“Oh, you know, we actually can’t on Friday,” I say. I inch closer to the door. “Sorry.”
“Maybe next week, then?” she says. “What’s your schedule look like?”
“Next week’s pretty busy, too,” I say.
Paige seems completely unfazed by my excuses. “Well, let me know,” she says, and then cuts herself a slice of the ham-and-banana bread.
I’ve just gotten back to my desk when my phone lights up with missed group texts from Catherine. Evidently, she has decided that we should get family photos taken while we’re in Hawaii, and has already researched local photographers.
There are so many options, Catherine texts. But here’s my faves. Thoughts?
I click the first link that she’s sent and it brings up a website brimming with photos taken at sunset; it’s almost like no other time of day exists. The second link that I click opens up a much more streamlined website, with photos that are just as flawless.
By contrast, the last website is, to put it mildly, outdated. I half expect there to be a hit counter at the bottom of the page. But I like that the photographer’s portfolio fells more genuine, less showy. He seems especially good at capturing candid shots.
I’m about to reply when Sherrie comes up to my desk and drums her fingers on the ledge of the cubicle. I quickly switch off the screen of my phone and place it face down and out of the way.
“Do you have a second, Emma?” Sherrie asks.
“Of course,” I say. I smile, but inside, I’m kicking myself for not waking up my computer the moment I sat down. It looks like I’m just sitting here doing diddly-squat at my desk.
“I was taking a peek in the folder of rejected vendor applications earlier today,” says Sherrie. “And I noticed a few missed gems in there.”
“You did? Which ones?” I ask. Memories of badly knitted scarves and custom pet urns flash through my mind.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. I’ve already forwarded them to the senior buyers.”
“Right, but if I knew which applications you thought had promise, I could—”
“I just want to make sure that you’re giving each application a fair shake. That’s all, Emma. Don’t dismiss anything too quickly. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Sherrie taps my cubicle again and starts to walk away. But she makes it only a few steps before she turns and comes back.
“Oh,” she says, and clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Also. I noticed that the backlog is getting pretty big. Don’t let it get out of hand, okay?”
I give her a tight smile. It’s all I can do not to sigh. So she wants me to take more time with each application, but also get through more of them, huh?
“Got it,” I say.
After Sherrie leaves, I use one hand to tap my keyboard and wake up my computer and the other hand to flip my cell phone back over and quickly reply to the family group text. There’s a bunch of missed texts from the conversation, the last of which is Catherine saying, Cool, ok, well I’m going to go ahead and book him. Thanks for the input. Scrolling up, I can see that they’ve decided as a group on the third photographer—the one I was going to vote for, too. Sorry, was in a meeting, I text them. Photog looks good. But now, of course, I look like the dummy who walks in late and starts laughing just because everyone else is.
Ten minutes later, Catherine send a quick update: Booked! And I was thinking we could coordinate our outfits for the photoshoot?
Mom immediately hearts the text.
* * *
Later in the week, a group of us are sitting in the break room eating lunch when Luke’s rugby match comes up. Apparently, the recreational team he plays on has a match this Saturday—and apparently, as his girlfriend, it’s expected that I’m going.
“You have to go cheer him on, Emma,” insists Cara, who works in Customer Support, as she dips a spoon into her yogurt.
“She really doesn’t need to,” says Luke.
Cara ignores him. She raises her eyebrows at me. “Trust me. Go. If you skip it, he’s just going to use it against you later. He’s going to be all, ‘You never came to my rugby matches!’ and crap like that.”
To be frank, rugby doesn’t interest me. And Luke knows it, just as I know that he isn’t interested in listening to me talk about Dance Den. Spending my Saturday afternoon at a rugby match—let alone cheering on a fake boyfriend—is pretty much at the bottom of my priority list. I guess I can just say that I’m going, though. It can be like one of our fake dates. Luke can give me the highlights afterward. It’s not like I’ll need to know the play-by-play.
“Sure, I’ll come,” I say.
“You don’t have to,” Luke repeats.
“No, I want to,” I insist. “It’ll be fun.”
Luke gives me a strange look that I can’t figure out the meaning of. But after lunch, after the group has broken apart, he pulls me aside and explains himself.
“You’re going to have to actually come to the match, you know,” he says, quietly enough that only I can hear.
“Oh I am, am I?” I say.
“Alex is on the team, too, smartypants,” says Luke. “So unless you’re going to bribe him or something, you can’t just lie about going.”
The smirk drops off my face. “He is? Since when?”
“Since last year. I talked him into joining.”
Seriously? This whole time, I could have been going to their matches and had a legitimate reason for staring at Alex? I’m suddenly super annoyed with myself for not being more interested in rugby. And annoyed at Luke for never mentioning it until now.
“Well,” I say, shrugging, playing it cool. “I guess I’m just going to have to actually show up. I mean, it’s fine. I can watch one game of rugby. How long does it usually last? An hour or something?”
“How generous of you,” says Luke. “And it’s ninety minutes.”
I show up right before the match starts on Saturday. There’s a small crowd already there. And as I move through the crowd, trying to find a good spot to watch from, I see a familiar face among the rest.
