Chapter 9
Chris pulled the keys out of the ignition, dropped them in the cup holder, then looked at me with a longing in his eyes that was impossible to deny.
It brought me right back to the equipment shed.
Maybe he did want me. It was my decision not to go home right now.
In this moment, I knew that I was in control, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of speaking first. I sat there staring at him until he finally spoke.
“You’re so quiet in school, but such a force on the field. I can’t tell if you like me or can’t wait to get out of my truck, I just can’t figure you out.”
I half smiled but waited for a moment before I finally replied.
“You just…left,” I finally said. There was something warm about him that I liked, but after today, and feeling tossed aside, I was hesitant about letting him in. I had already suffered enough rejection in my life and wasn’t interested in being let down.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. You said you didn’t like public attention or people talking about you, so I thought it would be best to just quickly leave with my friends. I didn’t think you would want them to suspect there might be something between us. Besides, is there?”
There it was. That doubt. And now there was a shadow cast upon it. I flinched.
“I understand if you want to take this slow after I upset you today,” he said as he laced his fingers together in his lap. I exhaled and was silent for a moment while I decided what I was going to say. He waited with a longing gaze, patiently, for my reply.
“How do I say this?” I said.
He looked down disappointedly, surely prepared for a rejection of his own.
“I think I like you,” I said, and his gaze returned to meet mine. “But I have trust issues, so if you change your mind about me, it’s not something that I will easily recover from.” Then I let out a slow sigh.
“Why would I change my mind?” he asked suddenly, turning to face me.
I slowly shook my head, and I looked at him as he held perfectly still, listening.
“Because my dad did,” I said, with a shrug.
“He and I are not the same. Please give me a chance,” he said with a furrowed brow that desperately made me want to believe him.
But Amy’s words of doubt remained nestled at the back of my mind.
I hated to admit it, but I felt safe with Chris, like I had known him my whole life, even though I had really just met him.
Apparently, he had been trying to get my attention all this time, but I had been too tied up in myself, always worried that everyone was trying to hurt me.
Nobody had ever paid attention to me like this, or shown me this much affection.
But how could I trust him? How could I be sure I wasn’t just some toy?
As far as I was concerned, I was invisible to everyone around me, but in this moment, I decided to take control.
I leaned in, kissed him, and then pulled away. His green eyes widened, and his cheeks flushed at my unexpected advance. Before he could make a move, I leaned in again and kissed him, then worked my way over to his ear.
“Are you going to break my heart?” I whispered.
“No. Never,” he said, and then he grabbed my face and kissed me with vigor as I quickly pivoted and swung a leg over his lap to straddle him so I could look him in the eyes.
Now that I sat in his lap facing him, I grabbed his waves of hair with authority and tipped his head back into the headrest. His mouth fell open into a wide smile, and I held his head still.
My mouth found his neck again, and he moaned softly as I kissed my way down to his collarbone, sliding my other hand inside the collar of his soccer jersey, and I lightly brushed my fingertips across the top of his shoulder.
His hand moved to my neck, and I felt his open lips move just below my ear.
His other hand moved to the small of my back and pulled me close against him.
“Come here,” he whispered.
Suddenly, I felt his hand leave my back to wander up my thigh, but I placed my hand on top of his to stop him, and he whimpered. I think I wanted more, but I wasn’t quite ready to let my guard down.
“I just can’t get enough of you,” he said into the side of my neck.
I looked at the clock. “My mom will start to worry if I’m not home soon. We’d better go,” I said, as I slid off his lap and he let out a sigh of disappointment that I was abruptly ending our moment together for the second time.
“Ok,” he said, as he reached into the cup holder and put the keys into the ignition, then looked over at me once more before starting the engine.
I reached across the bench seat and placed my hand on his thigh. His head snapped to mine. “It has just always been easier to avoid disappointment in my life by pushing people away.”
“Push as hard as you want, but I’m stronger than you,” he said with a smile.
