Chapter 25 – Waylon
chapter
twenty-five
Waylon
She’d made the team.
I knew she would. I’d watched her train for weeks, watched her shave seconds off her splits on the hill behind the athletics complex while the rest of the campus slept, and when she crossed the finish line with a 400m time that made the distance coach’s clipboard come down, I was on my feet screaming.
Now we were pushing through the fieldhouse doors into November cold, and she was still flushed from the run, still wearing that smile she couldn’t put away. My hands were in my pockets because if they weren’t, I was going to do something I couldn’t take back.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“Starving. But Kimmy’s already texting me about...”
“Check the back seat.”
She gave me a look as I unlocked the truck, then climbed in before I could get around to her side. She always did that. Every time. Like someone had taught her not to expect help, and she’d learned it so well she didn’t even notice anymore.
I got in and started the engine. The heat kicked in slow while she twisted around.
The thermal case in the back contained a brown paper bag from Rhythm Kitchen.
I watched her open the case, then grin at the logo, the grease spot at the bottom, and the fact that the bag was already there, which meant I’d driven to the Jamaican spot on the east end of campus before her tryout, not after. I’d been that sure of her.
“Waylon.”
“Oxtails. Rice and peas. You said it was one of your favorite spots on this side of campus, so.”
She pulled the bag into her lap and opened it slowly, like she didn’t quite believe it. The smell filled the cab, and she closed her eyes for half a second while the steam curled up between us.
“I haven’t had oxtails since I got here.” She pulled the container out, and her hands weren’t steady. “I cut out everything when I started training. No junk, no fried anything, no flavor.” She stared at the container. “This is my favorite food.”
“I know.”
She looked at me. I kept my eyes on the road.
“You mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. After the Tuesday run.”
She hadn’t even been talking to me. She’d been on the phone with Kimmy, walking back toward Hadley, and I’d caught her saying she’d murder someone for oxtails from that place near the science building.
I’d filed it away, the same way I’d filed her birthday when she’d rattled it off to a tutee without thinking, and the same way I’d filed Gabby Thomas.
My brain kept a whole file on Josie, and it kept adding to it whether I wanted it to or not.
She ate in my truck, and I drove. The campus slid by, the same stretches I’d learned to run in the dark over the past two months. I knew the route to her building by memory now. It was nine minutes door to door, and I’d timed it without meaning to.
“Kimmy and Lena are doing a congrats thing at their place later,” she said around a bite of plantain. “If you want to stop by.”
“Sure. Maybe.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’ll do my best. I just don’t want it to be awkward.”
She pointed at me with her fork. “It won’t be awkward. But also Trace will be there so think of it as you tagging along with him. And, uhm, Marcus won’t be there obviously.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I didn’t give a flying fuck about Marcus. But I bit my tongue. The only thing holding me back was making sure she was comfortable.
I could be patient. Besides, I really did like her. Even if she didn’t want anything else, I’d be gutted, but I was good being her friend too. I wasn’t going anywhere, Douchepuck Marcus or no Marcus.
She almost smiled. She went back to her food, and we drove for a while without talking, the cab warm, smelling like oxtails and plantain grease. She hummed under her breath between bites, twice.
Three blocks from her building, she set the fork down.
“I’m sorry about Marcus.”
I didn’t answer.
“What he said at the party. About you wanting...” She stopped and tried again. “He had no right to say that to you.”
I turned onto her street, pulled along the curb outside Hadley, and put the truck in Park, engine idling, heat pushing through the vents.
I went quiet long enough that she shifted in her seat. The parking lot lights came through the windshield and caught the grease stain on her thumb from the plantain.
“He’s right, though.”
Her head turned.
“I keep telling myself I’m your friend.” I gripped the steering wheel with one hand even though we weren’t moving. “But sometimes I don’t feel that way.”
She was quiet. I could hear the engine, and her breathing and bass thumping from somebody’s dorm window.
“But you don’t do girlfriends.” Her voice went tight.
“I haven’t. But I’m not opposed. Not the point though.
I do want you so bad my teeth ache. But, I also do just like being around you.
You’re funny even though you have terrible taste in superhero names.
And you have this way of bringing sunshine with you.
You might not be ready for more and that’s okay.
But make no mistake. Marcus was absolutely right.
I want you so much it burns. And if you let me, I would take you from him. ”
Our gazes stayed locked on each other for what felt like hours. And when she licked her bottom lip, my dick threatened to mutiny and fight my zipper for freedom.
Then she reached into her bag, not the food bag, the one from the fieldhouse, and pulled something out. She held it in her lap with her jaw working, then held it out toward me.
It was a bobblehead, about five inches tall, with a little white coat, a stethoscope, and a grin too big for its face. The head wobbled when she extended it across the console.
“Dr. Bob,” she said. “World’s greatest doctor.” Reading straight off the packaging. “I bought it because you said your mom is a resident, and she works too hard, and you worry about her. You seemed to miss her so I thought you might like it.”
Well shit. It was a little gesture so why the hell did it make my heart squeeze that she’d thought of me. Hell, I wanted to hug her.
Dick: I want to more than hug her.
Which was why he wasn’t allowed to do the thinking.
I took it from her hand. The head bobbled, and the grin stayed.
Nobody thought of me like that, the small way, where you see a six-dollar bobblehead in a novelty shop and grab it because you’re thinking about someone’s mother. You had to be paying real attention to do that.
I knew, because I did the same thing for her, and I’d been doing it since before I could admit it.
I set Dr. Bob on the dashboard and adjusted him so he wouldn’t slide.
“Josie.”
She was staring at Dr. Bob on the dashboard, anywhere but at me. “don’t go getting mushy on me now, Waylon.”
Fuck she was cute. “I really want to fucking kiss you right now.” I kept my hands on the wheel. “But you haven’t asked me to. So I’m going to keep my lips to myself.”
Her breath caught, but she didn’t ask.
She sat there with the empty container in her lap and Dr. Bob grinning at both of us from the dashboard and looked at me for three seconds. Then she unclipped her seat belt, grabbed her bag, and got out.
She paused at the lobby door, one hand on the glass, her shoulders dropping. Then she pushed through and was gone.
I sat there, and Dr. Bob watched me from the dashboard.
“Don’t,” I told him.
He didn’t have shit to say about it.
I put the truck in drive and headed home. Dr. Bob wobbled the whole way.
She hadn’t asked me to kiss her. She hadn’t said no, either.