Alex is on the sidelines. In his street clothes, for some reason. Seeing him standing there makes my heart beat a little faster. I take a breath and sidle up beside him.
“Hey,” I say, in a voice that’s obviously trying to sound casual.
Alex glances at me for about a millisecond. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”
“Not much,” I say. “Just here to…cheer Luke on, you know.” I take a second to scan the players out on the field and pick him out among them. Then I look over at Alex again. “Why aren’t you out on the field?”
Alex sighs. “I screwed up my ankle yesterday. Decided to sit out today.”
“Oh. That sucks. I’m sorry.” Inside, though, selfishly, I’m thrilled about this turn of events. Who cares about watching Alex when I can hang out with him?
The referee blows his whistle out on the field and the game begins. I watch for a few minutes, completely at a loss.
“So, not to be annoying,” I say, leaning toward Alex, “but…how does this work, exactly?”
“It’s kind of like football,” says Alex, keeping his eyes on the field. “You can carry, pass, or kick the ball. You can’t pass it forward, though. Only backward.”
“Gotcha,” I say.
I return my attention to the game and continue to watch for another few minutes. But even with Alex’s explanation, I can’t get into it. Especially not with my crush standing right there. I just wish I could actually flirt with him—I have to keep reminding myself that I can’t. Each time a flirtatious inclination strikes me, this other little stupid voice says, You have a fake boyfriend, remember?
“Luke said you joined the team this year?” I ask.
“Uh…yep,” says Alex distractedly.
“Did you ever play as a kid?”
“No,” says Alex, his eyes following the ball. “Just other sports.”
“Cool, cool,” I
say, sounding totally uncool.
As the game continues, it doesn’t become any clearer to me. So I just follow along with whatever Alex does. If he cheers, I cheer too. If he yells something out at the referee, I…well, I don’t yell at the referee. But I shake my head strongly in disapproval. And then I sigh, and turn to Alex, and say something like, “What is that ref’s deal?”
“I know,” grunts Alex.
God, he’s even cuter when he’s mad.
I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t. But I can’t pass up such a good opportunity to try to make a connection with Alex. I mean, when am I going to have a chance like this again? Even if I come to another one of their games, his ankle will probably be fine by then. I’ll be standing alone on the sidelines, watching him with faraway longing, kicking myself for not taking advantage when I could.
And so, the next time Alex says something even remotely funny, I laugh and gently touch his arm. It’s the briefest of gestures. A quick touch. A graze, practically.
But it’s enough to make him finally look over at me.
As my eyes and Alex’s meet, I wait for the magical moment to happen. I wait for him to finally realize that I’ve had a thing for him this whole time. But when our eyes do meet, there’s nothing. Just a half-second of dull eye contact.
There is not, to my great disappointment, a single spark.
And then both of our attentions are pulled away by a succession of shrill, forceful blows of the referee’s whistle. It’s different than the chirps that have accompanied the game so far.
This time, it’s a sound of distress.
I pivot my attention from Alex to the field. Everyone has crowded around two players who are both lying flat on the grass. Slowly, one of them gets up on his own, and nods as others presumably ask him if he’s okay. The second player, though, is still down.
It takes me a second, between my slightly dazed state and the other players obscuring him, but then I realize that Luke is the second player—the one who looks like he really got knocked out. My hands rise to my mouth.
“Oh my God. Is he okay?” I ask though the screen of my fingers, not taking my eyes from Luke.
“Stay here,” Alex says, and starts jogging across the field.
I want to go, too. But I know I won’t be of any help. I’ll just get in the way. And so, helplessly, from the sidelines, I stand and watch, feeling a terrible sourness rise in my throat. I glance around, desperately searching the faces of other people, trying to gauge how serious this is. But the worry I see in other faces only makes me freak out more.
“Did you see what happened?” I choke out to a stranger a few feet away from me. I’ve managed to lower my hands from my mouth, but now I can’t get them to stop shaking.
“They ran headfirst into each other,” he says, shaking his head. “Looked like a pretty bad hit. Oh. There he goes. He’s up.”
I turn just in time to see Luke stand up. I watch as the other players around him give him some breathing room. My chest half-relaxes as he takes a few steps.
He seems okay. A little wobbly. But it seems like he’s doing okay.
Then he takes a few more steps, slows to a stop, bends over, and vomits onto the grass.
6
Alex drives Luke to the hospital. I follow behind in my car, my hands refusing to stop shaking as they grip the steering wheel. Logically, I know that I had nothing to do with Luke’s injury, but the illogical part of me has me filled with guilt for trying to flirt with Alex. The illogical part of me has me convinced that if I hadn’t been doing that, somehow Luke would still be out there on the field right now, unscathed.
Between traffic and my semi-panicked driving, I manage to lose Alex and Luke along the way. And then of course I take a wrong turn, and drive for blocks in the wrong direction before realizing my mistake. By the time I get to the hospital, I’m nearly in tears. I’m already convinced that Luke is dead—and that it’s all my fault.
I find Alex in the emergency room waiting area. He tells me that Luke has been admitted.
