47. Lily
CHAPTER 47
Iroll out of the side of the unfortunately familiar bed, squinting at the bright afternoon light blazing through the broken spot in the blinds. Hating myself for overindulging the night before at the Crowbar, I sit up as quietly as I can and hunt around for my underwear and clothes.
Dressed, I sneak out of the bedroom and grab my purse on the floor by the door, dodging the maid as I do. Fucking nepo-baby and his gorgeous apartment with his cleaning crew.
I let my hair fall to cover my face as I run on tiptoes down the brownstone steps, not that it does any good. Not by blocking the sun from my over-sensitive, hungover eyes, or from keeping my identity secret on my walk of shame. Anyone in Tuft Swallow could pick my bright red hair out of a lineup in a second: especially when it’s roughed up after a night of casual sex. Lord knows I’ve slept with enough of the men in this town that they’d recognize my sex hair when they see it.
But it’s Sunday afternoon, and most folks are either inside their homes or already invested in some activity that isn’t walking around the residential blocks of town. Not to mention, the whole team is probably still nursing hangovers after we all drank away our sorrows last night. No one is interested in showing their face today. Especially me.
I can’t believe I slept with him again.
I really need to start picking better coping mechanisms.
As I reach the front steps of the outside of my dingy apartment complex, my phone rings. Which is weird. I always prefer to text, so getting a phone call is super random.
Did he wake up and see I was gone?
Pft. As if.
Then I recognize the number. Brian?
“Hello?”
“Hey, Lily—sorry to call on a Sunday.”
“That’s okay. What’s up?”
I hear him inhale sharply, and my shoulders tense. This is weird. Something is wrong.
“Kodi’s disappeared.”
My heart stops. “What do you mean, disappeared?”
“We were going to have dinner with her parents today, and she apparently walked out on her mom a few hours ago. She was upset. Do you know where she could have gone?”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
I knew something like this could happen. She’s been getting better about practices, but this recent bout with her injury has been hard on her. And with yesterday’s loss…
But why would she run away?
That’s dumb. You know why.
I’ll be honest: I’m not the biggest fan of Kodi’s mom. In fact, for most of high school, I rarely came over to my best friend’s house because her mom is such a control freak. She’s obsessed with appearances, and never appreciated Kodi’s physical talents or love of sports, claiming it made her an “unapproachable tomboy.”
Because Kodi was almost always pulling extra hours at school for practices and training, she didn’t spend a ton of time at home. Linda Gander was something of a jailor to Kodi on evenings and weekends, forcing her to study or help her with chores in her limited free time.
When I finally got my driver’s license, I would drive over to Kodi’s place once or twice a week just to bust her out of there. I knew if I called and asked if she could come to the mall or a movie with me, Mrs. Gander would say no. But if I showed up at her house out of the blue, Mrs. Always-Be-Polite-And-Proper wouldn’t turn me away. If she did, the neighbors would talk, and she couldn’t have that.
Despite my prodding for Kodi and I to actually go to the mall or a movie whenever I’d kidnap her, we rarely did. Neither of us had a ton of pocket money (between sports and classes, neither of us had time for part-time jobs), so we’d usually just go for a drive. Our favorite place to go was the state park on the edge of Hawkthorne County: far enough from town that people rarely ventured out there except for the ornithological reserve near the welcome center.
There’s a hiking trail that borders a creek there, and a path that leads to a secluded lake that we loved to hang out and skip rocks at. We spent hours there the summer before senior year, talking about our future: her accepting a softball scholarship and going to college out of state, and me meeting my future husband at community college and starting a family.
As we got older, we had less and less in common. I knew that she was so ready to leave me behind, go off to school and never see me again. We’d been growing apart for years. But that summer? That summer, we had the lake.
And for a time, that was enough.
After she got injured, I had to hang out with her at her house. I refused to let Mrs. Gander stifle her with visions of sugarplums and debutante balls or whatever the hell kind of plans she envisioned for her temporarily-crippled daughter. It might have been her dream come true to see her daughter give up softball, but I knew that Kodi was absolutely crushed. She needed a friend then more than ever, and she needed a safe place to mourn the plans she’d had for the future.
By the time she was back in a walking brace, the first place we went was the lake. The trails weren’t easy, but her physical trainer told her uneven ground was good for her, so Kodi insisted. For a while, it was part of her rehab.
But then we were in different programs at community college, and she got an office job, and I…
No. I don’t need to think about that.
“Lily?” Brian’s voice cuts through the memories swirling through my head, and I snap out of the past. “Do you have any idea? Where she might have gone?”
“Yeah,” I croak. “I’ll drive.”
