Blocked

by Jennifer Lane

  I groaned. Total cheeseball.

  “When you hear the word ‘should,’ challenge it with ‘want’ or ‘prefer’ and your anger will decrease.”

  I wondered if I could do that.

  “What are some other should statements you believe? How about ‘The government should take care of people’?”

  “That’s not a belief. That’s truth.”

  “That’s a philosophy, Dane.” She shook her head. “It’s no different from the other side believing ‘People should take care of themselves.’ They’re both valid beliefs.”

  I huffed, “But I agree with that too, to a point. People should take care of themselves, but sometimes they’re oppressed and need the government’s help. They shouldn’t have all these roadblocks to getting the help they need.”

  “I’m not questioning your philosophy. What I’m saying is that ‘shoulds’ increase anger so much that people have trouble discussing different points of view.” She sat back in her chair. “You’re living with somebody who has polar-opposite political beliefs. How’s that going?”

  I hesitated. “Did Lucia talk about me? What’d she say?”

  Dr. Valentine’s expression remained placid. “I’m not at liberty to discuss other athletes I may or may not be seeing.”

  What a joke for her to pretend Lucia wasn’t her client—she’d run into us together in the waiting room!

  “Hopefully my silence will reinforce my promise that I won’t disclose any of our conversation to others.”

  Oh. That made sense. I didn’t want Lucia to know about any weaknesses I revealed in here, especially if I decided to tell Dr. Valentine about my father’s affair.

  “With all the should statements in your head, how have you been able to manage your anger? How well do you let mistakes go?”

  A lump lodged in my throat as I considered my long line of mistakes—my harsh words, stretches of provoking Lucia, and most of all, the abortion. “Not great. And I think Lucia hates me.”

  “You sound so sad when you say that.”

  I swallowed as I looked away from her sympathetic eyes. Maybe I was just like my father—hurting those I cared for, thinking only of myself.

  “You know, Dane…hate implies strong emotion. I’ll take hate over indifference any day.”

  “Are you saying I still have a chance with her?”

  One eyebrow arched. “Do you want one?”

  Hell, yes. And I hadn’t realized how much until she asked me that. Was it too late to salvage things between us?

  Chapter 19

  MY STOMACH DROPPED as Coach Holter called us into a huddle. I’d been seeing Dr. Valentine for a while now—it was already October!—and though she’d encouraged me to take deep breaths during our little team “chats,” I still stressed out about them. Maddie had just hit the ball into the net right after I’d hit the last two sets out of bounds, and the rest of my teammates weren’t exactly killing it this practice either. I braced myself for an epic tongue-lashing.

  Instead, Coach said, “I can tell by your tired play that midterms are this week.”

  I’d had two today. My biology test had gone okay, but I wasn’t sure about the political science exam.

  Coach folded his arms across his chest. “Get out of here, go study, and get some rest tonight.”

  We stood there for a long moment, stupefied, before he jabbed his finger toward the locker room. “Out of here!”

  I shared a surprised grin with Kaitlyn as we jogged to grab our water bottles.

  “Lucia.”

  As I swiveled back to Coach, I gulped. I knew his kindness had been too good to be true.

  He approached me with his typical hard-set jaw and piercing gaze. “I want to talk to you about your nutrition meetings.”

  I’d been seeing Whitney and Dr. Valentine for a month, but this was Coach’s first mention of those sessions. My shoulders tensed.

  “I hear you’re making good progress. Excellent job.”

  “Um, thanks.” My voice shook.

  “You’re looking stronger out there. Keep it up.” He turned and walked toward his assistant coach. “Kara! Cue up Bridgetown’s latest game video. I want to figure out their service patterns.”

  I stood alone in the middle of the gym floor. My breath quickened as I looked down at my thighs. Everyone knew “stronger” was code for “fatter,” and I tugged my Spandex down an inch to hide the rolls of fat.

  “Hey.” Allison’s voice startled me. She stepped closer. “Are you having a rough body image day?”

  With a forced exhale, I nodded.