Still shaking, I take a seat beside Alex. “How was he in the car?”
“Confused,” says Alex. “I’m pretty sure he has a concussion. And his forehead was bleeding. But I don’t think it was that bad.”
I nod. A concussion. Of course. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that. I was in too much of a state, I guess.
“The doctor said they’d run some tests and then give us an update.” Alex glances at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I say. I avoid his eyes and instead look around, taking in the bright white of the waiting room, the tired and worried looking people waiting to be admitted, the big red signs that read EMERGENCY. “I just don’t like hospitals.”
“Not many people do,” Alex says.
“Doctors do,” I say.
I’m not even trying to be funny. It just comes out of my mouth. But Alex laughs.
“True,” he says.
Part of me wants to keep talking to Alex. Part of me wants to make him laugh again. But the other part of me is screaming in my head, What kind of idiot are you? Did you already forget what happened the last time you tried to flirt with him?
Reluctantly, I give into the illogical screaming voice. I lean back in the uncomfortable waiting area chair and think of Luke. I’ve never been a big believer of magical thinking, but right now, it feels like the only thing I can do.
Do not flirt with Alex. Do not even think about flirting with Alex. Focus on sending healing thoughts to Luke.
I’m in the middle of sending approximately my hundred-and-twentieth healing thought to Luke when a nurse comes into the waiting area and calls out Alex’s name. We both quickly stand and go over to her.
“You can see your friend now,” she says. “Follow me, please.”
She leads us into the treatment area, which makes my heart race as soon as we enter it. We’re suddenly surrounded by the insistent clicks and beeps of machines, the moaning of patients in distress, the low murmuring between doctors and nurses. When we finally reach Luke’s bed, I’m beyond relieved to see him sitting upright. He doesn’t look as bad as I was anticipating. He does have a small bandage on the side of his forehead. But besides that, he looks okay.
“Hey you,” I say, sidling up next to the bed. I feel the urge to hug him, but I’m also too self-conscious to. So instead, I just awkwardly touch his arm. In response, Luke looks up at me and smiles. But it’s a different kind of smile than he normally gives me. It’s spacey.
That said, I’m still a little spacey, too. I’m just now realizing that there’s a doctor standing on the other side of Luke’s bed.
“I’m Dr. Metcalf,” he says, extending a hand toward me.
“Emma,” I say, shaking it. “I’m…um, Luke’s girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend,” repeats Luke, and smiles again at me. Oh, God. Don’t blow our cover, Luke.
“I’m Alex,” says Alex, shaking the doctor’s hand.
The doctor nods. “Right. Well, Luke has a concussion, all right. But the good news is that when we did the scan, we didn’t see any internal bleeding or swelling of the brain. To recuperate, he’s simply going to need lots of rest. We do recommend, however, that there’s someone around to monitor him for the next forty-eight hours. Is one of you able to do that? Or another friend or family member?”
The question hangs in the air unanswered. It finally occurs to me that both the doctor and Alex are waiting for me to reply. I am the girlfriend, after all.
“I, um…” I glance at Alex, then back at the doctor. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Good. We’ll be discharging him shortly, then.”
The doctor quickly goes over what we need to know about post-concussion care, asks if we have any questions, and then leaves. After he goes, Luke scratches his forehead—the non-injured side—and says, “Hey, did we win?”
“The match?” says Alex. “We left early, dude.”
“We left early?�
�� asks Luke, frowning.
“You got hurt.”
“Oh,” says Luke. For whatever reason, he turns to look at me. “What happened?”
I feel guilty all over again that I can’t describe to him exactly what happened—that I was busy trying to flirt with Alex instead of paying attention to the game.
“You collided with another player,” I say. “From the other team.”
“Huh,” says Luke. Thankfully, he seems satisfied enough with that.
I look over at Alex. “So, uh—the next forty-eight hours, huh?”
“About that,” says Alex. “I would totally do it, but I actually have a bunch of family stuff going on later today. Are you cool with staying with him?”
“Oh,” I say. “Uh…”
“I’ll give you my number. If it’s too much to handle, you can give me a call.”
I find myself nodding. I find myself saying okay. And the next thing I know, Luke is being discharged from the hospital, and the three of us are walking out of the building. Outside, in the parking lot, Luke squints at the sunlight. He staggers a little as Alex and I lead him to my car.
After we get him into the passenger seat, Alex pats the top of my car and says, “All good?”
“I think so,” I say. I think about Alex’s number, which is now in my phone. The part of me that can’t help it wonders whether I’ll get to use it someday for non-Luke purposes. Then my attention snaps back to the task at hand.
I ask Luke what his address is, then type it into my phone. As we drive away, I glance in the rearview mirror to see if Alex is still standing there. But he’s already gone.
7
“So this is your place, huh?” I say. We’ve just gotten to Luke’s apartment. It’s a pretty typical looking bachelor pad for a thirty-year-old. Everything’s either gray or dark wood. He doesn’t own a single plant. There’s two framed pieces of art on his wall, and they’re both old sports posters.
Emma and Luke Are Totally Together Page 5
