That Thing Between Eli and Gwen (28 page)

“Guinevere, he is not on your team,” my father said to me. “We are on your team, and your teammates want to win, so…?”

“Lay them out.” It felt like high school all over again.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Lay them out!” I said louder.

“Are you just going to hug each other all day over there?” my mother yelled.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were in a hurry to lose, sweetheart,” my father hollered back.

Sometimes, I could not believe they were my parents.

Jeremy put the ball in the middle of the field.

“I’m guessing you want me to go up front?” I asked them. I saw them nod, as if to say “obviously.” When I walked forward, so did Eli. “I can’t go easy on you.”

“I know, your mother told me.”

I nodded.

Jeremy decided this was the time to be funny and begin preaching. “Now let us remember, this is merely a game, and as such let it be played fair, and let it be…a little bloody.”

“Jeremy…”

“1. 2. 3.”

We both attacked the ball, but he pushed me back with ease, flipping the stick, lifting the ball off the ground and throwing it over to Malik perfectly. They charged both Roy and my father, who stepped out of the goal even more so. Running forward, I tried to reach for it when Malik threw, but Eli jumped over my back leg, spun around Roy so badly Roy went forward, and faced off one-on-one with my dad. When he looked like he was going for it, he passed the ball right back to Malik, catching my dad off guard, and the ball just glided into the net.

“What the hell?” Jeremy said at the sidelines, pulling at his dirty blond hair.

Eli and Malik high-fived, and then Eli looked to my father. “You're right, I played a lot of baseball growing up, but that was only during the spring and summer. My coach didn’t want me to get bored, so I played lacrosse in the fall and basketball in the winter. If you'd brought a football, I would have been
screwed
.”

“How am I looking now, sweetheart?” My mother, who hadn’t done anything, stood smiling brightly at us. When Eli got back to her, she just gave him a high five.

“Guinevere,” my father said to me.

“Oh, I know,” I said to him, gripping my stick. “Eli, the kid gloves are coming off now.”

“I never asked you to put them on in the first place,” he replied.

“How can you date someone that cocky?” Roy frowned.

“Well, I’m about to humble him.”

When we met in the middle again, he crouched down right across from me, smiling like he'd stolen something, a gleam in his blue-green eyes.

“You know what they called me in high school?” he asked.

“I don’t care.”

“1. 2. 3.”

Our lacrosse sticks smashed against each other's again. This time, I pushed back with everything I had, and he fell back, chasing after the ball as it rolled across the grass. I had just picked it up when he smacked my stick, flipping it and the ball out. He picked it up this time, running back toward the goal. I came up as fast as I could, but Eli was on another level when it came to speed. One moment he was in front of me, and the next he ran straight toward my father, who eyed Malik coming up on his left. This time Eli didn’t pass, he took the shot, and because he was slowly trying to elevate my father’s and my blood pressure, it went in.

“It was a dead shot, just in case you were wondering,” he said, running past me.

Biting my tongue and taking a deep breath, I tried to remember it was just a game.

“Guinevere, you coming?” he called behind me.

“You, Dr. Davenport, are going to get hurt.”

Eli

With one swift thrust forward, she checked me so hard I landed on my back, and she fell straight on top of me.

“Oh,” I moaned, trying to breathe again.

“Did you just see the point he made?” Malik ran up to us.

“No, I was too busy being murdered,” I muttered, dropping the stick and rubbing my chest when she rolled off.

“Whelp, we lost!” Her mother came over to us. “There was nothing we could really do when Masoa, the big cheater, had to jump in.”

We had been playing for a little over an hour. I’d scored the first and only two goals of the game, but then her father had come out and decided to epically crush my pride. For a man who'd had a heart attack a month before, he was in damn good shape.

“Anyway, I had Jeremy run back to bring the food I made.”

I tried to get up, but my body just wasn’t feeling it. “I’m just going to lay here for a moment.”

Roy snickered, kneeling down. “And this is why we call it laying the grass.”

