Meet Me There

by Judy Corry

  "I'm sorry, but I can't give you any information."

  I sighed. It had been a long shot anyway.

  I walked back to the waiting area and slumped down in a cushioned seat. I was surprised that there weren't any other people here from school. The only other person I recognized was the red-headed woman who had been at the game with Luke's dad.

  I grabbed a magazine from a table and tried to distract myself. About thirty minutes later, the door opened and Luke's dad came through. I studied his face and his body language to try and see what I could learn. Was he devastated? Was he just tired? He scrubbed a hand through his graying hair and sighed. I decided he was just tired. Hopefully that meant Luke was okay.

  He walked over to the red-headed woman and sank down beside her. I held my breath and perked up my ears, hoping I could gain something from whatever he said to her.

  "He's going to be okay," he said, his voice heavy with exhaustion. "He suffered a mild concussion, but the doctor thinks he should make a full recovery. He just needs to take it easy for the next few days."

  My body went weak with relief and I wanted to cry. He was okay. Just a mild concussion. Nothing like what I'd feared.

  I listened for any other information. His dad just talked about how they would be able to leave in the next little while and he'd be taking him home to get some rest. Then he said something about how he didn't think it would be the best idea for her to be in the car with them.

  The woman nodded but looked disappointed at those words. And I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in her shoes. She probably was a nice lady. She probably really liked Luke's dad. She just happened to get to know him at the wrong time for Luke. But she seemed shaken enough over the whole situation that it made me wonder if she might already care about Luke too. And that was a very interesting thought. I knew Luke missed his mom terribly, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad for him to have another woman to love him. He was pretty easy to love, after all.

  I left the hospital shortly after hearing the news about Luke. He'd already suffered enough trauma for one night. I didn't want to add any more drama by being there. I still didn't know exactly what our relationship would look like from here on out, since I had no idea what he would want. But I knew that I definitely wanted to change things. It had only taken a few seconds of seeing him there lifeless on the field to realize that he was way more important to me than any of the anger that I’d been holding onto.

  In hindsight, it was stupid that I'd gotten so mad about him being British Boy. In the grand scheme of things, was it really that big of a deal that he’d used a fake accent on me? He told me himself in the Chemistry lab, right after we kissed the first time, that he had only started this whole thing because he didn't think I would have wanted him otherwise. And then, of course, being the fool that I am, I went and proved him right. As soon as I found out that he was British Boy I didn't want him anymore.

  But I did want him. I wanted him so badly that my chest felt like it was collapsing just thinking about him.

  Why had I deleted all the messages he had sent me? At least with those I could pretend that things might somehow turn out okay between us. That somehow he could forgive my stupidity.

  I was awake for much of the night, tossing and turning, because my brain wouldn't shut off. We were supposed to practice our dance in the morning, but with this new turn of events I was sure Luke would be out of the competition. Looked like I'd gotten what I wanted after all.

  I waited clear until one p.m. before driving over to Luke's house with a pot of chicken noodle soup. My mom had the best recipe I'd ever tasted, so I hoped it might help cheer him up.

  There was a bunch of cars parked outside his house when I arrived. Apparently, I wasn't the only one with the idea to visit him. But I grabbed my pot of soup and knocked anyway.

  His dad greeted me at the door and invited me into the house. Several of Luke's football buddies were sitting in the living room along with a few of the cheerleaders as well. Jake, Kellen, and Denton sat on the couch. The girls sat on the loveseat. And Luke rested on a recliner that must've been brought into the room just for his recovery. I hadn't seen it in there when we'd practiced before. The blinds were closed and the lights turned off, so it was pretty dim. I imagined it was like that for his recovery or something.

  A hush fell over the room once they noticed me. My face flushed as I handed the pot of soup to Luke's dad.

  "I thought he might like this," I said to him in a low voice, hoping the others wouldn't overhear.

  He took the pot from my hands and smiled gratefully, and I noticed he had the same eyes as Luke. "It's been a long time since we've had a good home-cooked meal. Thank you, Ashlyn."

  I nodded, still not sure what I was going to do next. I hadn't planned on there being so many people here when I tried to talk to Luke. But I should have known; he was a well-liked guy at school.

  Luke’s dad nodded toward the living room. "Go ahead and have a seat. I'm sure Luke will be happy to see you."

  I found an empty chair next to the head cheerleader.

  "Hi, Luke," I said, tucking some hair behind my ear when everyone kept staring at me.

  "Hey," was all he said before turning his attention back to the conversation with his friends. I wanted to turn invisible and disappear from the room. Why did I think that he'd want to see me? Of course he didn’t want to see me, not after the way I'd treated him this past week. I shouldn't have come at all. This was completely awkward.

  I just sat there for the next thirty minutes, quietly listening to his friends talk. Luke was pretty quiet too, but I figured a lot of that was because of the concussion. And the more I watched him, the more I noticed that he kept drifting off to sleep as everyone conversed around him.

