Chapter Thirty-Three Keely
Chapter Thirty-Three
Keely
Keely was ready to be home. She’d driven into town first thing this morning for a children’s book she wanted for her weekly visit to Mrs. Kershaw’s classroom. The bookstore’s website said it was in stock, but neither she nor the employee could find it.
The kids loved the one she’d chosen instead, which was all that mattered, but she still wanted to teach them about unicellular ocean organisms. So after that afternoon’s reading, she drove to the next town over, forgoing her self-imposed afternoon study block in place of nabbing the book.
Now, Keely tumbled through her front door, delirious, ravenous, and—
Ran straight into Nolan, still tugging his shirt over his head.
“Whoa,” he said, wrapping his hands lightly around her elbows.
He hadn’t knocked her off balance physically. It was him here, in this current state of undress and what that implied, that made Keely sway.
Over his shoulder, Zoey popped up from the couch. “What’s wrong?” She was fully dressed, but she wiped hastily at her mouth. “Oh. Hey, Keely. I was going to text you.”
“I’m sure you were,” Keely said. “Busy day?”
“We were working on my final anatomy project.”
Keely hooked her keys by the door. She could see how Nolan might need to be shirtless for that.
“I should go.” Nolan shot Zoey a look so intimate, Keely had to turn away.
“See you.” Zoey waved back and gave him a soft smile. “And thanks again for your help.”
“Any time.” He reached for the door again.
Keely started forward. “Um, wait. I have a question.”
Nolan nodded. “Go for it.”
“Have you—have you seen Max recently? Is he okay?” It might have betrayed his trust, and she already knew the answer, but sometimes you learned less from an answer and more from how someone reacted to the question itself.
Nolan’s soft mouth fell. “I don’t know, Keely. I wish I did.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “If it makes you feel better, he hasn’t been. . . all there lately. At practice. I think he’s going through something. With his—”
He shut his jaw so fast Keely heard his teeth clack together. He glanced toward the door.
“With his dad,” she murmured, taking a guess. “It’s okay. I know.”
Relief relaxed Nolan’s shoulders. “Maybe ask him about that?”
Just one problem—she needed to see Max to ask him about that. Watch his expression for anger, fear, a tightening of his mouth. Depending on what she saw, she’d most likely want to leave time to wrap him up in a hug, because she wasn’t sure anyone had ever done that for him.
Which is exactly why, two days later, she showed up at the track after his morning practice.
Nolan elbowed him in the side, and Max’s single-shouldered backpack slipped to the crook of his arm. His face lit up with an eye-crinkling smile, and Nolan nudged him again. Max shoved him back this time, mouth opening on a laugh Keely couldn’t hear yet.
Her heart swelled. Butterflies crawled into her throat. Her knees felt the way they had that night in her bed, when they’d squeezed Max’s ribcage.
“Oh,” she exhaled under her breath. She didn’t need that particular reminder.
When she absolutely couldn’t stand the distance, she closed it, taking two large strides forward and going in for a hug. She missed him, dammit, scholarship or no.
“I’m sweaty,” he mumbled, but she was already burying her face in his chest.
It was a little gross, but he mostly smelled like Max—hard work, diligence, perseverance. His sharp muscles stood out beneath his form-fitting shirt, Abe the ash borer smiling right back at Keely.
He inhaled deeply enough that his ribcage expanded under her palms, and a low sound of satisfaction rumbled under her ear. She clasped her hands behind his back and let out a contented sigh into his chest.
Max laid his chin on top of her head. Wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Tugged her closer like he missed her too.
Which was completely his fault, but she could pick that apart later when she didn’t feel like throwing him to the pavement and mounting him.
She tiptoed up to kiss him, but paused. There were other people around, and they hadn’t discussed their situation yet, much less whether they were comfortable with PDAs.
His brow dipped below the locks of damp hair on his forehead. He cupped her jaw, bringing his mouth down on hers. A quick peck, but a hard, claiming one. Nolan still managed to squeeze in a wolf whistle.
Max pulled back. “You don’t ever have to hesitate to kiss me, Key.” He slid his hand from the side of her face all the way down her arm, where he twined their fingers. “What are you doing here?”
