Page 3 of Catch and Cradle

“Now that is a good note to start the term on,” she says as she applauds. “We should drink to that.”

“That would be cutting it close. Dry season starts tomorrow, and isn’t training camp at eight?” I wag my eyebrows. “Aren’t you supposed to be the responsible one?”

She puts her hands on her hips. “I’ll be responsible tomorrow. Tonight I’m busting out the whiskey.”

I whoop and lead the way out of the room. I need the few seconds it will take to get downstairs to pull myself together.

I spent the summer at home doing everything I could to stop the words he said—screamed—from playing on a loop in my head, but all it’s taken is one stupid Polaroid to hear them again.

You are crazy and selfish and you wasted a year and a half of my life.

I can still remember how the whole room got quiet, like they’d been waiting for a cue. Drake went on singing about one dance over the sound system, but the entire party stopped.

I wish the worst part was that he’d ruined a perfectly good Drake song for me. I wish he’d done something cliché and stupid like break up with me because I’m bi or because he felt weird dating a girl with more muscles than him.

It’s hard to write him off as a complete asshole when a lot of what he said made sense.

A few deep breaths of caramel apple help calm me down enough to push the memories away for now. I roll my shoulders back and lift my chin after I’ve made it off the last stair, the way my mom taught me to do when I feel bad about myself. Jane has only just caught up behind me when the front door swings open and Iz walks in carrying a stack of pizza boxes while Paulina trails in behind them clutching her basil pot.

“SOAP OF HOPE!” Iz shouts. They zoom past me to dump the boxes off in the living room before zooming right back to pull me into a back-slapping hug.

“Iz, that is such a weird nickname.” I laugh as I pull them closer.

“No, it’s unique and cool,” they correct me. “Just like me.”

They pull back to smile at me, and I have to agree: they are very unique and cool. Their shaved head is topped by a backwards UNS baseball cap, and they’ve paired raggedy cargo shorts and a green plaid shirt over an expensive-looking pair of high-top basketball shoes.

Iz exists almost exclusively in five dollar finds from the thrift store, but their compulsive splurging on designer Jordans is a force to be reckoned with.

When they came out as non-binary last year, Jane, Paulina, and I all chipped in to buy them a pair in the non-binary pride colours to celebrate. For a few weeks after, it was hard to convince them to even take the shoes off for lacrosse practice.

“Jumping Jesus, you think you got enough pizza, Iz?” Jane is shifting through the boxes in the living room. There is a lot of pizza there, even for four college athletes.

“It’s Davy Jones!” Iz protests. “I had to get all the good flavours.”

“I’m hungry enough to eat half of these.” I head over to plop down on the squishy royal blue sofa next to Paulina, who’s picking the few remaining leaves off the withered basil plant she has sitting in her lap and scattering them on one of the pizzas.

“I killed this plant, but at least I can honor it in death,” she says in a forlorn voice without looking up.

The rest of us all exchange looks and struggle to hold back our laughter. I pat Paulina on the shoulder, but I don’t trust myself enough to attempt to say something encouraging.

“Okay, wait, before you dig into the pizza, we need to raise a toast!” Jane disappears into the kitchen for a moment, and after some clanking of glasses and banging of cupboards, she comes back with a bottle of whiskey and four shot glasses.

“Por Dios!” Iz slaps their thighs. “Hitting the hard stuff already. Can this be our sweet Jane?”

“One shot isn’t going to hurt us, and we’ve got a whole dry season to get through starting tomorrow.” She sets the glasses down on the giant coffee table that serves as the Babe Cave’s unofficial command station and starts pouring.

Iz gets up to turn the sound system on, and Paulina continues covering our pizza in half-dead basil leaves. I look around at the three of them, and for the second time tonight, heat pricks the corners of my eyes.

This is it. This is our third year. The first semester will fly by like it always does, and before we know it, we’ll be in our fourth and final year and on our way out the door. Sometimes it feels like I just went through orientation yesterday, and sometimes it feels like UNS has been my whole life, but it never feels like enough.

I always want more of these moments.

“Hey, you guys.” Everyone turns to look at me, and I swallow to keep my voice from shaking. “We should make this a year to remember, yeah? I want...I want it to be special. You guys have been the best two years of my life, and I don’t...I don’t want to waste...I...”

Paulina squeezes my shoulder, and Jane looks at me like she’s close to tears too. I push my glasses up and swipe at my eyes, pissed I can’t seem to get myself under control tonight.

“I guess what I’m saying is that we don’t have all that much of this left.” I gesture around the room filled with UNS memorabilia, photos of us, and a mix of cheap IKEA furniture and second-hand finds. “We should make it count.”

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