Chapter 9 #3
I didn’t have much to eat here, nothing like the sumptuous dinner I’d prepared earlier in my daydream, but I did open the cupboard and refrigerator and offered what was available.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I have some frozen peas. I also have rice that I could make with them.” The neighbor got mad when we cooked because he claimed that he could smell it, but I didn’t believe that he could actually catch the scent of rice through the wall.
“We have two burners,” I added, pointing to the little stove.
“No oven, so I can’t bake. Also, I don’t have any ingredients for that. ”
“I’m not hungry.” He was peering into the cupboard. “You have that chocolate spread.”
“Willow loves to put it on toast. Do you want some?” I tried to be sparing with that because it was so expensive, but he was a guest.
“No, I’m really fine.”
I shut the cabinet doors, which inspired my neighbor to hit his wall in protest of the clicking sound, and sat on the bed. “How do you feel after a football game?”
“In general? I’m tired, sore, ready for sleep. But tonight, I’m pretty keyed up.” He smiled at me, showing off the dimple.
“You should be!” I was smiling too, and I bounced slightly on the mattress. It was so exciting and I was keyed up, too.
“The second half started and I went out there, and then it was like…” He looked up at the stains on the ceiling, but I didn’t think that he saw them. “I don’t even remember that first pass. It all went by so quickly.”
“That used to happen to me when I got really into a piece of music,” I agreed. “I mean, it’s different, because what you did was on a national stage and you also got paid a lot for it, but I think I can relate a little. I got so focused that it was like I woke up when it was over.”
“It sounds like you also got into a zone. That half of football was…” He paused again, as if it was indescribable.
But I could say it. “You were so good that I almost cried. The woman sitting in front of us did cry.” My voice had gone up in volume and my neighbor knocked to indicate his displeasure. “Ignore him,” I advised. “He’ll pound there all night. Were your coaches happy?”
“They seemed pleased. Jim Roberts never shows too much emotion.”
I knew that name: he was the head coach. “How about the mean guy?”
“Who, Rami? The offensive coordinator? He’s not mean,” Everett told me, smiling again. “He shook my hand on the sidelines. Kayden Matthews also sent me a message.”
That interested me. The former Woodsmen quarterback hadn’t done what Everett had predicted and retired from football after the donkey-induced injury to his knee.
Matthews had done his press conference and had made jokes about the dangers of small farm animals, and then he had discussed how he would be gone for the season.
Only the season, that was it. He was asked directly if he planned to come back after his surgery and he’d said yes.
Then he’d flown to Detroit to have it, and now I wasn’t sure where he was. He hadn’t been on the sideline tonight.
“What did he say to you?” I asked. “Did he think you played better than he would have?”
“Uh, no, he didn’t use those words. He congratulated me and said that Dallas and I had done a great job, and that he’s around if I want to talk about anything.”
I frowned. “He might have said, ‘I think I just lost the starting job permanently to you.’”
“I don’t have it, not even temporarily,” he told me. “I played well tonight, but Coach Roberts already told me that Laforet and I will keep doing the fifty-fifty split next week when we go to Brazil.”
“What?” That didn’t make sense. “But you were miles ahead of him!” I’d been too loud again, so I heard more thumps. I shook my head at my neighbor’s anger and at the irrational Woodsmen coaches. “Don’t they look at statistics?”
“Definitely. But maybe what I did tonight was a fluke.”
“No.” I shook my head, my loose hair flying in every direction. “No, that was no fluke. That was the result of skill, practice, and determination.”
“Thank you. We’ll see in Brazil.” Suddenly, he put the back of his hand over his mouth as he yawned, gigantically. “Now I’m tired.”
Well, Fun Girl had struck again. I’d successfully lulled him to sleep.
“I think the adrenaline finally wore off. Is that possible?” he asked, but I didn’t quite remember that topic from high school science. “You were already asleep.”
“How do you know?”
