57. Kodi
CHAPTER 57
“I’m so, so sorry.”
I’m standing in the doorway of Lily’s crappy studio apartment, feeling like the shittiest friend of all time. I haven’t been here since I helped her move in almost a year ago, and I had to scour our text messages on my phone to find the apartment number. Looking around, I can see why she always wants to hang out at the bar or the park or literally anywhere other than here. Not that she doesn’t take care of it–but the hissing fluorescent lighting that is at once too bright and insufficient coupled with the stained ceilings and peeling wallpaper would be difficult for anyone to brighten up.
It’s a straight line from the front door to her bed. Callie invites me in, and Lily just stares at me, clutching a pink pillow animal to her chest.
“You’re just saying that because you need me for the team.”
Oof. I deserve that. But it still stings to hear her, in her own words, admit that she doesn’t think I care about her.
I squeeze the friendship journal tighter, and say the next words slowly, trying not to deny how much I’ve hurt her. “I do need you on the team, yes. But if I had to choose between you coming to the game on Saturday, or you coming to Girls’ Night on Monday, it would be Girls’ Night every week of the year.”
She snorts, the sound coming out squelchy and wet from the tears that have started flowing down her cheeks. “Yeah right.”
“Listen to her, Lily.”
Callie nods at me, and I hold out the notebook. “I want to remember who I was before I lost the championship. Before all I cared about was sports and winning. I don’t want to give them up entirely–because it’s still a part of me–but I’ve got too much,” I suck in a breath, “trauma around all of that for it to be my whole identity anymore.”
Lily’s eyes widen, darting from me to the notebook in my hands.
“You kept this? All these years?”
I nod, gesturing for her to take it.
She does, flipping through the pages and shaking her head. “I didn’t think you even cared about stuff like this anymore.”
“I’m not going to pretend that it’s been hanging on my wall or anything. It was under my crutches in the closet,” I admit. “But I never would have thrown it away. Ever. And I don’t think finding it again now was a coincidence.”
It wasn’t, of course, because Brian found it and gave it to me on purpose. But that doesn’t change the fact that both he and Lily were totally right: I need my friends. And needing someone to remind me of that doesn’t diminish the realization.
It proves it.
“I’m sorry that I don’t talk about my problems. That it takes so much poking and prodding to get me to tell you anything. I just–ever since I had to change gears after that game, when my whole life just imploded, it felt like I couldn’t lean on anybody. And I was too broken to realize how much you helped me through all of that.
“It was so hard for me to see the joy in life, to see anything other than what I’d had as worth fighting for, you know? I was terrified to think that I might find something better, only to have it all taken away again.
“Maybe I was even pushing you away. Assuming you’d find what you actually wanted and move on, too, leaving me alone again. I felt alone, like no one understood, so I ended up forcing that belief on the only people who did. Like you.”
“Jeez, Kodi, did you like, go to therapy or something?”
I laugh, and it feels so good I want to cry all over again. “No, although I probably should. But now that I’ve been healing physically, finally, I think that’s starting to loosen up all of the emotional crap that’s been locked up in my injury all this time. You know?”
“I know that you have a sexy, mature chiropractor who’s been pushing your buttons,” she smirks.
“And it sounds like he also maybe helped talk you through some of this just now,” Callie adds.
I feel the blush bloom on my cheeks, and I shuffle my toes on the ratty carpet. “Well, yeah, maybe. I mean, this is why I need people in my life, okay? You guys to help me know when I’m being an asshole, and Brian to help me know why I’m being an asshole.”
Lily gets up and wraps her arms around me. I squeeze her back, and we stay like that for a moment.
Still holding me, she says, “you know what? That sounds like an alright arrangement.”
“So you forgive me?” My words come out muffled as my face squishes into her hair.
“Yeah, girl. I forgive you.”
“Thank God,” Callie sighs, throwing her arms around us and squeezing until Lily’s boobs start to push the air from my lungs. “Now, what are we going to do about the match on Saturday?”
“You mean, you still want to play?” I blink at them, and Lily rolls her eyes.
“Uh, duh, bitch, we’re not going to let you lose another championship.”
“Especially one as important as this.”
I look back and forth between my oldest friend and my newest one, and for the first time feel like it isn’t all up to me. “That’s amazing. Because I could really use your help.”
Spitz-Shein Soars Whilst Swallow Squad Splinters
Good news for folks with local investments: Hawkthorne County employer Spitz-Shein Inc.’s stock prices soared yesterday, bringing some outside enthusiasm close to the roost. Apparently, talks of acquisition of the Spitz Hollow start-up by tech giants in San Francisco and Seattle are the cause of the bump. Morale was high in the neighboring township yesterday which caused some rowdy crowds; calls to Tuft Swallow PD kept Chief Woodcock and his team busy writing tickets for public indecency and vandalism near the town line.