  “Remember, you’re not seeing reality. You look great. Now let’s get out of here like Coach said, okay?”

  I forced a smile. “Okay.”

  Twenty minutes later, we zoomed away from the gym. “Coach needs to let you guys out early more often,” Frank said from the driver’s seat. “It’s easier to make a getaway without those media dogs hounding us.”

  “For sure.” Chilled from the cool October rain now pelting the vehicle, I tugged my warm-up jacket tighter across my chest. Any night without my media stalkers was a good night. Still feeling unsettled from my chat with Coach, I took out my mp3 player. Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” always brightened my mood.

  When we pulled up to the greenhouse, I took out my earbuds.

  “Go on in, Lucy,” Allison said as she looked down at her phone. “Frank and I need to coordinate travel plans for this weekend.”

  I jogged through the rain as I groaned about more out-of-town matches in my near future. All the volleyball travel had blended together in a blur the past month. On the plus side, our match at Penn State had interfered with the first debate, so I didn’t have to squeeze that travel into my busy schedule. On the down side, we’d played matches in Oregon on my birthday, making that a non-event. But my dad had promised we would celebrate my nineteenth year after the election.

  I was also starting to miss Dane when I went out of town. His gentle smiles and sweetness the past month had confused me, especially after he’d been such a pendejo my first days at Highbanks. But once I began opening up to him again, I’d discovered he was cool to hang out with—not to mention still hot, of course. Maybe we were learning how to move past our differences?

  Brad met me at the door. “You’re home early.” He glanced over his shoulder and, when his eyes returned to me, seemed anxious.

  “Damn, she’s hawt,” China said. It sounded like her voice came from the TV room. “Especially when she’s pissed off.”

  Dane’s deep laugh rippled into me. “You do like the blond ones.”

  What were they watching? I studied Brad, who wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “I like Maria better,” Dane said. “She’s caliente.”

  My breath caught at the back of my throat. Just who was this Maria? I pushed past Brad to the TV room. Sprawled on the sofa with a half-empty tub of popcorn between them were my roommate and his agent, both too absorbed in the onscreen action to notice my arrival.

  I watched as a raven-haired actress dabbed her tears with a tissue.

  “Stay away from my husband, bitch,” the blond actress hissed at her.

  Dane gasped. “No, she did-ent.”

  “Oh, Maria completely deserved that!” China retorted. “She’s a total ho.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. I marched closer to the TV. “You’re watching a soap opera?”

  “Shit!” Dane scrambled off the sofa, his eyes flashing surprise. “You’re home early.”

  China paused the recorded show and stood as well. “Don’t knock it till you try it. This show is addicting.”

  “Hey, my mom watches telenovelas all the time,” I said. “I just never expected you—” I smirked at Dane. “Or you—” I pointed at China. “To watch this stuff.”

  Dane looked away. Was this the first time I’d seen him blush? It was definitely the first time he’d been speechless in my presence.

  “Why aren’t you still a
t practice?” China asked.

  “Coach let us out early.”

  Dane whirled to look at me. “Did you collapse again?”

  “No.” I leaned back, feeling offended. “Why would you say that?”

  “You’re obviously lying. Coach Holter never ends practice early.”

  “Well, hell froze over, ’cause he did let us go. When monkeys fly, or whatever.”

  Dane’s concern seemed to morph into amusement. “I think you mean ‘when donkeys fly,’ not monkeys.”

  I smiled. “In my family, we don’t use the word donkey.”

  “Ugh.” He rolled his eyes. “Republicans. Like elephants are any better?”

  “Elephants are majestic animals!”

  “The correct expression is when pigs fly,” China said. “It’s not about donkeys or elephants. You two argue about everything. I feel like I’m living with an old married couple.” She walked past us out of the room.

  Dane and I looked at each other for a second, then quickly looked away. I can’t believe she just said that!

  “So, um…” Dane stretched his back and cracked his neck from side to side. “If I make you dinner, will you promise not to tell anyone about the show you caught me watching?”

