Chapter 28
Miller
She’s almost shy the entire two-and-a-half-hour drive to the cottage.
She runs a hand along the tan leather and wood adornments on the dash, mouth lifting at the side when she whispers, “Practical,” and settles back into the worn leather seat.
She talks, but less than usual, and I think, more than once, I catch her glancing sideways at me, blue eyes caught on the corner of my mouth before she stares back at the road, hands shoved firmly under her thighs.
She bounces those a lot, actually. The frays dangling off the hem of her denim shorts sway against the smooth skin of her legs, and she knocks her knees together.
We’ve texted a bit over the last week—just the usual. Pictures of Victor in the dugout, pictures of the new exhibit coming together. Her and Imani at some college sports bar, watching the game and celebrating her finishing an interview for that job. Wanted to die, when I saw that one come in.
Nothing about that almost kiss that fucked up my entire life in the best and worst ways.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think, maybe, she was as nervous as I am to spend three days together, just us, my thoughts about her, and whatever it is she does to my heart for company.
And I imagine what Matty might say if he was here.
The way he’d have given her the front seat, the way Ren would have had something teasing to say about our shared chivalry—they’d get along, I think—but he’d catch my eye in the rearview, he’d grab my shoulders, give them a little shake and whisper, not at all that quietly, that I should give it a chance.
She might like me after all, I’m not that bad.
She’s more herself when I pull into the stretching driveway, gravel crunching under the tires and the heavy branches, laden down with bright green summer leaves, whispering over the roof, and when I turn the last corner, the cottage comes into view.
Nestled into the top of the hill, stretching down the slope towards the water, the oak siding shines, and the wraparound, floor-to-ceiling windows wink in the sun.
She hops out of the car, interlacing her fingers and stretching her arms over her head as she tips from side to side.
I stare pointedly at the gravel, so I don’t see the glimpse of skin when her top shifts away from the waist of her denim shorts.
She whistles, smacking my shoulder when we walk inside, whispering, “I knew I made the right choice when picking a father for Victor.”
My heart kicks up with the side of my mouth. “He’ll be well taken care of, yeah.”
I’d take care of you too, I think. The way you took care of me. If you’d let me.
“I knew it would be nice, but I didn’t think—” She tosses me exaggerated wide eyes over her shoulder, but they catch in the afternoon sunlight and turn into another colour I’ve never seen, and I think my knees might give out.
Ren gestures around, tipping her chin up to the vaulted ceiling, and I think I can see her pulse flitting beneath her skin along the side of her neck.
My hand twitches at my side. I think I’d like to drag my thumb across it, probably the closest I’d ever come to actually feeling what it might be like to hold Ren Jacobs’s heart.
She turns back to me with a shake of her head, sending red-wine hair tumbling down her shoulders. “Good use of that hard-earned money.”
“I, uh, don’t work that hard.”
She gives me a flat look. “How many games do you play in a season?”
“A lot,” I answer lamely.
“Imani tells me shortstops typically report to spring training in March, too. So, you work, what? Almost six or seven months straight with minimal days off?” She wrinkles her nose. The strap of her tank top slips down the skin of her shoulder and she lifts it. “More than most people.”
“Yeah, well—” I tug at the brim of my hat. “Most people would still say I’m grossly overpaid.”
“Ask them if they want to trade knee and elbow joints with you when they’re thirty-five,” she says wryly. “Trust me.” She points down at her legs. “Thirty-two-year-old knees aren’t for the faint of heart.”
“I like your knees,” I blurt.
She takes a soft inhale. “My knees?”
“Yeah—” I pinch the bridge of my nose to hide my wince. “They’re nice.”
Her bottom lip dips, and the corners of her eyes crease, all apprehensive, but she whispers a soft “Thank you” before she makes a show of looking around, tipping forward on her heels. “I heard a rumour.”
“Oh yeah?” The corner of my mouth lifts in relief. I don’t know how I’m going to survive being here with her when I’m saying dumb shit like “I like your knees.” Maybe I should wear a sign that says: I have a crush on Ren Jacobs and she’s way out of my league. I swallow. “What’s that?”
She makes a come-here motion with her hand, and against my better judgement, I angle my head down, closer to her and just a breath away.
There’s a faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and I start to count them, but she interrupts with a conspiratorial whisper.
“Imani told me professional baseball players are some of the highest paid athletes.”
I shake my head and lose count of the freckles. “Nah. Basketball and professional soccer have us beat.”
“She’ll be sorely disappointed to hear she didn’t invest her energy and statistical mind in the highest paid athletes, then.
” She rocks back on her heels, and her eyes sweep over everything again, but I notice she stares a bit longer out the window, down towards the dock and the waiting boat.
Her voice drops, gentle, when she asks, “What did you two do . . . when you came here together?”
“We didn’t get to spend a lot of time here together in the summer, actually.
Maybe two days if we were lucky.” I swallow—we were, lucky.
To have each other. Or maybe it was just me who was the lucky one, to have a best friend and brother and the best person on the planet for twenty-seven whole years.
I curve the brim of my hat under my palms. “Matty came up more than me. Pitchers typically get more rest. So, uh, nothing?”
“Nothing?” she asks, teasing.
“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t—think this through.” My cheeks burn, and I lift a hand uselessly. “There’s food and we could go into town. You can swim off the dock, we could take the boat out and—”
But she looks at me, eyes bright and alive, cheeks pillowed and soft, full lips moving together when she says, “I’d love to do nothing with you.”
Doing nothing with her turns out to be the best thing I’ve ever done.
It’s showing her around the rest of the cottage while she tells me what she’s going to take if I default on my child support to Victor.
It’s dying inside when she steps out of the guest room in this white bathing suit. The top tied around her neck, messing up her hair I’d love to run my fingers through. The bottom knotted right where her waist dips into the swell of her hips that I’d give anything to grab onto and never let go of.
It’s her, leaning across the kitchen island, plucking an apple from a fruit bowl the housekeeper left out.
The way she tries to toss it in the air but ends up dropping it, her head tipped back in laughter while her hair tumbles down her back.
How her fingers brush mine when I pick it up and hand it to her.
It’s telling her you can sometimes see turtles off the edge of the dock, and when she leans down to look, already talking about extinct species in the fossil record from over 230 million years ago, it’s me, sprinting across the wood, wrapping my arms around her waist, and sending us both careening into the cold water.
It’s the way she sputters, eyes wide and mouth parted, until she bursts out laughing again, splashing me in the face. The way we fight like kids until she climbs on top of my shoulders and says she’s the winner because I cheated when I knocked her into the water without warning.
It’s her lips, poised at the precipice of a perspiring bottle of beer while she sits, propped up on her elbows, and we watch ducks swim across the lake.
It’s the lazy feeling of the sun dropping lower and lower in the sky, dipping the world into dusk, but we’re still out there, stretched out along the dock, talking about anything and everything and nothing all at once.
And somehow, all that nothing rips out a page in the history book of me and Matty—the one from the chapter where it all ended—and she writes over it in messy scrawl, Ren Jacobs was here, and it doesn’t hurt so bad anymore to read it again.