14. Seth
Two takedowns. One escape.
The referee holds up a hand, blows his whistle, and the time on the clock stops.
Blood time.
I look down at my shoulder and see droplets of blood slowly dripping down the outside of my arm. I swipe a hand under my nose and look down at it. It’s not mine.
Gabby comes across the mat, pulling on latex gloves as she gets closer to me. The athletic trainer for the other team goes to attend to my opponent, who is actually bleeding.
I felt it when it happened. My elbow caught his nose. It happens in wrestling.
Gabby wipes my arm with a cleaning wipe. “Are you okay?” she asks quietly. She looks everywhere but at me.
“It’s not my blood.”
I hate that we’ve ended up in this weird spot where she barely looks at me. We don’t talk. We don’t text. If I see her out in public or in the weight room, she gives me half a nod of acknowledgment.
But what I don’t understand is why she looks like a kicked puppy at every encounter. She’s the one who didn’t want to be with me. I invited her to stay the night, and it turned into an argument about my sexual past. I”m not going to lie—she hurt my feelings.
I look up and see that they’ve shoved a nasal plug up my opponent’s nose. It looks like a mini marshmallow, but it’s really more like a small tampon without a string. It keeps him from bleeding all over his singlet.
He gets five minutes for the bleeding to stop. If it doesn’t stop in five minutes, he forfeits, and I win. I dance in place to stay warm. It’s really easy to suffer an adrenaline dump when there’s a long break during a match.
I look over in the stands to find Matt, Sky, and my sisters all eagerly watching. Logan and Emily are with them. Logan holds up five fingers with his thumb toward his chest, the sign for fine, to ask if I’m all right. I nod and sign back to him, saying that I’m fine.
“You got some on your singlet,” Gabby says. She sprays a solvent on a cleaning wipe and lifts the strap of my singlet, scrubbing the tiny spot.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“It’s blood,” she reminds me.
Blood-borne pathogens can be dangerous, even for us. Hepatitis and HIV are only two things that get transmitted by blood-on-blood contact.
They pull the marshmallow from my opponent’s nose, wait a beat, and the referee motions for us to reset the match.
“Thanks,” I reply absently.
“No problem,” she says. That’s the closest I’ve been to her in almost two weeks.
She turns and wipes the last of the blood spray from the mat.
And I hate to see her go because, Jesus Christ, I have missed her.
As soon as I reset with my opponent, his nose starts to bleed again. This time, I don’t get any on me. It splatters on the mat instead after I grab his leg to take him down. He lands on his elbows, and the blood just flows.
The referee calls blood time again. This time, they use some skin adhesion liquid to keep the marshmallow in his nose.
Time starts again, and I get him in a cradle he can’t get out of. I win.
After the match, I take a shower and meet up with Matt, Sky, Logan, Emily, and my sisters in the café. Mellie and Joey attack me the minute I walk into the area.
“I just saw you last night,” I remind them, laughing. I saw them when I went to get my hair braided. I don’t need the braids, and I honestly just get them for two reasons— they keep my hair out of my eyes, and I get an excuse to go home. My apartment is quiet compared to the bustling atmosphere at home. Too quiet sometimes.
Sky passes me a hot chocolate she bought before I got here, and I sit down with them. Matt gives my sisters some quarters so they can play one of the arcade games in the corner.
The door opens, and my heart nearly stops. Gabby walks in. She instantly sees me, her gaze drops to the floor, and she walks over to the barista without saying a word. She does give a slight wave to the rest of the group.
Matt’s brow furrows, and Aunt Sky looks confused.
“What happened?” Logan asks abruptly.
I shrug. “Nothing happened.”
“I thought you guys were friends,” Logan says.
Emily and Sky look at one another, and an almost imperceptible message flies from one of them to another. They both get up and leave the table. They walk over to the arcade games, and I watch as Emily drops in a quarter, and Sky pretends to be really interested in what she’s doing.
I’m about to be ambushed. I can feel it.
I hold up a hand. “Don’t even start,” I warn.
“What did you do?” Logan asks with a smirk on his face.
“What makes you think I did anything?”
I look up as the bell over the door chimes, and I see Gabby walk out of the coffee shop without saying a word. My heart sinks.
Logan looks at Matt. “He did something stupid,” he says.
Matt replies, “He must have.”
“What makes you think it’s me?” I ask them.
Logan snorts but doesn’t say anything else.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say quietly.
Logan stares at me for a moment, and then he breaks into a grin. “Holy fuckballs, Batman,” Logan croons. “You love her.”
I sputter. “I barely know her.”
“You know her,” Logan replies.
Matt says nothing.