  Eventually, his dad came back into the room to tell us that we needed to go so Luke could get some rest. I took my time standing, hoping to get a moment alone with him before leaving. His buddies patted him on the shoulder and told him to get better soon. The girls gave him hugs and told him they were happy that he was okay. I had no idea what I'd do when my turn came. But finally, the room was empty, leaving Luke and me alone for a moment.

  "How are you feeling?" I asked when he slid his drowsy gaze to me.

  "Honestly?"

  I nodded. "Of course."

  "I feel like I got ran over by a bus."

  "Well, you pretty much did."

  His lip quirked up into a small smile, which put me more at ease than anything else had all day. If he was still able to joke around, he was going to be okay.

  "If you came over to practice our waltz, I'm sorry to say that the doctor banned me from it."

  "I pretty much figured that. And don't worry about it. I'll talk to Max."

  "Thanks," he said. "But just so you know, I totally didn't try to get run over just to get out of the dance. This was a true accident."

  I gave him an understanding smile. "I know. You just work on getting yourself better. And I'll see you at school later this week."

  I wanted to hug him, but my body didn't seem to remember how. Instead, I wrung my hands in front of me before finally making my awkward escape out the door.

  35

  Luke

  When I came down for breakfast Monday morning, Dad was sitting at the bar with his laptop open in front of him.

  "How's your head feeling today?" he asked.

  “A bit of a headache, but better."

  I couldn't remember what happened in the moments before I received my concussion, and not much of what happened the next day either. That's the fun thing with brain injuries, I guess. My dad reminded me that I had a lot of visitors come over and that Ashlyn was one of them. She didn't come back after the first day though, which had me worried that maybe I hadn't been very welcoming to her. But I hoped when I went back to school that she'd forgive anything I might've said or done and let me blame it on my low-functioning brain.

  I glanced at the clock on the wall and frowned at my
dad. "What are you still doing here? Weren't you supposed to be at work an hour ago?"

  He shook his head. "I took the day off."

  I almost tripped. "You took the day off?" He barely took sick days, and that was only when he was throwing up.

  He closed his laptop. "I wanted to be here for you if you needed me."

  I grabbed a bowl from the cupboard, still not sure what to make of this. "You don't have to do that. I'm okay on my own. I know how important work is to you."

  He looked at me pointedly. "You're important to me, too. I know I haven't done the best job of showing you that in the past, but I want to change things. We need to start acting like a family."

  A family of two, since mom was gone and Alec was half a world away.

  I pulled a gallon of milk out of the fridge and poured myself a bowl of granola. "Would this acting like a family include Amy?"

  I glanced at him to see his reaction. His face didn't give much away, but he seemed to be thinking my remark over.

  I dug into my bowl of oatmeal, nuts, and raisins. My dad had found a brand of old-fashioned type granola at the grocery store last month that was similar to my mom's, but it still wasn't quite as good. It didn't have enough raisins in it or something.

  "About Amy," he said after a minute. "I'm really sorry that I went about introducing her the wrong way. It's not something I ever planned on doing, so I'm just fumbling my way around." He sighed and looked at me more carefully, like he was trying to see into my soul. "Do you remember what Mom told us over and over during those last months with her?"

  I thought about it and shrugged. "I don't know. She said a lot of things."

  His gaze softened. "She didn't want her death to be the reason for us to stop living. She wanted us to be happy."

  "And Amy makes you happy?" I said bitterly.

  "Yes, actually, she does. I know the timing was terrible for you, and I still have to tell your brother about it, but to me, she feels like an angel. She came to me at my darkest hour and rescued me."

  I scowled into my bowl, not wanting to look at him. I didn't want to have this conversation. He'd betrayed my mom. She'd only been gone for a couple of months before he decided their twenty-five-year marriage was recyclable.

  "I hadn't planned to tell you this," he continued. "But about a month and a half after your mom died, I hit a really low point. I got to where I didn't see a point in living anymore. It just hurt too much to be without her. The months and years stretched ahead of me in an infinity of pain that I didn't want to face. I figured you were pretty much an adult. You didn't need me anymore. Alec had been out of the house for a couple of years and barely saw the need to talk to me much, anyway."

  My throat constricted. I didn't like the way this was going. I didn't know if I should be hearing this, not from my dad.

  He swallowed. "I had it all planned. I was going to stay late at work, like I always did. I figured it would be better for someone to discover me there the next morning, instead of having you find me. I had a bunch of sleeping pills that I'd been using to help me sleep since your mom died. I could just swallow a bottle of those and never have to wake up. Never have to feel the pain of living without your mom again."

  Tears pricked behind my eyes. I could barely believe what I was hearing. My dad had been the strong one. He wasn't the weak person who had panic attacks. He'd been able to move on like nothing had ever happened.

  "I went into my office and was holding the bottle in my hands when I heard your mother's voice. She said, 'Don't you dare do that, Brady. Don't you dare throw away the time we all wish I'd have more of. Don't you dare take away the only parent our boys have.'"

  Chills ran down my back. I could hear my mom's sweet, smooth voice in my mind. The tears spilled out, and when I looked at my dad's face, his eyes were wet, too.