  He wanted to make me dinner? My heart twittered with joy, then thudded with fear. Dinner. “You know how I feel about eating. Is food supposed to entice me to keep your secret?”

  “Oh.” He winced. “I wanted to do something nice for you, but obviously I wasn’t thinking. You, um, you seem to be getting better…”

  “Why’d you want to do something nice for me?”

  He shrugged. “Late birthday dinner, I guess.” One corner of his mouth slowly lifted. “A bipartisan celebration, a week before the final debate.”

  “Well, if you put it that way, I guess it’d be okay if you cooked dinner for me.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t want to be from the ‘party of no.’”

  He smiled as he reached for my hand and led me to the kitchen. “I’d planned to finish cooking by the time you got home, but now you can be my sous chef.”

  He’d planned to cook me dinner? That was so adorable. His hand cradling mine felt amazing, and I hoped he couldn’t detect my trembles of excitement.

  Dane set a cutting board on the counter and parked me in front of it. “Here you go.” He slowly handed me a huge knife. “I know conservatives have a love affair with guns…how do you feel about knives?”

  How does that charming smirk work every time? He made it nearly impossible to keep my guard up. I pointed the Ginsu at him. “Keep up the snark, and you’re about to find out.”

  “Whoa!” His hands shot up, and his eyes danced. “Cut the food, not the defenseless Democrat.” A few bell peppers and an onion plopped on my board. “I want thin strips.”

  “Oui, Chef.” I curtsied and began slicing sections off the red pepper, avoiding its seedy core. “Is the sous chef allowed to know what we’re preparing?”

  His head popped out of the fridge, and I noticed he held tortillas and a bowl of chicken marinating in some sort of sauce. “Your favorite.”

  My knife paused mid-slice. “How’d you know fajitas were my favorite?”

  “I, uh…” His second blush of the night! “I sort of texted Mateo.”

  “You texted my brother? How’d you even know his number?”

  “We exchanged numbers when he was here with your mom. He liked the music I was playing, and he seems like a cool kid. Well, nicer than Alejandro, anyway.”

  My face felt hot, and I returned to chopping to conceal my inevitable blush. Not only had he asked about my favorite meal, he’d planned to make it for me? Was it possible he liked me as much as I liked him? Glancing at my fat, sausage fingers clasping the knife, I knew that wasn’t likely. And the abortion thing still never really left my mind. How could he have killed that baby? Our values were too different for a romance. We’d barely found our way to being friends.

  His hip bumped mine. “Earth to Lucia.”

  Over the pungent tang of red onion I smelled his clean, soapy scent, and my heart thumped wildly. I knew Alejandro wouldn’t approve of my physical reaction to Dane—or anyone with beliefs so different from mine, actually. “Matty is much nicer than Alex, you’re right.”

  I dared to look up at him, and a line creased his brow, as if my response had disappointed him.

  “Thank you for making my favorite meal,” I added. “It means a lot to me.”

  He stared at me for a few more seconds, then nodded. As he left my side and squatted to retrieve a frying pan, I stared at his taut butt encased in charcoal grey workout pants. My eyes zipped back to the cutting board when he rose, and I tried to think of something to say. “I get to meet your sister next week, right?”

  The muscles in his forearm rippled as he added some oil to the pan. “Yep, Jess will be there.”

  “What’s she like?”

  He shrugged. “Sixteen, smart, pain in the ass.” He added the chicken breasts to the sizzling oil. “She’s always at swim practice, so she’s tired and grumpy all the time.” His nose scrunched. “She reeks of chlorine.”

  Belying his critical words was his fond smile, which stretched into a grin when he said, “I think she has a crush on one of Mom’s agents.”

  “Really?” I laughed.

  He snorted. “Poor guy. Jess is the determined type.”

  “Like her brother, huh?”

  The depth of blue in his eyes made my breath catch in my throat. “I’d say we’re both pretty determined.” He held my gaze as the chicken crackled in the pan.

  I was certainly determined to stay next to him for as long as possible, and I swallowed but didn’t look away. The moment lengthened between us, timed by the pulsing metronome of my heartbeat. Was it getting warm in here? I unzipped my hoodie and hung it on a kitchen chair.