“I don’t know her very well, honestly.” Not nearly as well as I’d have liked to.
“You love her,” Logan says again.
I could have loved her, yeah. “No.”
“Want to talk about it?” Matt says. He sets his hot chocolate aside. He’s serious, as compared to Logan’s introspection, awe-struck expression, and not-so-subtle jabs.
“No.”
“Too fucking bad,” Logan says. “Spill it.”
“Logan,” Matt chides.
Logan says nothing. He just prompts me with a goading stare.
I shrug. “We’re different. That’s all.”
“You’re supposed to be different.” More staring. “Life would be boring if everyone was exactly the same.”
“True,” Matt says.
“We’re too different,” I say.
“In what way?”
I shrug again. The back of my neck itches.
“Spill it!” Logan barks. Then he grins. “If you want to.”
I sit back and take a deep breath. I look over and find Aunt Sky and Emily still pretending to be engrossed in the arcade game. They aren’t. But they’re making it look like they are.
“Have you ever had a seriously meaningful connection with someone?” Logan suddenly asks. He stares at me.
“I’ve had plenty of connections.”
He corrects me. “No, you’ve had plenty of sex. I said connection.” He enunciates the last word.
“I don’t know what that means.”
Logan glances over at Matt. “You might as well tell him,” Matt says.
Logan pretends to mull it over. Then he sighs heavily. “I used to have lots of sex,” Logan says.
“Used to?” I ask.
“Well, I still have plenty of sex, but I didn’t know what a connection was until I met Emily.”
Matt laughs out loud. “The night he brought Emily home for the first time, there’s another woman naked in his bed waiting for him.”
I sit forward. “Shut up.” How have I never heard this story?
“Emily was standing on the sidewalk, and I saw her shivering. We went for pie at the diner. We talked.”
I do know that part. Logan didn’t speak until he met Emily.
“It was cold outside, and she didn’t have anywhere to go,” Logan explains. “So, I tossed her over my shoulder and carried her to our apartment.”
“Where there was a blonde he’d fucked a few days before that. She’d come back for a repeat performance.” Matt chuckles. “Let’s just say sparks flew.”
Emily walks over. “That was when I threatened to wrap her extensions around her skinny neck because she spat in my face when she yelled at me,” she says with a shrug. “Do you have a quarter?” she asks Logan. She holds out a hand, and he digs in his pocket, pulls out a dollar, and hands it to her. She goes back to the game.
“So, yeah, that happened,” Logan says with a sigh. “We changed the sheets, and I gave her my bed for the night. She locked me out of my own room, and I went to the couch.”
“But the next morning, Paul went to wake him up, and he was wrapped around Emily.”
“No sex,” Logan explains. “And it was still one of the best nights of my life.”
He gets a dreamy look on his face, shakes his head like he’s shaking his happiness fog out of his mind, and sobers.
“I didn’t know what a connection was until I met her,” he says again. “It’s like a soul connection. Like when your soul just knows somebody.”
“She doesn’t want to know me,” I say quietly.
“What makes you say that?”
“I tried to make it more, and she wasn’t interested.”
“Sounds like trust issues to me. Can she trust you, Seth? Are you trustworthy?” Matt asks. “Or does she just think you’re looking to score?”
“I could have scored with somebody else,” I remind them. Then I decide just to blurt it all out. “I asked her to stay the night with me. We were at the neighbor’s apartment—long story, we were medicating cats—and we were taking my braids out. I fell asleep on the couch, and she was kind of tucked in the crook of my arm. We woke up around one in the morning. I invited her to stay at my apartment since it was late, and she declined. Then she got all weird. And then she said some things, and I said some things, and now we’re not talking.”
I haul in a breath because that was a lot.
“So why does she have that kicked puppy look?”
“So, a few nights later, I was at a bar with some teammates, and there was this girl there—Mimi. She was stinking drunk, like falling over drunk, and none of her friends were taking care of her. I know her from my chemistry class, and I kind of felt like the night just got away from her. I couldn’t just leave her there. I walked her back to her apartment, and I helped her get to bed. Alone! I put her to bed alone, but then she threw up. I didn’t feel right leaving her because I was afraid she’d choke or something, so I slept on the couch, and I checked on her during the night.”
“Good job, Seth,” Matt says quietly. “I’m proud of you.”
“But her apartment just happens to be in Gabby’s building, on the same floor. The next morning, after I gave Mimi a glass of water and a pain reliever, I left her apartment. Gabby saw me leaving.”
“And she thinks you fucked her,” Logan says.
I hold up my hands like I’m surrendering to the cops. “I didn’t.”
