Better Late Than Never Page 4

  I remember the first pep talk I gave him last year when he was coiled tight with nerves and on the verge of hurling: “Pretend it’s someone you hate and hit that sucker out of your life.” Every game when he hits a homerun, he reminds me of what I said and says it’s usually the only thing going through his head during games. I’m his biggest fan outside of his little sister.

  I bound up the bleachers as soon as I get there, Grayson signaling me with a wave at the very top seat. I pass by Becky, Kyle’s girlfriend (barf), barely acknowledging her bright smile. Grayson’s eyes are on her for a split second before he looks out to the crowd. He’s always staring at her, sometimes as if she kicked his Pitbull, Dunkirk, or something. Or maybe he hates her because of me. Whatever it is, I’m happy to have him in my corner…even if he’s tired of hearing me complain about her and Kyle being together.

  I get to the top and plop down next to Grayson, just in time to see Kyle walk out onto the field. Screams and chants raise like a chorus and gooseflesh break out all over me as I stare at him. I can barely see his face through his helmet, but I know he has a focused look on under it. And if I know my best friend, he’s also incredibly nervous.

  I stand, hoping he sees me – as if I don’t already stand out like a sore thumb with my purple hair and 1950s orange and green plaid dress. When he gets to the home plate, he digs his cleats in a few times before gripping the bat and pointing it toward the stands behind the pitcher’s mound. The crowd erupts again and I nearly burst at the seams with excitement.

  I usually hate sports, but I love my best friend. So if baseball is important to him, it will be important to me, too. And in this moment, as I witness him doing something great, I can’t help but scream.

  “Go, Kyle!” I yell as I cup my hands around my mouth.

  I think he hasn’t heard me, but his head whips to the stands and, maybe I imagine it, but his shoulders relax. My tummy flips and I find myself clapping and whooping in earnest, giving the cheerleaders a run for their money. He stretches his bat in my direction and I warm at the action…

  Until I see Becky stand up and shrug on his letterman jacket. He blows her a kiss before his focus goes back to the pitcher and I deflate right there. She and her friends giggle into their hands as she sits, cheering even louder than I ever could. I don’t think it was intentional on her part, but it still makes me feel…

  Stabby? Cutty? Angry…angry and hurt. Irrationally, yes – I mean, she is his steady girlfriend – but it still hurts.

  I sit back down quietly, clutching my arms as a chill of humiliation whips through me. I stare out at the field blankly, seeing nothing but the rebuff just doled out by my best friend. Grayson tries to reach out to me, to console me, but I just shake my head, refusing to break apart in front of all of these people. I should get up and leave, should go lick my wounds in private, but I’m rooted in place.

  Even after what just happened, I still want to see my best friend hit this dinger.

  The pitcher positions himself, shaking his head twice before nodding at the catcher once. My heartbeat accelerates amidst my shame and a surge of butterflies take flight in my belly as the pitcher pulls his arm back, his leg going up, before he releases it in a quick burst. Kyle’s stance is resolute as he waits on the right moment to hit the ball.

  And then he does…and the crowd goes wild!

  I knew he would do it.

  And when he raises his bat in victory, he whips off his helmet and looks directly at me. I feel his eyes incinerate my doubts, and my heart soars when he curves his index finger in a hook – one of our friendship codes – and I know then, that it was all for me.

  March 2006

  I’m sick. Like food poisoning sick – puking, diarrhea, sweats, shakes, the works. My parents wanted to stay home with me but I insisted that I was sixteen and able to take care of myself. As I clutch the porcelain throne in my bathroom, however, I am beginning to regret that decision. After the last time I tried to get to the bathroom failed, I decided to camp out here instead.

  Smart move if you ask me.

  I hear Spike growl from his perch at the door before his menace turns into excited little yelps. I raise my head, thinking one of my parents came back, only to see Kyle crouch down and rub my dog’s head. What?

  “Hey, Crazy Hair. How you feelin’?” he asks, leaning a shoulder against the door jamb, school bag slung over the other shoulder. I have never been so happy to see him in my life.