“Yep, I got that.” I groaned again.

“Gwen, you just going to lie there, too?”

She flipped him off, her eyes closed. “Screw you guys for making me play again. I hate lacrosse so much.”

“Why did you play in high school?” I looked toward her.

“Her dad was the coach.” Roy grinned, standing up and putting a water bottle beside me. “You weren’t half bad, Eli.”

“Using my name now, I see.” I finally sat up.

“Don’t get all excited about it.” He frowned, walking away.

Guinevere sighed, turning onto her back and lifting her leg up, trying to stretch it. “I get stiff legs.”

“I know, give them to me,” I said, taking her leg and placing it in my lap.

“Eli—”

“Were you injured while you played?” I asked seriously, pressing on her calves.

Releasing a breath through her nose, she sat up beside me, eyes on her dad, who stood beside her mother, still rubbing in his victory.

“My dad loves lacrosse. He played with his dad, and he played with my brother. So when he passed, I made sure to play, too, no matter what. I got hurt my senior year. Remember Chloe Drake? The woman who was waiting and holding Taigi?”

I nodded.

“She tripped and stepped on my leg.”

I winced at the thought of it. “That’s Chloe with an extra 97 pounds?”

“Yep, and my leg broke. She felt so bad, and everyone teased her about it. It was practice, and I remember secretly telling her that I was kind of thankful because I didn’t have to play anymore.”

“But you still played after you healed, didn’t you?” She didn’t even have to answer, I just knew it. “Are you sure it’s not you who is the rock?” I asked, helping her off the ground, because from where I was looking, it looked like she was bearing a lot of weight on her shoulders.

She grinned. “Never in any of the stories I have ever heard from my father did a person beg for the rock to come.”

“You lost me.” I held her hand, walking back to her family and friends.

“The symbol for rain is the thunderbird, and if you beg hard enough, it sometimes comes. But the rock, no matter how much you beg, will stay in its place, bearing whatever weight is on its shoulders. My father needed some way to make a connection with me after my brother passed. And I came and gave him one. I don’t regret it. Every once in a while my legs get stiff, but I have so many memories of him running to me after a game, cheering at the top of his lungs, lifting me up and spinning me around. It’s not a burden for me.” She smiled, wrapping her hand around my arm. She reached up and kissed the side of my cheek. “You were great, my father just doesn’t like to lose.”

“Gwen.” Masoa held up a water bottle toward her.

She rolled her eyes, knowing he just wanted us to break apart, but went to him anyway.

I couldn't take my eyes off of her as she knocked shoulders with her father and he wrapped his arms around her, telling her something.

It was astonishing how every time I watched her now, it seemed to be in slow motion, my eye wanting to capture every one of her facial expressions, her voice, her movements, to save her in my memory forever. It made me wonder:

How did I get here?

When did I start falling for her so badly?

Is that even what I am doing, falling?

And, most importantly, is she too?

Chapter Twenty-Three

Six Little Words

Eli

I was sitting on the porch when a beer materialized right beside my face.

“Thank you,” I said to Masoa.

He sat down beside me, not saying a word.

It was our last night there before heading back. They had prepared a dinner by the lake, and I had even managed to get the campfire going. Just like on the first night, the sky was coated with stars.

Guinevere played with Taigi, chasing him around the campfire. She had spent the day showing me all of Cypress. It had about one of everything: one movie theater, one grocery store, one mall, and in each one, I noticed how they all welcomed her back, either with a hug, a kiss, or free things. Each of them also thanked her for the money she had loaned them; she had even helped fund a new arts center for the high school.

“You do know I still don’t like you, right?” he said to me, opening his can and drawing my attention.

“Yes. Maybe when we come again next time, I’ll convince you more,” I replied, taking a drink.

“Never going to happen,” he muttered.

It took me some time, but I finally just asked him, “Do you mind if I ask you some things?”

“Are they about my daughter?”

“Yes. And you, too.”

“Only if you answer mine.”

Risky
. “All right.”

“Ask, then.” He waited.

