Page 35 of Only in Your Dreams

“I wasyourmath tutor—you and Parker always begged me for help. It’s what I do now. Math. Data analysis for an investment bank.”

“This is the job Connor got you?”

“The one and only. We don’t work directly together, and thankfully, I work from home. But he comes back from his trip in a couple weeks, and… I hope we can avoid each other. Until I find a new job.”

My ears are still straining, alert for sounds outside our tent. But I can feel my heart rate go down as she keeps talking.

Melody blows out a soft breath. “Remember those couple months in senior year where Parker busted up his elbow?”

“I remember.”

“And how you were a total freak back then, always wanting to train outside of practice? You and Parker made me sub in for him, so you’d have someone to practice with.”

There’s no way I’d ever forget the sight of her dressed in my too-big football gear, my jersey. She wanted to look the part while she practiced catching my throws.

“Yeah. I remember.”

“Well, by the time you were done with me, I’m pretty sure I could have given Parker a run for his money for his spot on the team. You know, if we didn’t live in such a persistently patriarchal society.”

She wrenches a chuckle out of me. “You definitely could have. The patriarchy sucks so hard.”

“Fuck the patriarchy,” she agrees. “But seriously, Zac. If you could get scrawny little me to hang with a quarterback like you, I know you can do it again.”

We’re back there. In that hallway at school.

I’m new in town. Friendless all my life after being endlessly plucked from country to country, following my dad’s job. I’ve finally got a group of kids I’m meshing with. I’m a second from the starting whistle of my first game, and I’m terrified to fuck up. To be the new kid letting down my first ever friends—the entire school—just weeks into the school year. I’m pacing the hallway, and then I turn around.

Mel pulls a four-leaf clover from her pocket and tells me I’ve got this game in the bag. She just has a gut feeling about it, she says, and those big blue eyes look at me like she believes every word. Getting that vote of confidence from Melody Woods, the infamous skeptic, is enough to make me feel like I can conquer anything.

Every week for four seasons, she finds me before a game, home or away, to give me my good luck charm. Even when I lost, it felt okay. Because there was a blue-eyed girl out there somewhere who believed I could do it. If not that game, then the next one.

It wasn’t the clovers that did it for me. It was her. Shewasmy four-leaf clover. And then she left and—

I can’t exactly see her right now, but it feels like Mel believes in me now, too, and it’s an instant mood-shift.

This night, with wild animals circling our tent. My next game, and the one after that.

“Thanks, Clover. Can’t tell you how much that means.”

She pushes her face into my shoulder. “You’re really not supposed to call me that.”

“I know,” I whisper. “Can I anyway?”

She doesn’t say anything. Just nods into my shoulder, but my chest swells.

“Do you think it’s gone?” Mel whispers after a while.

It’s not gone. It’s out there somewhere. It and its pack, whatever they are. “Yeah, I think it’s gone. We’re fine. Try to get some sleep, okay?”

Mel releases a long breath. She’s still pressed so hard against me there’s not a sliver of space between us. “Can we stay like this?”

“We can stay like this. Go to sleep, Clover. I won’t let anything happen to you, I swear.”

Still, she tenses at every little sound outside this tent. Every chirping cricket. Every time the breeze shudders the tent walls. It’s not until a couple of long, painful hours later that I hear her breathing start to slow. Until I feel her melt into me, lose the tension in her body.

Mine stays put, though. I stare into this dark tent, straining my ears, clutching her to me until the sun comes up.

Chapter 9

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