Brian and I meet at the Gander’s. Kodi’s mom is beside herself, tears streaking her typically immaculate mascara down her cheeks as Mr. Gander wraps a comforting arm around her shoulders. She keeps crying about Kodi’s escape being “all her fault,” and I can’t help a flare of satisfaction in my gut that ignites at her words.
About time you fucking realized it.
But before I can pile on her pity-party, Brian runs up to me. His face is splotchy and red in a way I’ve never seen before.
Has he been crying?
“You know where she might be?” His voice breaks halfway through his sentence.
I nod hesitantly. “I have an idea.”
Let’s just hope I know her as well as I think I do. With Kodi, I can never be quite sure.
My insecurity is nibbling at the edges of my brain as Brian and I climb into my Bug. He has to duck a little to climb into it, and his knees are folded up to his chest when he buckles in, which would paint a far funnier picture if we weren’t both worried about our girl.
If Kodi would only talk to me like an actual best friend, instead of holding everything in, I wouldn’t need to worry that this whole chase is in vain. No matter how hard I try to get her to open up, it’s always like pulling teeth to know anything that’s in that girl’s head.
And I’ve tried everything. Weekly hangouts, boring her to death with endless stories of my dating life, endless text messages…all just to get her to open up. I’ve tried asking her, pestering her, boring her—nothing works.
Or at least, nothing did. Until Brian came to town. And that brick wall she erected around herself slowly began to crumble.
I glance over at him in the passenger’s seat as I look both ways at a stop sign, before pulling onto County Route 16. He’s tapping his fingers on his knees, leaned forward and half-hugging himself awkwardly in the tight space.
“You know you can lean the seat back, right? Or move the whole seat; the release is underneath.”
“Oh.” He adjusts it until he almost resembles a normal-sized human. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. You’re taller than my usual passengers.”
He quirks an eyebrow at that, but doesn’t say anything. “So where are we going?”
I take a deep breath. “Cardinal Lake. Or, at least, the state park welcome center where the trail head is. We’ve got a bit of a hike to get to the actual lake itself. Not sure how far Kodi would have gotten with her crutches.”
“She’s gone to a hiking trail? With her injuries?” Brian asks, dumfounded.
I shrug. “She’s always been one to power through. Does it surprise you?”
“I guess not.” He bites his lip. “But I would’ve hoped she’d learn better by now.”
That makes two of us.
A few silent minutes pass, and I turn on the radio to give my fingers a beat to twitch to. It’s about a 25-minute drive out to the edge of the county, and Brian and I aren’t exactly besties. But I can’t help but wonder how he’s so oblivious to what’s going on with his girlfriend. I’ve never seen Kodi listen to anyone the way she does with Brian. For once, her hard-headedness seems to have found its match. Or maybe he’s impressed her enough with his various skills to actually warrant her attention?
Either way, she’s actually listening to a doctor’s advice for the first time since her post-surgery PT didn’t go as well as she’d hoped. She went through the normal six-week recovery routine after she tore her ACL, but got frustrated with the fact that she couldn’t run or train the way she used to.
When her doctors told her that might just be her lot in life now, she refused to accept it; she tried every diet and exercise program she could find to bring her full range of motion back, but with the lack of actual direction she started to flounder.
It didn’t help that, at the time, she was still living at home, and her dad would come back from golf with some new idea Coach Blevins had come up with to get her back to “tip-top shape” again.
What a hack. I think it was after he’d suggested taking cold, hour-long baths everyday to “re-invigorate her brown tissue to promote healing” in her leg that I finally convinced her it was time to move out of her parent’s house. It wasn’t enough that he had to push her to her breaking point back in high school, but now that she’d graduated, he had to control her through her dad?
Being away from all of that is good for her.
“Hey, I have a question for you,” Brian asks, turning down the radio.
“Yeah?”
“Your old softball coach. Was that Lyle Blevins?”
I almost stop the car. Was he reading my fucking mind? “Uh, yeah. Why?”
“He was at golf.” He makes a face.
I look over at him, and we meet eyes. “Fuck that guy,” I say, and Brian’s eyes widen for a second, before he lets out a relieved laugh.
“Seriously. My thoughts exactly.”
The tension in the car snaps a little bit, and suddenly it feels like I can actually breathe again. I didn’t even realize how heavy the air had been until he started laughing. “What the hell is that guy’s problem?”
“He likes to convince everyone he knows better than them. And preying on high school kids makes that real easy for him.” The steering wheel squeaks under my hands, and I realize my knuckles are white from gripping it so hard. I consciously remind myself to relax.
“He’s the one that pushed Kodi to the breaking point?” Brian asks.