  When Dane stared at my boobs, my heart raced.

  “We like to spike,” he said with a smile, and I realized he’d just read my T-shirt. “Where’d you get all those shirts?”

  Oh, he wasn’t staring at my boobs. Wait…why wasn’t he staring at my boobs? “My dad buys them for me.”

  He nodded, and for once he didn’t make a mean comment about my dad. “Are you finally done chopping?” He gestured to my cutting board.

  “Jeez!” I returned my attention to the last pepper. “Just a second, Chef.”

  “You can work on the lettuce and tomatoes next, slave.”

  “So bossy.” I smiled to myself.

  A few minutes later he piled the cooked chicken breasts on top of each other on a plate and molded aluminum foil over them to keep them warm. The kitchen smelled so good. I paused my tomato chopping to hand him the strips of peppers. “Do you know where the word fajita comes from?”

  He finished sliding the vegetables into the pan. “Little fajas, right? Only…I hate admitting this, but I don’t know what faja means.”

  “It’s a belt, or strip.” I pointed to the peppers in the pan.

  “Yummy.” He stirred the peppers, then bellowed, “Fried belts for dinner tonight!”

  A second later Brad meandered into the kitchen, rubbing his belly. “Did you say something about dinner, GD? It smells awesome in here!”

  “This is for Lucia and me,” he said.

  I looked down at the bowls of fixings I’d prepared. “This is a lot of food.”

  Dane frowned. “Fine. Dinner will be ready in fifteen.”

  “Hey.” Brad thumped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, man…we won’t crash your party.” He strolled out of the kitchen.

  I chewed my lip as I dolloped sour cream into a bowl. I would not be eating any of that lardaceous goo. “So, why do you like Maria?”

  “Huh?” He turned to me.

  “The soap opera actress. What makes her attractive?”

  His gaze slid down the side of my head. “Her hair. It’s long and…shiny.”

  Self-consciously, I twirled a strand o
f my hair. Dane’s eyes followed my fingers.

  “And, um…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “She’s kind of shy and sweet.” His eyes traveled to my face, then he grabbed the package of tortillas and turned back to the stove. “I think the actress is from Puerto Rico. She’s just pretty, I guess.”

  Once the tortillas were warming in the oven, Dane pulled out some ranch dressing. He winced as he set it on the counter. “I’m not a fajita purist—I use ranch instead of sour cream.”

  “So does Matty!” I grinned. “It drives Alejandro nuts.”

  “Good to know I’m not a freak.”

  “Oh, you’re still a freak.”

  His eyebrow arched, but he didn’t seem mad. He surveyed the spread and sighed. “Margaritas would go really well with this.” His shoulders slumped.

  “Is it hard?” He looked at me. “Not drinking, I mean.”

  “Nope.” He’d rushed his response, and he paused, like he realized he hadn’t been honest. “If I say yes…that means I have a problem, right?”

  It was rare to see him vulnerable like this. “It just means you’re strong. It means you’re fighting.”

  He seemed to stand an inch taller. “What do you think of Dr. Valentine?”

  “She’s pretty cool.” I thought about her for a moment, then scowled. “Except for the times she makes me eat.”

  “Yeah. I was pissed when she made me do an alcohol swab test.”

  I recoiled. “What’s that?”

  “She had me swab the inside of my mouth to test for alcohol in my saliva. I told her I hadn’t partied, but she said she still had to test me.” His eyebrows pulled together. “I wish she’d trust me.”

  “Trust—” I started, and he joined me to finish Dr. Valentine’s platitude, “—takes time to build.”

  When we both laughed, I noticed his face relax, and his eyes shone like ocean waves. Were we building trust? Could I trust him?

  He took a step closer, smiling down at me, and I froze. Maybe I forgot to breathe. Was he about to kiss me again? That’s what I wanted, right? Then why did I feel so scared? Why didn’t I feel ready? “Um…” I looked at the counter. “How ’bout I tell the agents dinner is ready?”