  "It was then that I heard someone else." His voice shook. "It was Amy. She had come back to the office, feeling like she needed to check on me for some reason. She found me curled up on my office floor, a broken man, and I knew your mom had sent her to me. She wanted to make sure you weren't left here alone. Wanted to make sure I didn't ruin everything forever."

  Emotion had built up in my throat. I swallowed it down to speak. "That's why you called her your angel?"

  He nodded and wiped at his eye. "She and your mother are my angels. Your mom is my angel in heaven. Amy is my angel on earth. She talked me down from the cliff. You see, her husband died in a plane crash a few years ago, so she understood what I was going through. She helped me find the strength to live when I didn't think I had any more to find. She became a good friend, and I really do think your mom sent her to be with me. She knew we needed someone else to love us, and Amy does."

  My heart wanted to soften at his words, but they didn't make any sense. "Amy doesn't even know me."

  "I've told her all about you. And when I didn't think I could bear to go to your football games without your mom there, worried I'd break down when I didn't hear her yelling at the refs, Amy went for me."

  "Amy went to my games?" How many bombshells was he going to drop this morning?

  He nodded. "She sent me video clips of your different plays so I could watch them as I listened to the games from the car on the radio."

  "You were in the parking lot for all my games?"

  He nodded. "Every single one. I'm so sorry I never came out until last week." His eyes were wide and vulnerable. "I'm sorry I've been so weak. I haven't been there for you like I needed to. But I'm really hoping this can be a turning point for us. I've been selfish, only thinking about myself and my pain. I neglected the most important person I have in my life right now."

  I looked down at my cereal, my jaw working as I processed everything that he'd said to me over the past few minutes. My dad was just as broken as me. He hadn't moved on from my mom—if anything, he'd taken it harder. We just had different ways of coping with the pain.

  Dad got up, the bar stool scraping across the tile. And before I could think, he gave me a hug. We clung to each other, weeping like big babies. I had hated him for so many months, but now I could feel part of my heart healing.

  After we composed ourselves once more, I sat back down, thinking. I knew I needed to make a peace offering as well.

  “Do you think we could try that dinner with Amy again?” I sighed, not believing what I was saying. “I think I’d like to get to know her better.”

  He smiled, probably the first smile I'd seen him wear since Mom died. "I think we can arrange that."

  My dad and I spent the next two days together, watching football and talking about some of our favorite memories of Mom. We planned to take a trip to Yellowstone, one of her favorite places on earth, when my brother had his leave in a few months. Our relationship still wasn't perfect, and we both had a lot of healing to do, but things were getting better—and "getting better" was an improvement from where we'd been a week ago.

  There was a knock on our front door Wednesday evening. The steady stream of visitors had become a lot less steady, so I had no idea who might be here. But I hoped it was Ashlyn.

  Instead, I found Noah on the front porch with his hands shoved in his pockets.

  For a second, I wondered if I was hallucinating or something, another side effect of my concussion, but when he grunted and asked if he could talk to me for a minute I decided he must be real enough.

  We sat in my living room. He looked around the photos on the wall before speaking. "You're probably wondering why I'm here," he said.

  I nodded. "Yeah, can't say that I expected to find you here."

  "I'm surprised myself." He cleared his throat. "But I've been meaning to talk to you for the last few days. And since you're too wimpy to show up at school, I figured I'd come over." His lips lifted into a teasing smile.

  "Totally wimpy." I shook my head and smiled despite myself.

  He rubbed his hand along his pant leg, like he was trying to get up the nerve to say something to me. If he was going to
gloat about getting Ashlyn back from me, I might just have to disobey the doctor's orders and get physical.

  He swallowed. "I think there might have been a little misunderstanding about why I was at Ashlyn's house last weekend."

  "Misunderstanding?"

  "I don't really want to go into the details of why I was there. But there's nothing going on between us. She was just helping me out."

  Helping him out? That really didn't tell me anything. You could help people out in a lot of different ways.

  He continued, "I got into a fight and she helped bandage me up. I fell asleep on her bed, but when I woke up she was sleeping in a chair. So no, nothing happened. And from what I've noticed of her since then, I'm pretty sure she misses you. Though the verdict is still out on whether she should choose you over someone as awesome as me." He grinned. I still didn't like the guy, but I had to hand it to him: it was a stand-up move to tell me this even though I was pretty sure he still had feelings for Ashlyn.

  But I couldn't blame him—Ashlyn was a hard girl to get over. Probably impossible to get over.

  "Thanks for telling me that, Noah. I appreciate it." We both stood, and I walked him back to the door, since he seemed to have said everything he needed to.

  He turned back to me just before leaving. "But don't think for a second that just because I'm letting you have Ashlyn that I'm gonna go easier on you during practice."

  I chuckled. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

  36

  Ashlyn

  "Ashlyn, you're wanted at the door." Macey called to me Thursday evening when I was finishing up dinner.

  When she came back to find me, I whispered, "Who is it?"

  "It's Luke."

  A field of butterflies flooded my stomach. "Luke? As in…?"

  She nodded, grinning mischievously. "As in, major hottie who can use a British accent anytime you want to go weak at the knees."