"You first," I told Travis, stepping into the spotting position for him.
Once he was comfortable on the bench, he seemed to relax for the first time in my presence. "I really messed up," he admitted in the middle of his second rep. It really was better not to talk but I wasn't gonna stop him once he got started. "It was bad enough that I fucked up, but then for Wren to see it, too. She's so fucking mad at me."
I swallowed down my initial jealousy at hearing him so concerned about her. More concerned about her than about himself, I couldn't help but notice.
"I think she's more worried than mad," I suggested.
He coughed out a wheezy laugh. "She won't even talk to me."
"Have you tried talking to her?"
For a second, Travis seemed to lose his grip on the bar. Just as I moved to help him with it, he managed to right himself. "Sorry. For a second there you just sounded so much smarter than Coach thinks you are." He smirked. Leave it to a sophomore to have big enough balls to joke about something like that. I wasn't offended. I knew it was goodnatured joking.
I snickered. "He does think I'm dumb, doesn't he?" I asked, my voice lowered so that I didn't risk any of the assistant coaches hearing me.
"To be fair, when you've got a quarterback like Thomas hanging around the overall expectations really seem to drop for everyone else."
Travis had finished his first set, so I helped him lift the bar back into place. He was out of breath from talking while lifting.
As he sat up, our eyes traveled to the opposite side of the room. Thomas was a senior. Any other senior quarterback would have been pissed to not be starting, but I wasn't even sure Thomas knew what day it was half the time. I had my suspicions that he'd suffered one too many concussions in his high school league.
It was a wonder the poor guy had even stayed eligible for so long. His degree was Liberal Studies. I was pretty sure someone was paying the advisor to keep passing him or that someone else was just doing all of his work for him. There was no way he'd done it on his own.
The idea that Coach would compare me to him was laughable at best.
"You're not kidding there," I agreed. As we switched spots, I fished for information. "So, what was the deal with the whole drinking thing anyway? I've never seen you like that. Not even at the move-in weekend party."
I could see Travis' neck turning red as I moved into position on the bench. His voice was barely above a whisper when he said, "I'm not supposed to be drinking."
"How come?"
"It was part of the agreement for me signing here."
I did my best to keep a steady pace with the bar. The more casual the conversation seemed the more I figured Travis would feel comfortable talking about something so personal.
"He put that in your paperwork?" I asked, surprised by the possibility. Stuff like that was usually just swept under the rug pretty well.
"Of course not," Travis said, confirming my suspicions. "It would have made me a liability. Unofficially though, he told me any signs of binge drinking wouldn't be taken lightly. He doesn't want to be responsible for me if something happens." The slight lift at the end of his sentence revealed a very important detail. Something had happened before.
"So the only thing saving you was—"
He nodded his confirmation. "Matty and Rachel dragging my sorry ass home. If word had gotten out, I would probably have been on a bus home by now."
"Bus?"
"Let's just say I don't have the sort of parents that would be helping me load up my stuff on the way out. Which is a lot of the reason why I started drinking in the first place."
Even looking at him upside down from my vantage point, I could see the grim set of his lips. The reality of what he'd said set in. The way he talked about it actually reminded me of Wren. He had the same hint of finality in his tone that she always had when she talked about seeing the world by herself. I realized that for Travis, football for him was probably the equivalent of Wren's traveling for her. It was the thing that kept his life moving.
Meanwhile, I couldn't quit whining to myself and to Wren about what a burden it was to have options. I made a silent promise to myself to tell my parents about my decision as soon as possible. No more peacocking as if I was actually considering the football draft come post-graduation time.
Telling the coaches would be a little trickier, but they needed to know about my intentions soon, too. They could be spending extra time training Travis. Instead, they'd been wasting valuable practice time trying to get me up to par for my anticipated drafting. They would have to accept that I only had one more season left—at most—after the current one.
I lifted the bar one last time and settled it back on its post. After comparing Travis' words to Wren, there was something I couldn't push from the front of my mind. I tried to convince myself to stay quiet as we switched positions again. It really wasn't fair to drag Travis into the middle of things between the two of us.
"Can I ask you something?" I blurted out in spite of myself. He stared up at me wearily. "It's not about the drinking thing," I reassured him.
"Okay, shoot."
"How well have you gotten to know Wren?"
He surprised me by sitting back up on the bench. His back was ramrod straight, his expression guarded. "She's my best friend."
"I know but do you all, like, talk about things?"
"Of course we do." He looked offended that I'd even asked. He paused before asking in a knowing voice, "Does she not talk to you?"
"I don't think she does. Not in the way that counts," I admitted, even though it pained me to do so.
At first, I'd thought she was just guarded. The more time we'd spent together the more she'd given me snippets of her life before Kelley University. I'd thought I was slowly working up to getting the full picture, but it looked like that couldn't be further from the truth. When I compared all the things I'd shared with her versus what she'd shared with me, I'd realized that I didn't feel like I knew much about her at all.