  “Like death,” I barely croak out, before turning my face away.

  I hear his footsteps and groan as my stomach rolls. At this point, there is nothing in it, but it doesn’t stop me from…

  Just thinking about my ordeal since last night has me breaking out in a sweat. I would not wish a stomach bug on my worst enemy. Not even Becky.

  Kyle turns the faucet on at the sink, but I’m too exhausted to take a peek at what he’s doing. I just wish he would go away so I can be sick in private. We might be best friends and have gotten even closer these past few months, but we are not at the watching me take a number two phase.

  Not that we’ll ever be.

  I open my mouth to protest then close it on a sigh. Kyle places a cold, damp towel on my forehead and I instantly shiver. That feels so good. He takes another cloth and shifts me so that he can clean my face, and then he makes me gargle some mouthwash.

  “Feel like you’re going to be sick any time soon?” he asks, concern making his eyebrows pinch together.

  I take a moment before answering, checking how I feel. While there’s still a queasiness, the overwhelming feeling of nausea is absent. I shake my head in response and he nods before placing his hand under my legs and the other around my shoulders. I’d have argued, but I can’t even find it in me to be my usual cranky self. I let Kyle carry me to my room, my head on his chest. He’s pretty strong for a sixteen-year old boy. I’m not exactly light.

  He lays me on my bed, using the damp towel to wipe away any residual perspiration from my forehead. He parts the curtains at my open window, letting in the cool, fresh air, and I assume that’s how he got in. I watch him go around my room, moving with such ease as he picks up after me, and my tummy flutters. Kyle truly is my best friend. He’s missing school for this, missing baseball practice; and that’s a huge deal.

  “Leave it,” I beg him, straining to get up.

  “Hey,” he hushes, rushing to my side. “Lay back, it’s okay.”

  “But school, practice…”

  “I’ll handle it. Let me take care of you, Savi,” he reasons softly, eyes pleading.

  We stare at each other for a moment, before I break our connection and close my eyes, giving in. He can’t stare at me with those gorgeous brown eyes and not expect me to give in. Pretty unfair, if you ask me.

  I listen to him move in and out of my room and before I know it, I’ve dozed off. I awake when the smell of chicken soup wafts up my nose. Looking around my room, you never would’ve guessed that it stunk of puke earlier. I sit up, thankful about feeling a little less like death. I spy a bucket to the side of my bed and smile. My best friend thought of everything.

  Seconds later, said best friend walks in with a tray – a bowl of chicken soup on it, along with a purple lily in a glass. I gasp seeing the pretty flower, plucking it up and inhaling. Big mistake.

  My stomach lurches and I lean to the side, snatching up the bucket to purge. Kyle is by my side in a rush, hands free of soup, pulling my hair back. He’s cooing softly in my ear, quieting me as I heave. And when I’m done, he cleans me up again and feeds me soup.

  I don’t usually let people in, but here is Kyle burrowing deeper into my heart and making a home. He spends the day with me and we watch old movies on my laptop on my bed. I fall asleep on his chest, contented with having him in my space, and when I wake again, he’s gone; the sun setting and my parents, home.

  I smile seeing that the purple lily is still sitting in the glass on my dresser and reach for my cell phone, a message already
waiting for me from him.

  Kyle: U snore like a tractor.

  I snort as I respond, I do not!

  And the space my best friend holds in my heart, slowly closes around him; room available only for him. But then I get another text and the space I created for Kyle cracks a bit.

  Grayson: Didn’t see u @ skl today. Is everything ok? Want me 2 kiss it & make it better?

  I giggle. This boy is too much.

  Me: What if it’s my period?

  Grayson: So ur not opposed 2 me kissing it then…interesting.

  I blush in spite of myself. Instead of answering, I correct him.

  Me: *U’re :-)

  His response is a few lines of LOL and it makes the smile on my face threaten to split me in two.