She licked her lips—salt and Max sang on her tongue. “I wanted to see you. My morning study session got cancelled, so I’m heading to the library and dragging you with me.”
They fell into step together, and she didn’t know how something so new could be so natural.
“How am I supposed to say no to someone this pretty?”
Nolan cooed. “You say no to me all the time.”
Keely and a few others around them laughed.
Max threw up a hand. “I get it. Be nicer to people.”
After they ducked inside Athletics so Max could grab his stuff from his locker—The Locker, Keely’s brain renamed it—Nolan peeled off, and Max and Keely stopped at the Q for sustenance.
She got to see what went into Max’s protein shakes, and she grabbed them three eggwiches to split as they walked to the library. It was hard to hold them all, plus eat one, while she was holding Max’s hand. But she didn’t let go.
She hoped he’d bring up the other day on his own, tell her why he’d canceled, but she’d give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Maybe Nolan was right, and something really was going on with his dad.
At their usual table in the library, Keely had spread out her notebooks and flashcards, plus her detailed finals study guide. Her phone vibrated.
The unknown caller ID made her pulse jump. It’s nothing, she told herself. There probably wasn’t even a real person on the other end, just some automated something that would do more to ratchet her anxiety than anything.
Still. She couldn’t let it ring out.
“I need to take this,” she said, giving Max a wooden smile.
She tucked herself in the stacks and listened intently, jotting notes on her phone when she needed to.
When she came back, Max’s leg bounced wildly under the table, his thumb drumming against the side of his trackpad. He stopped when he noticed her. “Everything okay?”
She nodded, too vigorously, if her hair clip sliding down was any indication. “All good.”
“Was that. . .” He glared at his screen, but his eyes didn’t move. “About the scholarship?”
“What?” Keely sat back in her chair, ice spreading over her skin. “No. I haven’t submitted that yet. There’s still two weeks.”
He nodded once, but his knee still bounced under the table. It shook the water in her bottle.
“Have you submitted yours?” she prompted, the thought running rampant through her worst nightmares.
“No,” he said.
“Good.” She picked at the empty wrapper from her sandwich. “I was sort of hoping we’d submit them together.”
He stopped glaring at his screen and his gaze jumped to her instead. He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “Why?”
His face swam with doubt, and she had an overwhelming, heartbreaking realization that Max had been balancing on one foot his entire life, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
If she could pull this off—if the phone call panned out—he wouldn’t need to do that anymore.
Not with her.
“We’ve done this entire thing together so far, Max.” She moved her hand forward, bumping his pinkie beside his laptop. “I figured we’d see it through to the end. Fair and square, like I said from the start.”
Her phone lit up again. She slid her hand forward and dimmed the screen.
The corner of his mouth dipped down, but he still nodded. “Fair and square.”
His smile didn’t touch his eyes.
· · · · ·
Max thought Keely was hiding something.
It was in his shoulders whenever her phone buzzed on the table or her email dinged. Whenever she ran late to their study sessions. The casual questions with hidden barbs.
And, well—he wasn’t exactly wrong.
It sounded worse than it was.
This had nothing to do with him, and she was still figuring it out for herself.
Turns out, making a spring-semester-senior-year career pivot was really damn hard, more so when she was considering switching disciplines completely.
Keely wanted to teach.
She’d realized it while drafting the latest version of her essay, and the conversation in Dr. Goff’s office had confirmed it.
A tiny ember in Keely’s heart glowed like neon every time she let herself think about the “what if.” Each Thursday night, she stared at her ceiling, mind racing with anticipation and hope at what new discovery the children would make during her Friday-morning reading session.
It was the exact opposite of her Sunday Scaries. Those filled her stomach with rocks; teaching, witnessing the moment someone understood a concept because of something she said? Keely was capable of magic in those moments. Better, she gave other people magic. Even tutoring Max sparked it.
She still couldn’t bring herself to open up to anyone about it. She’d drafted no less than four emails to Dr. Goff, only to send them straight to the garbage.
This was one of the first things in life she’d picked for herself, and she was worried the second she spoke it out loud, it would slip through her fingers, dissolve back into her dreams, but she owed it to herself to try.