Sure, I knew how she liked her coffee, where her favorite campus parking spot was, and how her face lit up when you mentioned 80s Rom-Com movies. I even knew her mom had gotten sick and died. There were so many things I just still didn't know. I didn't know what kind of childhood she'd had, or who'd taught her to drive, or why she hadn't gone to college right after high school. I knew she had a dad, but I didn't know anything about him. I wasn't sure if she even liked the guy. They were the sort of things you expected to be able to talk to someone about when you were intimate with them, but every time I'd tried to broach a serious topic she'd changed the subject on me.
"I don't think you should take it personally. She's just hard to get to know." The way he tried to rationalize that made my stomach turn.
"But you've gotten to know her," I pointed out.
One of his shoulders tilted up in a half-shrug. "It's probably just because there's less pressure with me. Besides, it's not like there aren't things I still don't know about her, either."
"Do you think she's still dating other guys?" There I went blurting things out again.
"What makes you ask that?"
"You heard her earlier. She said she had dinner plans tonight but wouldn't even say who it was with. What else am I supposed to think?" I'd tried to swallow down the concern, but it kept making its way back up like a bad meal.
"I think," he seemed to be choosing his words carefully, "That if you've talked about being exclusive that you have nothing to worry about."
I felt my whole body twitch in irritation. I'd thought things were good enough between us the way they were. Obviously, I'd been so very wrong.
"We haven't talked about exclusivity," I admitted.
"Well, that still doesn't necessarily mean she's dating other people." The words weren't all that reassuring.
"I'm gonna go talk to her when we get done here."
Travis winced. "Maybe you should calm down and talk about it the next time you see her. I don't know that ambu
shing her is the best idea."
"That's odd coming from the guy who convinced me to try outright stalking her the last time there was an issue." I shook my head. "What's different now?" I demanded.
He dragged a frustrated hand over his sweaty head. He seemed genuinely nervous.
"What?" I prompted when he took his sweet time coming up with an answer. His eyes locked dead on mine.
"From some of her stories it just seems like maybe when things get hard she doesn't stick around. I don't want you to run her off by asking for too much too fast."
He wasn't wrong. It was easy to gather from Wren's storytelling that she'd always left her destinations before getting too close to people. She hadn't just gone traveling alone—she'd made sure she stayed that way.
"Then let her go. I'm not gonna walk on eggshells to keep her from leaving. If she wants to run from all of us then we should let her." I was angry but didn't mean any of the words even as I was saying them.
Travis jumped up to a standing position. He crossed his arms defensively. Around us, guys had turned to see what was going on. We were starting to make a scene.
"You don't get to make that decision on behalf of everyone she's become friends with here." He paused to clear his throat after his voice cracked. "You need to chill out before you go confronting her. Don't go scaring her off just because you're feeling a little insecure."
"Whatever," I muttered. I looked pointedly at the bench so Travis would take his spot back. I didn't like the way everyone was staring like we were putting on a show.
And whether Travis liked it or not, I did have every intention of confronting Wren. It was time she either opened up or walked away.
22
Carter
I was painfully under-dressed for the fancy steakhouse. That much was obvious the second I'd stepped foot inside the door. The hostess looked at me with barely concealed disdain. No one had ever looked at me like that before, but I'd also never crashed a fancy dinner before, either.
I'd known my sister would know where Wren was going. She was too nosy not to. She had been able to tell me the name of the place but not much more than that. I'd never imagined that the restaurant name she'd given me would be attached to a place like the one I was awkwardly standing in. Nothing about Wren screamed big money. Even the stories of her traveling had included her working odd jobs and staying in cheap hotels.
I swallowed what little was left of my pride and strolled casually to where she stood behind a glass podium.
"I'm really sorry," I told the woman politely. "I wanted to surprise my girlfriend who's here, but I had no idea how nice this place was."
Her eyes softened. "What does your girlfriend look like? Maybe I can point out her table for you."
"She's got long red hair, you can't miss her."
Her smile faded. "Are you talking about Wren Wallace?"
"No." It was my turn to frown. I didn't think that Wren was that common of a name. "Wren Harrison."
The hostess glanced over her shoulder quickly before lowering her voice. "I don't mean to put my nose in someone else's business, but Wren's father is in here a lot. He's the sort of parent that likes to brag."
Words escaped me. I'd assumed Wren's father lived somewhere far away since she rarely talked about him and never mentioned seeing him. If the waitress was that familiar with him, though, it would mean he lived nearby. If that had been the case then surely she would have thought to introduce me to him at some point.
The hostess sighed impatiently. "I'm just saying, I know enough to know his daughter wouldn't have a boyfriend."
I stared at her strangely. The way she said the word boyfriend made it sound so scandalous. She also made it sound like a complete impossibility. It was odd to hear a stranger so certain that I wasn't Wren's boyfriend.
Something wasn't adding up.
"I don't think we're talking about the same person," I carefully suggested. "My Wren's last name is definitely Harrison, not Wallace." Something about the name bothered me in the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite pinpoint it.
"There's only one Wren here. But let's just solve this the easy way, shall we?"