“Oh yeah?” I said, as I gave his leg a playful nudge.
“Yeah,” he said, as he slid across the seat, pulled me in for one more kiss, then he reached up and pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. Then he laced his fingers with mine and smiled with contentment.
We rode all the way home in silence. When he pulled up out front of my house, he put the truck in park, cut the engine, and turned to look at me with our fingers still laced together.
“I hope I’m not dreaming,” he said, as he let go of my hand and slid an arm behind my back to pull me across the bench seat. Then his hand raised to my cheek, and he leaned down to kiss me softly. I liked that he was taller than me.
“I’ll call you later,” he said as his fingertips slowly melted down the side of my face, then floated back to the steering wheel.
Through closed lips, I took a deep breath through my nose, exhaled, then looked back at him one more time and smiled.
“I’ll see you,” I said sarcastically this time, as I shook my head and smiled, then hopped down onto the driveway and shut the heavy door of his truck.
“Yeah, you will!” he yelled over the roar of the engine as he pulled away.
As soon as I stepped inside the foyer, I closed my eyes and leaned my back against the front door, sure to realize that when I opened them again, none of this would be real.
When my eyelids opened once more, I looked up at the top of the stairs, and Amy was standing there looking down at me with an angry expression on her face.
“What?” I asked with an incredulous tone.
She didn’t say anything; she just walked away, and I could hear her slam the door to her room from where I stood at the bottom of the stairs.
I raced up the steps, skipping two at a time, but by the time I made it down the hall, I could hear the click of her door lock. I jiggled the handle, just to be sure.
“Are you serious, Amy? What is your problem?
“Go away.”
“Fine. Whatever,” I said, but I was confused by her sudden outburst.
I headed back down the hall to the bathroom, where I stripped down out of my clothes and stepped into the shower.
The warm water felt good as I dragged the bar of slippery soap back and forth over my sore quads, wincing at the spots that the muscle had torn before and hadn’t quite healed, but I worked through the pain.
I washed my hair, rinsed it out, and then grabbed a towel and stepped out of the shower.
As I pulled the towel around me and headed for my room, the phone rang, and I raced to my room to pick it up, but Amy beat me to it.
“Hello?” I heard her say as I held the receiver quietly to my ear.
“Can I speak to Allie?” Chris’s voice said at the other end of the line.
“She’s not here right now,” Amy lied with a rude tone in her voice.
“What? I just dropped her off half an hour ago,” he began to say, when I quickly cut in.
“Yes, I am here. Get off the phone, Amy,” then I heard the sound of the receiver slam down.
“Whoa. What’s her problem?” Chris asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“How was your shower?”
“It felt so good on my sore muscles. I thought about you.”
“Oh, really? Which part,” he asked eagerly.
“I thought about your hands all over me just like they were this afternoon at school, as I ran the soap all over—” Suddenly I could hear someone gasp on the phone.
“Is there someone else on the phone?” Chris asked.
We both got quiet and listened, then heard a click.
“Oh my God, who was that?” I said, horrified.
“I’m not sure. I assume that was your sister. Was it?”
“I assume so too. I can’t believe she heard that.”
“Whoever it was sure got an earful,” he said, then we both laughed, but I was secretly panicking that Amy had heard what I said.
The last thing I needed was her spreading rumors about me.
Pretending not to care, but actually embarrassed, I changed the subject, but I think I could hear him smiling through the phone.
“You’ve got a big game tomorrow, you should probably get some sleep, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Goodnight Superstar,”
“Goodnight,” I replied. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you will,” he said, and we both hung up.
I set the phone back on its cradle and turned on the stereo as Dave Matthews Band — Grey Street came through the speakers.
Then I quickly went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, hoping to avoid my sister, assuming it was her eavesdropping on the phone, then came back to my room and got into bed.
I rolled over to pull the blinds shut, closed my eyes, and hoped that tomorrow’s game wouldn’t be a disaster.