“How do you know when you’ve fallen in love with someone?”

He was silent for a long time.

“Sorry, I’m not sure who else to ask. My mother, as amazing as she is, doesn’t always help.”

“Weren’t you about to get married?’ he asked me.

I sat straighter, my arms on my knees. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I should have been. I set a goal to be married, and I chose a person who I thought best fit what I needed. I never asked myself if I loved her. I thought: this is great, she is what I was looking for. I hurt her and she hurt me in return.” I had cared about Hannah. I couldn’t lie about that, nor should I have had to, but that was different; I felt different with Guinevere.

“I believe when you start thinking like that, you’ve already fallen,” he muttered.

“How did you know with her mother? Gwen said you ran off together to get married when you were only eighteen.” And after all those years, they still held hands while they went on walks.

He snickered, sitting tall and looking at her mother where she was staring into a telescope. “It first hit me when I realized I didn’t want her to go home. I wanted my home to be her home. Then I started to think about my life in ten or twenty years, and no matter what, she was there. Once I asked myself those questions, it was clear to me.”

I thought back to Guinevere’s first night with me. I’d said I didn’t want her to be just some one-time screw and asked her to stay with me. That wasn’t the reason…I may not have thought her home was mine, but I never once stopped her when she brought her toothbrush, hair dryer, and flat iron into my bathroom. I thought about how I couldn’t sleep on her side of my bed, even if she wasn’t there…because now it was her side.

“Do you want to know where I see myself in ten years?” I whispered to him when she moved to her mother, staring up at the sky.

“No, but I’m sure you're going to tell me anyway.”

I turned to look at him. “I see myself still trying to get you to like me.”

“It’s going to take more than ten years.” He frowned, drinking again. “Eli.”

He finally said my name. However, he didn’t look pleased.

“She’s my baby girl. I would go to hell and back for her, and I can’t bear for her to be hurt again.”

“I won’t hurt her.”

“That’s the thing. We don’t try to hurt the people we care about, we just do. Do you know she didn’t tell us how her engagement ended? She just called to say the wedding was off. We had to press Stevie to learn the truth. And again, I felt like I had failed my child. I told her not to go to New York, I begged her not to go, told her the city would chew her up and spit her out. I told her she could be an artist here, and teach at the high school. We had a huge fight about it. The next morning, she and Stevie were in her car, and she didn’t talk to me again until after she felt like she could tell me she’d made it. She wrote letters, made sure to call us while we were at work, or when she thought we were busy. If we answered, our phone calls lasted five minutes, if that. All because she didn’t want me to think I was right, that she couldn’t cut it. So I have no idea what she went through her first year. She wouldn’t take money or anything. But the day she was mentioned in the paper as an upcoming artist, she called me and talked for hours.”

“She wanted to prove she could do it,” I said.

He nodded.

“And you blamed yourself for the void between you both, because it reminded you of your son?”

His head shot toward me, shocked, as if to ask how I knew.

I just nodded, drinking again.

“I can’t believe she talked to you about that. She never talks to anyone about it.”

“She told me that, too. I was having trouble dealing with my brother's wish to go his own way.”

“Damn it.” He sighed, standing up. “I guess I’m going to have to get used to you. Make sure to bring her back as often as you can. I still won’t like you, but I will adjust.”

“Why the sudden change?” I asked, rising as well.

“Because she’s in love with you. I thought you were another passing phase, like the other one. But if she was willing to dig up something painful like that just to help you, then there is nothing left to do or say,” he replied, preparing to walk back to the fire.

“Can I ask you one more question?”

“Boy, are you a neurosurgeon or a shrink?”

Ignoring him, I asked seriously, “How is your heart? I won’t tell her, if it makes you uncomfortable. But honestly, how is your health?”

“Keeping my cholesterol and blood pressure low. You aren’t helping the latter with your questions, though. Any more?”

I raised my hands in surrender.

He walked over to his wife.

Guinevere said something to her before running over to me and grabbing on to my arm.