I nod, not trusting my voice when it comes to that asshole.
“Coach, my shoulder’s not feeling great.”
Kodi’s voice was hesitant in the dugout. We just wrapped up the sixth inning, and we were only up by one. For the first time in twelve years, Eagle View made it to the State Championship, and it was almost entirely on Kodi’s shoulders as our star pitcher. No wonder they were sore.
“Maybe you should take a break, Kodi. Have Lindsey sub in for you for the last inning. Kayla and I can totally get a few runs in–”
“Are you outta your damn mind, Cooper?” Coach’s grubby, gray eyes were practically bugging out of his head as he snapped at me. I shrank back, and Kodi glared at me for speaking up. But I’d been watching her rolling her shoulder after every pitch for almost a week. I knew she’d been icing it after practices, too, even the extra ones Coach had been forcing her to do three or four times a week since we won County. “You sit out this inning. Drink some water or something. Gander, we need you out there. Forget your shoulder. You throw with your whole damn body, you hear me? I wanna see you pitch from the tips of your toes!”
“Yes, sir!” Kodi shouted, letting go of her arm and thrusting it into the middle of the huddle. “We can do this, guys! Let’s show ‘em!”
I didn’t realize at the time how stupid his advice was, if you can even call it advice. Kodi’s form got worse and worse throughout the inning, and between every pitch she was shaking out her arm.
How was no one noticing how uncomfortable she was?
She’d been training nonstop for months. She was clearly overworked, tired, and needed a break. But Coach kept shouting at her.
“Come on, Gander! Power through the pain! You’re not gonna feel it once we win this thing!”
From the bench, I could see it when she started to compensate for how tired her shoulder was. She started twisting at the waist more first—that got two batters on bases. Then she started to twist at her hips.
“Harder, Gander! What the hell is wrong with you? Speed, Kodi, we’ve talked about this!”
“Shut up, you fucking slavedriver,” I muttered. “She’s tired. Give her a break.”
But Kodi didn’t stop. She shot a pained grin over her shoulder at the dugout, signaled the batter, and then made the most desperate attempt yet.
I watched as she wound up with her whole body, lifting her knee up to her chest for a full second before launching her torso forward and slamming her ankle down into the ground, twisting from her knees to her shoulder as she launched the ball from her hand.
I saw her face scrunch up in a wince when she unwound, favoring her knee as if she strained it, which she obviously did. She threw the next three pitches the same way. And then she ran the whole rest of the inning on it.
But it wasn’t until she was up to bat with two outs and no one on the bases that she really fucked it up. She’d practically limped up to home base to swing, Coach still refusing to let me bat for her. As if she still had to prove herself to him. As if she hadn’t done enough.
She was so tired. When she swung, it connected—but it didn’t go nearly as far into the outfield as she needed. She threw herself into a sprint, rounding second when she should have stayed put, only to miscalculate as the shortstop ran towards her with the ball.
She twisted one more time into a slide, dropping all of her weight onto her strained knee, only for the catcher to ram into her from the side.
“Gaaaaaughghh!!!”
“Out!”
I can still hear the scream.
“He’s the one.”
Brian shakes his head. Even though Coach is the last person in the world I’d ever want to talk about, I’m relieved to see that Brian can tell just how terrible he is. And he gathered that from one golf game.
I wish the rest of the town had been better at seeing through his act. Before he’d ruined Kodi’s life. Although…I look at Brian a little more closely in my periphery.
Maybe her life isn’t ruined after all. Maybe he can help her fix it.
I pull into the Welcome Center parking lot, and Brian and I both get out of the car. Sure enough, Kodi’s Subaru is parked in the far corner of the lot by the trail head. My whole body sinks into a sigh of relief.
“She’s here!”
Clouds have rolled in while we were driving, and I feel the wind picking up as it licks its cold tendrils across my exposed arms when we jog across the lot. Brian follows my lead as I head down the left-most fork toward the lake trail.
“It’s gonna storm,” he shouts over the increasing wind. “The ground is going to get slippery, we need to find her!”
“It’s just another half mile or so. We’ll make it!” Even as I say the words, another gust whips them out of my mouth before I’m sure they can carry back to Brian.
Summer thunderstorms are worse out this way, as elevation changes are more severe. That summer, when this was our place, Kodi and I got caught in a few big storms. We’d hole up in the picnic shelter and play M.A.S.H. or write ridiculous stories in whatever composition notebook we’d thrown in our backpacks while munching on squashed granola bars.
It’s there that we find her, right as the storm breaks, rocking back and forth and shivering with her arms wrapped around her good knee on top of one of the picnic tables.