Page 7 of Walkoff Wedding

After pausing to talk to a few guys from the team, we walk out back, closing the door and drowning out the party behind us. This seems to be the only place that I can take a second to breathe.

I hang back while Davis walks away, looking for a place to pee, and fish my phone from the pocket of my jeans, opening the group chat with Reese and Lane, my other best friend who graduated last year.

Not to be in my feelings, but I miss them. Having my best friends around, being on the team together. Being a redshirt senior means I’m here for another year playing ball, praying that I get drafted before I graduate.

“Oh shit.”

Glancing up, I see Davis peering down onto the deck. “What?”

“I almost just pissed on this thing.” He leans down and scoops what looks like a notebook into his hands, flipping it over to look at the back.

I stride over, swiping it from him before he can open it. “Lemme see. Can you please go pee so we can get outta here?”

“Fine, but I want to know what it is. Ooooh, what if it’s a diary? I’m so fucking reading it,” he mutters, sauntering down the stairs toward the darkened tree line.

“It’d be the only book you’ve read this year.”

He flips me off and keeps walking as I chuckle, turning the book over to the front. I don’t know what’s inside, but it’s definitely some type of notebook.

It’s light blue, leather-bound, with a well-worn crease on the spine from frequent use. I pause as I go to open the cover. Shit, what if Davis is right and it is someone’s diary or something? It feels… I don’t know, intrusive or something to look at someone’s private thoughts.

I run my fingers over the worn spine, feeling the smooth leather beneath the rough pads.

It might not even be a diary, who knows, and surely whoever left it behind did so by accident and probably wants it back.

So, actually, opening it to see who the rightful owner is would be the right thing to do.

Yeah.

Carefully, I flip the cover open and see the front page littered with hundreds of hand-drawn stars, varying in size and complexity, etched onto the page in dramatic smudges of dark charcoal.

The spot where someone would put their information is blank, instead filled with more of those tiny stars. Okay, well, I guess that’s not going to help.

I flip the pages slowly, scanning the sketches on the paper, completely in awe.

Holy shit.

This isn’t just a sketchbook. It’s more than just drawings. It feels like someone’s soul poured onto the pages. It’s filled with mesmerizing pieces of art, and it’s… incredible. The details. The linework. The shading. Whoever this belongs to is extremely fucking talented.

I continue to flip, lost in the art, until the next page has my entire body going taut, my heart thrashing wildly in my chest as I peer down at the book in my hand.

It’s not the portrait of the Milky Way that causes shock to course through my body. Nor the fact that it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of art I’ve ever seen, nor even that it feels like I could step right into the pages because it’s so realistic.

No, it’s not that.

It’s the signature at the bottom corner of the page, the one that’s so small I almost missed it entirely.

The artist’s figurative fingerprint.

It’s the fact that I know who this book belongs to without a doubt, without another glance, that has me frozen in place.

A swirly A that’s drawn with the side of a star connected through the middle.

This is ArtGirl’s sketchbook. This is her art.

The girl I fell for through a screen without ever even seeing her face. The girl who ghosted me and broke my fucking heart. I never even realized it was hers until it was too late. Until the damage was already done.

The girl I’ve spent practically a year dreaming about. Wondering where she went, if she was okay. Wondering if the things I felt for her were all one-sided and that’s why she ghosted me.

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