Since the room was very small, the chair where he sat was very close to the bed. All he had to do was reach a little, and he could gently touch my cheek with his finger. I froze, not even blinking or swallowing, but it only lasted a second.
“You have a big red line there,” he said. “And your hair looks like you slept on it, too. I like how you’re doing it differently.” He mimicked patting long hair on either side of his own head.
“Thank you.” I raised my voice over the noise in the street. “Willow fixed it for me.”
“What?” he called. “What’s happening out there?”
“There’s a fire station two doors down,” I yelled back. “They seem to respond to a lot of emergencies.”
“And your neighbor gets mad about you talking in the hallway?”
“What?” I shook my head, because I hadn’t totally gotten that.
Usually, the trucks pulled out and were loud as they did, but they kept on rolling so the sound of the sirens decreased.
Right now, the cacophony didn’t abate. I got up and went to the window in the bathroom, and I saw that the fire trucks had stopped right in front of this building.
“Oh, geez!” I said. “There must be a medical emergency here.” I glanced at the wall I shared with my neighbor, and it was mean but I found myself hoping that—
“What’s that smell?” Everett also stood, and he sniffed. “That’s smoke. There’s a fire!” He went to the door and reached for the knob, and the lessons about fire safety that I’d learned in my first semester of student teaching came right back to me.
“Stop!” I yelled, and ran to block him. “Call 911!”
“They know,” he reminded me. “They’re already here.”
Right. I carefully felt the door and then touched the metal handle, and neither were hot. I peeked into the hallway and there was light smoke gathering at the ceiling, and then I completely broke protocol and grabbed my purse and some stuff out of one of the boxes before we left the apartment.
“There’s a fire!” I yelled at my neighbor’s door and I pounded on it with my fist, but for once, he didn’t seem to hear. “Fire!” I repeated.
“Zoey, I think he’s already gone. We have to get out of here,” Everett told me, and took my hand to pull me along. I was supposed to let go, because you were supposed to leave guys wanting more, but this was an emergency situation. I held on to him.
The bar had already closed for the night but most of the patrons seemed to have stuck around to see the excitement of the building possibly going up in flames.
Then they also got excited to see the new Woodsmen quarterback again, when they could have been excited about him as a Junior Woodsmen player and gone to see him as he had played frozen football on a crappy field.
But that was another issue, and right now, I was more concerned that almost everything I owned could have been on the verge of lighting on fire.
The clothes I’d carefully gathered so that I looked appropriate at school, Willow’s medication, her wheelchair!
What had I been thinking to leave all that?
“I have to go back in there,” I announced, but Everett prevented me.
“No, no,” he answered. “Jesus. Damn. You’re not even wearing shoes. Are you cold?”
It was summer, but it was the middle of the night and it wasn’t warm out here. “I’m ok,” I said. My feet were a little chilly and also, I’d walked through some water so they felt pretty dirty, too.
“You’re shivering. Or, are you shaking? I don’t think your apartment is going to burn up,” he said, but how could he have known? He put his arm around me. “Want to stand on my feet?”
It did feel better to be so close to him, but I was too upset to enjoy it. “That’s ok. I’m ok.”
“I know, because you always are. You always say that.”
“Everett? Everett Ford? Can you sign this?” a woman asked him. She thrust a piece of paper in his face.
“Not right now. We’re worried about the fire,” he told her.
She nodded sympathetically and then gave him her number and various social media handles so that they could get together later, when he wasn’t worried.
I nearly kicked her with my dirty foot. She left and I told him that he could go, too, since he was so tired.
“I don’t know when they’ll let me back in. I have to go back in,” I said. “I have to live there and I have to get my stuff.”
“You could get more stuff and find another apartment,” he suggested, but he didn’t understand how difficult it had been to find that one. I didn’t want to end up in another motel and I couldn’t just “get more” of my belongings. None of that was right.
“It’s going to be fine,” he said next, and as it turned out, that wasn’t right either.