  I don’t know what to make of Kyle’s cousin. I don’t like him like him, but there’s something in me that always wants him around. What is it with these Moxam boys who are just adamant about squeezing themselves into my life?

  Three months later

  It is finally my seventeenth birthday. I’d gone to the salon yesterday to retouch the color in my hair because today was going to be a special day. Seventeen golden years on this Earth. So many memories made. Seventeen years of a great childhood and today…sucks!

  The month of June had always been good to me, especially my birthday; but today is a day from hell…or somewhere close by it.

  First of all, I woke up this morning to cramps, then had to stuff my sheets in the washer due to my period making her grand, unwelcomed entrance. When I finally looked in a mirror, I screamed bloody murder, because there it was – a motherfucker-of-a-pimple on my chin, making me look like the Wicked Witch of the West. To make matters worse, I was too bloated from my period, so I had to wear something that didn’t make me look like a house.

  Skinny jeans it was.

  My parents tried to make my day better by singing for me and feeding me cake for breakfast, but not even the chocolatey goodness of chocolate fudge cake could do the trick. I went to school in a foul mood…

  And now, watching Kyle swallow Becky’s face in the school’s parking lot is making my foul mood worsen. Stabby…cutty…

  They have been dating for the past five months and I am starting to feel like the third wheel. It isn’t that I’m jealous, but I have found myself wishing, a time or ten, for her to disappear, or for a bus to come out of nowhere and accidentally hit her. Like in that one movie with the mean girls…

  I’d given him Joy’s birthday gift the night before – a pair of nunchucks. Don’t ask me what she had planned on doing with them because she wasn’t even in karate class. I loved that she wanted them, though, even if it was for some silly reason. She’s my twin being, aside from her brother.

  But, right now, he’s not even so much as a best friend.

  “Are you gonna be okay, honey?” my Dad asks, concern evident in his deep tone. He turns his radio down that’s been blasting my “birthday song”, as he’d called it, on repeat since I got in the car. I’m not on the edge of seventeen anymore, though. I am smack dab on the cliff of it, waiting to dive off into what experiences it would bring me.

  The first experience is that my best friend is a douche, and a heartless one at that.

  I think Dad knows that I like Kyle, but I will be shriveled and senile before I ever admit that to anyone, least of all my father. It’s just…weird. He always wants to have girl-talk with me. My mom is the straight shooter, while he is the feeler. Strange as it is, I kinda like the dynamic. My mom can be tender when she wants to be, but I like how honest she is. Dad tries to protect my feelings while she tells it like it is.

  For example:

  “Losing your virginity will hurt like a motherfucker, Savi. If you ever do it, icing your love cave helps.”

  Class she has in abundance.

  “We could ditch this joint and go for a road trip,” Daddy suggests, and I can’t help but laugh.

  “You want me to ditch school, Dad? You’re spending way too much time with Mom,” I tease, shaking my head.

  “Hey, your Mom isn’t the only one who knows how to walk on the wild side,” he argues, adjusting his black and red diagonally striped tie.

  He looks smart and handsome in his navy-blue suit; my mother told him as much when she decided to make out with him for two minutes just after she rushed me out of the house. He came outside with his tie crooked, his hair disheveled and a light flush to the cheeks his eyeglasses sat on.

  Handsome, smart, reserved are words we use to describe Dad. Wild he is not.

  “Dad, your idea of wild is not wearing a tie to work,” I joke, before my attention snaps to Kyle now nibbling on Becky’s neck.

  The idea of ditching is becoming more enticing by the second.

  Dad chuckles and the sound makes the weight seem lighter. My face brightens with a genuine smile and I reach across the center console and hug him. He’s taken aback for no more than two seconds – because he knows his daughter is so not a hugger – before his arms come around me and he just holds me, grounding me as only a great father can to his daughter.

  I love my mother, but I will always be a daddy’s girl.

  “The offer still stands, kiddo,” he expresses, his voice muffled by my hair. “If you call me within an hour of me leaving here, I’ll come running.”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I tell him, truly grateful to him for knowing I would need a way of escape if things got too overwhelming. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now stop being weird.”