She stepped out from behind her post and strode purposefully into the dining room. I wasn't sure what exactly I was supposed to do, but I figured it was okay to follow her. The woman was so tall that I couldn't see over her. She was easily the tallest woman I'd ever seen in real life. I blindly let her guide me, hoping beyond reason that she'd lead me to some unfamiliar woman. That somehow it would all be a misunderstanding.
I nearly ran into the woman when she stopped dead in her tracks. She apologized quickly for interrupting the table before asking point-blank, "Does he belong to you?"
She stepped aside, letting me get a good look for the first time.
I could barely make sense of what I was seeing. It was my Wren, all right. And across the table from her was...
Dr. Wallace.
Whatever I'd been expecting, it wasn't that. Wren was staring at me like she didn't recognize me at all. It was safe to say she hadn't been expecting me to show up.
"Are you dating our university president?" somehow slipped from my mouth.
Wren's face transformed in horror, but Wallace chuckled with amusement. "I'm not sure about where you're from, my boy, but here in the great state of New York we happen to frown upon men dating their own daughters."
"Daughter?" I felt dumbstruck. My eyes studied Wren, begging her to say something and put me out of my misery.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded. Well, I hadn't expected her to say that.
"I... Uh..." I forced my mouth to close. There was no good way for me to answer that question. Especially not when I still had a million of my own.
"Abby, would you mind having another chair brought to the table?" Wallace requested. It felt eerily familiar to the way he'd had an extra chair brought in for Coach Mack at our first meeting. Except for this time, it was me showing up uninvited.
The hostess shot a curious look in my direction before giving a single nod and disappearing. I couldn't figure out what it was about me being there that seemed like such a foreign concept. It seemed like she was surprised about more than just a guy crashing a father/daughter dinner. In fact, she'd seemed pretty damn certain that it was impossible for me to be Wren's boyfriend.
"Here you go, sir," a waiter announced, placing a third chair at the table.
I hesitated. "Go ahead and sit down," Wallace insisted.
I tried to look to Wren for some sign that it was okay for me to join them, but she was concentrating on emptying her wine glass. My stomach turned as I realized how badly I'd fucked up by showing up. Travis, Rose, and hell, even the hostess, had tried to warn me away. I should have listened.
The waiter was still hovering uncertainly near the table. "Can I get you something to drink, sir?"
"Why don't you go ahead and open us up a wine bottle, please," Wallace answered for me. "The way my daughter is entertaining her glass makes me think she'll be needing another soon." To me, Wallace said, "Normally we just have the one glass apiece, but I guess we'll consider this a special occasion."
"It was rude of me to interrupt. I really should just go." I couldn't seem to stop fidgeting but a stern look from Wallace had me freezing in my seat.
"Don't be ridiculous. I've told Wren before that she's more than welcome to invite her friends to our Monday dinners."
"I didn't invite him," she muttered under her breath. Her father didn't seem to have heard the comment, but I had. I sank further back in my seat.
Wallace adjusted his glasses on his face. Somehow, pushing them higher up on his nose made him look even more serious than usual. "Tell me, Carter, how have your courses been?"
"I'm doing well in all of them. I'm scoring consistently at the top of my classes." Even to my own ears, I sounded embarrassingly robotic.
"Well, of course. Your professors have been updating me on your progress. I meant tell me how yo
u're liking the classes. Any second thoughts about switching your major?"
"None, whatsoever." That was a question I was able to answer with confidence.
"And my daughter, has she been a good tutor?"
"Dad," she said his name like a warning. She didn't want to be roped into our conversation. I could tell from the bitter expression on her face.
He didn't take the hint. "My daughter is very accomplished, you know. After the sort of international traveling she'd done she could easily have found a job just about anywhere. Has she told you about how she's just here fulfilling her poor old man's wish that she have a degree?"
The waiter appeared to refill their wine glasses and to offer me a fresh one. "Keep pouring," Wren told him in a dry tone as he refreshed her empty glass.
Wallace kept talking as if the waiter hadn't interrupted at all. "The tutoring center job was actually my idea, too. I keep hoping she'll realize that college can be just as exciting of an adventure as any foreign country. Heck, some days it feels like I'm running a small country, after all. And can you imagine the only daughter of a university president not getting a college degree?"
He took a moment's pause to gaze fondly across the table at Wren. "Though, I guess I'll be fine with whatever she chooses to do long term so long as it makes her happy. And hopefully, she'll visit me more often. Considering I've funded everything that big heart of hers has desired," he teased with a wink in her direction. Then, more seriously he added, "Well, for the past few years anyway."
It was nearly impossible to keep up with how fast Wallace was burning through the questions that Wren had left unanswered. She'd enrolled in college for him. He'd been funding her travels. For some reason, he'd only been in her life for the past few years. I'd come to that last conclusion on my own. Wallace seemed too proud of her to have been playing the willingly absent father for most of her life. The only reasonable explanation for why he'd only spent a few years financing her had to be that he hadn't known about her before then.
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