Although rumor has it the Spitters had a second reason to celebrate: The Mighty Swallows may not have the number of players they need to qualify for the Championship match-up this weekend. For the first time in League history, we’ve seen a mass exodus of players from the team. The culprit?
Our anonymous sources point to none other than former star pitcher Kodi Gander who, as you all know, is kicking off her tenure as cornhole team captain with some questionable decisions. Romantic entanglements with the new town chiropractor, Dr. Gosling, may be the cause for her shifting mood throughout the season. Although no one can deny that the recovery from her mid-season injury has been impressive—benefit to getting handsy with a healer, one might say!
Jury’s still out on whether or not Gander will be able to win over enough skilled players to defend our unbroken championship record. But for the sake of all of us Nosy Peckers, we can only hope she and her few remaining teammates can pull off a miracle.
I crumple up the paper and toss it in the deserted waiting room trash. I don’t need to worry about what anybody is saying about me in the Pecker. I’m doing everything I can to right this sinking ship—with a little help from my friends. And if, at the end of the day, we’ve done everything we can and it still isn’t good enough?
Well, I guess we’ll have to forfeit.
And…that’s okay.
Really.
I can live with that.
“Miss Gander!” I jump as Dr. Cratchet bursts into the entrance to the clinic, sleigh bells crashing in a cacophonous alarm above his head. “Do you have a copy of that insufferable gossip rag?”
“I just threw it away, sir.”
“Well retrieve it at once!”
His eyes practically pop through the lenses of his fogged glasses as he rushes to my side, pushing my shoulder back down into the trash can.
“Sir–stop–”
“Quickly, quickly, this is of utmost importance!”
My fingers snatch the crumpled ball from the rest of the garbage and I toss it to him. He flinches.
“Oh, my that simply won’t do,” he mutters, throwing it back onto the floor and scuffling off to my chair in the office where he pulls up the browser on my computer. “I’ll need to snare a copy from the deli on my way to lunch. I’m rich, I’m rich!”
By the time I clean up his mess and follow hurricane Cratchet into the office, he’s pointing at some numbers on a screen and clapping his hands together in glee. The wisps of white hair bounce around his crown as he does a little wiggle in the wheely chair.
“It’s a good thing I was proactive in hiring you assistance, Miss Gander. It looks as though you’ll be needing it!”
“Sir, what are you talking about?”
He points at the screen, and I peer over his shoulder.
And my jaw drops.
“Is that…seven zeros after that number?”
“Oh dear, I did advise you to invest your paycheck wisely, Miss Gander. To think where you might be if only you had listened to your elders!”
He pops up from the chair, giving me a patronizing pat on the head as he does, before grabbing his man purse from the island and darting back into the waiting room.
“Cancel all my appointments from now ‘til forevermore! Ms. Bailey will be here on Monday to start her new position as head practitioner of the Tuft Swallow Clinic. She can deal with the lot of you ungrateful scallywags. I, delightfully and wealthfully, resign!”
I follow him, pausing in the middle of the floor as he once again swings open the door and sets the sleigh bells into song. “Sir, don’t you want to close out of your account before–?”
“You’ve been a perfectly satisfactory employee all these years, Miss Gander. I thank you for your mediocrity. Now I’m off to catch a cruise to the Dominican–don’t try to reach me! I won’t be caught dead wasting any of my hard-earned fortune on Royal Caribbean’s superfluous wiffy.”
I blink. “You mean wifi, sir?”
He places a hand on my shoulder and sighs. “This is the kind of millennial knowledge that will serve you well as you flounder in the absence of my tutelage, Dakota. May God bless you for the rest of your pitiable working-class existence.”
“Um. Sure. Thank you, sir.”
With that, he skips down to the sidewalk, and the door jangles closed.
I guess this means I can text at work now.
After canceling all of Dr. Cratchet’s appointments for the next week, starting with calling all of today’s patients, I print out a sign for the front door of the clinic that reads Closed for Change of Management. Then it’s phone calls with different members of the board for the next hour. The chairwoman assures me that my job is still secure, but tells me I can take the rest of the day off while they figure out the plan moving forward.
Which gives me almost twenty-four hours to prepare for tomorrow.
Me
So it looks like I have the rest of the day off? You’ll never guess why. Want me to bring you lunch at the salon and we can brainstorm my grand gesture of apology to the team?
Lily
Ooh, yes. I’m craving wings.
Hope you’re also craving tea… ??