  He chuckles again before letting me go. “Happy birthday, baby girl,” he bids and kisses me on the forehead. “And remember, you’re amazing. Any boy would be a fool not to notice.”

  He winks at me and I groan, “God, you’re such a weirdo.” But he’s my Dad and I love him.

  He drives off when I get out of the car and honks his horn at the smooching couple. They pull apart and Kyle waves at Dad. His eyes immediately search me out and when they finally land on me, his shoulders relax and the sexiest lopsided grin spreads across his face.

  We are besties, at the point of no return – the friend-zone – but it doesn’t stop my heart from fluttering every time he smiles at me.

  Ugh. Stupid, hot boy and his hot boy way.

  “I hear it’s somebody’s birthday,” a deep voice I’ve come to know as Grayson’s, says from behind me. Startling me yet again.

  “Stop doing that, you stupid son-of-an-alien-whore!” I yell at him, beating at his muscular chest.

  In mere moments, my fists open and I am massaging his chest because, well, damn. His pecs are just there.

  “How is this natural?” I ask, frustrated, now poking him in his pectorals. Seriously, he’s almost eighteen with the body of a man who can rock my world and my entire universe.

  Lord, have mercy!

  “Yet, you’re sexually assaulting me,” he quips, flexing and smirking at me.

  “You’re sexually assaulting me with these things,” I respond, still transfixed on his chest. “What are they, anyway? Airbags?”

  “You could say that,” he answers slyly. “You’ll need it for the bumpy ride I’d give you.” He winks at me and it goes straight to my…

  “Happy birthday, hon’,” he says, pulling me from thoughts I have no business thinking.

  Focusing on his eyes, I notice then that he is dangling something between his fingers. On further inspection, I realize that it is a simple silver necklace with a unicorn at the end of it – my favorite animal that doesn’t exist.

  “How did you remember?” I ask quietly.

  “I remember everything you say, Savannah,” is his softly spoken answer before he slips the jewelry over my head.

  I stare at him, in what feels like new light, and notice the vulnerability in his gaze. I notice the slight shift in his stance and the tremor of his hand as he pulls it away. He’s nervous. Bad in all the good ways and sexy as sin Grayson Moxam is nervous. Dude…

  “Is this a trick to get into my panti
es?” I fire at him, suspicious of all of this nice that he’s giving off. I’m used to the pig, the horn dog, the cocky asshole. Not this imposter.

  “Much as I want to, Princess,” he admits, waggling his eyebrows like the horn-dog I know him to be. I can always count on him to be completely and brutally honest. “I also want to get to know you.”

  He raises a hand and scrubs it down his face, effectively lifting the hem of his grey t-shirt and exposing his waist. My stomach dips as the butterflies ascend and I force my eyes up and away from the beginning of that sexy V of his that leads to…and focus on his face as he speaks.

  Damn you, teenage hormones!

  Grayson takes a deep breath and then blurts, “I’m an asshole.”

  “You’re right.” No argument there…

  “A womanizer.”

  “Right again.”

  “A self-absorbed piece of shit.”

  “It really is my birthday!” I exclaim, clapping while I jump in place. “You’re on a roll!”

  “And God’s gift to women,” he ends on a mischievous smile that halts my celebration.

  “You were so close,” I say, bringing my index finger and thumb inches apart. “But it would have been too much to ask you to be human and not a pig.”

  “What I’m trying to say is,” he contends, jostling my shoulder jokingly. “I like you, Savannah, and I’d love to get to know you better, even if all we’ll ever be are friends.”

  My hands twitch at my sides, the need to grab the end of my hair, great. I can feel his eyes boring into the back of my head, as if he is willing me with his mind to turn his cousin down. He hates Grayson, but I don’t. Grayson has wished me a happy birthday, and he hasn’t. Right now, Grayson is being a better friend than he’s been these past few weeks.

  So… “Yeah,” I settle. “Yeah, Grayson, I’d like that.”