard at the time, but when Luca and I were getting together, we had a big issue. We didn’t talk about it. He wanted to, I didn’t, and we both suffered because I was so stubborn.”
“I remember.”
“Luca couldn’tmakeme talk any more than you can Logan, but there’s an important difference. Logan’s older and smarter than I was, and I don’t think he’ll go to the extremes I did to avoid a conversation. If he tries to avoid talking again, don’t let him.”
“How? He told me no.”
Harpy laughed. “Since when do you listen to whatanybodytells you? Look, I don’t know exactly what happened, but you two are still friends. You can fix this, but since you’re the one who said it was off limits, you’ll have to be persistent about opening it back up.”
“Fuck. I guess you’re right.”
He nodded, and we both sipped our beers.
“Don’t wait,” he said. “Take care of this before it becomes a major obstacle between you two.”
“I won’t. It may take me a day or two to decide how to approach it, but I’ll get it done.”
I turned down Harpy’s invitation to lunch and headed home to think about things. After a walk around the neighborhood, I had a plan, or at least the beginnings of one. Before anything else, I had to fix the distance between Logan and me, and I could start on that tonight.
The first thing I had to do was make sure he wouldn’t cancel. I pulled out my phone and started typing, then erased what I’d said. It took three tries before I pressed send.
RILEY: Thought I’d come over about 8. We can watch TV like you said. Or I can watch TV while you read lol.
Since he hadn’t mentioned dinner in his invite, I didn’t either. I wondered if he’d make me wait for a reply, but his answer came a minute later.
LOGAN: Sounds good. See you at 8.