So she’d put out some feelers, reached out to a few nearby schools about their education programs, and had placed some calls about next steps, which she was half-heartedly looking into.
It might not even be viable, but she had to do something.
Had to convert her thoughts into action, so it didn’t feel like she was just. . . standing still.
Teaching felt the same way science did: exhilarating and calming at the same time. And if she ever found a way to combine them—say, as a science teacher, perhaps—she was pretty sure she’d die of happiness.
“What’s that?” Zoey said from behind her.
Scratch that—she was going to die of a heart attack, right here at her kitchen table.
Keely slammed her laptop closed; she hadn’t heard Zoey come out of her bedroom. Usually on Mondays she holed up in there to watch Italian-dubbed, English-captioned reality television. She preferred it over Duolingo.
“Nothing.” She blinked. “Just looking at some stuff for the fall.”
A stretch, but not a lie.
Zoey pulled a bottled water from the fridge, and Keely stopped vibrating with fear long enough to actually see her best friend.
Zoey’s raven-black hair bounced in curls around her high bun, and a coral romper lit up her warm bronze skin. Even without the blush on her cheeks or the gloss on her lips, the glow in her eyes would have given her away.
“Hot date?” Keely guessed.
“I’m going to dinner with Nolan.” Zoey’s response was clipped, but Keely still caught the tail end of a smile.
Their relationship had improved only marginally since the auction. While Keely didn’t think Zoey had been faking her gratitude, they hadn’t gone back to how they’d been at the beginning of the semester, either. Gone were their weekly grocery runs, the sneaking into the locker rooms.
The grad school housing decision was looming closer, just weeks behind the scholarship deadline, and they all compounded in her head, giving Keely one massive headache, right behind her forehead.
She hadn’t looked at her planner at all today because there were too many boxes, too much to do, too many people to disappoint.
Keely grinned. “Have fun.”
Zoey nodded, eyeing the laptop again. “You too.”
“Oh, you know me. Night full of studying!” Keely imbued her voice with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, but when that didn’t work, she added a truth. “Max might come over later.”
Zoey made a noise in the back of her throat. “Is that so?”
Keely’s mind was already too full to parse the subtext.
Her mind had been wandering for hours about what she and Max would get up to tonight. The permutations were endless. They could study—which they both probably needed. Or they could kiss.
Or something in between. A kiss for every page of homework flipped. A graze of teeth for every question answered correctly. A wandering hand because she wanted to.
She was still new at. . . at being. . . whatever they were. In a relationship? Friends with benefits? Though her thoughts toward Max were the farthest thing from friendly.
After Zoey had left, Keely picked up her phone and called him when her eyes glazed over and wouldn’t come unstuck. Seemed she wasn’t going to be able to focus until he was here anyway, for better or worse.
The line clicked.
“Hey.” She grinned at her now-dimmed computer screen. Was there still banana smashed in the corner? She picked at it with her thumbnail. “What time are you coming over? Because not to jump to conclusions, but Zoey’s going out with Nolan, which means—”
“I have to rain check,” he interrupted, then cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. My track times right now are. . . not cutting it, so I’m going to put a few extra hours in. Coach offered to stay behind with me.”
Her shoulders fell, her hand stilling on the screen. A flake of dried banana fell off and lodged near the escape key. “Oh.” She blinked unseeing. “Is, um—is your dad—”
“He’s fine.”
She nodded feebly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just. . . I can’t let my training slip, Key. Not now. Not when I’m so close. It—you know what happened last year. I won’t let it happen again.”
“I understand,” she mumbled. She ground her back molars together, and the silence stretched between them like a canyon. She only released her breath when her chest clawed for oxygen, when she realized he didn’t have anything else to say. “I’ll see you when I see you, I guess.”
For the next hour, she stared at the pages of her thesis notebook, but her handwritten equations swam together. She almost made the epinephrine have a delayed-release instead of the melatonin she needed to counteract it. Which would have been fine, a simple mistake, except Keely didn’t make those.
Her entire life, she’d bent over backwards to tie herself in knots. Sleepless nights and early mornings, stifling, unending pressure from all sides. From within.
Her eyes watered. If pressure made diamonds, when the hell was Keely going to start shining?