“But she thinks you did. That’s why she looks like somebody stabbed her in the chest.” Logan lets his head fall back as he groans. “You need to tell her,” he suddenly says. “You need to make it clear that you didn’t fuck anybody.”
“No.” I don’t want to tell her. I shouldn’t have to explain. “Absolutely not. If she thought the worst, that’s on her.”
And that sounds stupid, even to me.
“Jesus,” I say quietly. “Why do I even care what she thinks?”
A look passes between Logan and Matt. They grin at one another. “Yep,” they say at the same time.
“Just in case you don’t know what it feels like,” Logan says, “you’re in love with her.” He says the words slowly. You’re. In. Love. With. Her.
I scoff. “I am not.”
Logan chuckles. “Okay. You’re not.” He rolls his eyes.
I rest my elbows on the table and drop my face against my palms. I look up. “Is this what love feels like?”
Matt laughs. “Yes.”
“That feeling like you want to be with her all the time? Yes. That feeling like you can’t wait to tell her about something that happened? Yes. That feeling like she’s the only person you want when something goes wrong? Yes.” Logan grins. “That feeling like you really want to fuck her, but you don’t even want to fuck her because this is more. Yes.”
Matt shoves his shoulder. “Oh, shut up. Of course, he wants to fuck her.”
“He does want to fuck her, but he wants so much more!” Logan says vehemently. Then he grins maniacally. “So much more!” He shakes a fist in the air.
“Fuck you,” I say with a laugh. “Fuck both of you.”
They both smile.
Logan gets up. “My job here is done.”
“But mine’s not,” I mutter.
“What’s that?” Logan asks as he drops back into his chair. He looks from me to Matt like he’s waiting for someone to interpret.
“I need to go somewhere,” I say, getting to my feet.
“Yeah, you do,” Logan replies with a grin.
“I hate you both,” I say.
“We love you too,” Logan replies. He makes a shooing motion with his hands. “Get a move on.”
“I love you, Aunt Sky!” I call out. “Bye, Emily!”
They both give me absent waves.
I leave the coffee shop and go to Gabby’s apartment. My athletic bag still hitched over my shoulder. I knock with my heart in my throat.
I hear footsteps in the apartment, and I wait. My heart is now in my hand.
She opens the door. “Seth?” she says, looking around me. “What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t fuck Mimi,” I say.
She pulls her hoodie around herself, holding it tightly as she steps into the doorway and pulls the door behind her. She stands in the sliver of the opening. “What?” she asks.
“I didn’t fuck Mimi,” I say again. “I know you think I fucked Mimi because you saw me leaving her apartment in the morning. But I didn’t fuck her. I couldn’t have fucked her because all I can think about most days is you. I think about you twenty-four-seven. I saw Mimi at a bar, and she got wasted, and she needed to go home. I took her back to her apartment, poured her into bed—alone—and left her there. I stayed on the couch because she was throwing up. I was afraid she’d choke or something. Then I left the next morning. I never touched her. I wouldn’t touch her. And that’s mainly because all I can think about is touching you. I think about you all the time. And I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you, but I don’t really know what that feels like since I’ve never been in love. If this is what love feels like, I hate it because I feel like I don’t know up from down or red from blue. My life is upside down, but I couldn’t go another day without telling you that I didn’t fuck her. I didn’t fuck Mimi.” Finally, I stop my big old word vomit, and I look at her. I really look at her. She looks uncomfortable.
“Um, Seth,” she says.
“Do you believe me?” I ask with my heart still in my throat.
“Um,” she says again. She looks toward her apartment. Suddenly, a man’s hand lands on the door, and it opens slowly. Someone steps into space behind her. She jerks a thumb toward the man. “My pop is here,” she says with a grimace.
I swipe a hand down my face. “Of course he is,” I say quietly.
I just vomited every thought in my head, all over both of them.
“Seth,” the old man says with a nod.
“Mr. Jacobson,” I reply. “So good to see you.”
Mr. Jacobson looks at Gabby. “Who’s Mimi?” he asks her.
She points down the hallway. The apples of her cheeks are bright red. “She lives a few doors down.”
He looks at me. “And you didn’t fuck her.”
“Ah, no.” This is so weird. “I didn’t fuck her.”
He shrugs. “You should probably come inside, then,” he says. He steps to the side.
Gabby raises her eyebrows. “Do you want to come in?” she asks.
“Do you want me to come in?” I ask.
“Well, my heart just stopped when you told me that you didn’t fuck Mimi,” she says sheepishly, “so I wouldn’t be opposed to it.” She rushes to add, “But only if you want to. No pressure.”
I walk in. Mr. Jacobson smirks at me and shakes his head.
I’m an idiot.