Page 15 of The Captain

“Mom, we have to get back to studying,” I said, cutting off any more unnecessary comments.

“Oh, all right, I’ll leave you two be. Lincoln, come by more often!” Like they’re old friends, Mom gave him a strong hug and he returned it, his charming smile still in place.

We settled back into our seats, and I could just tell that Lincoln was trying to bite his tongue.

“So, notecards?” I asked again, holding out my hand.

For some reason, he didn’t make any comments as he dug through his backpack, looking for the bright yellow note cards I’d carefully written out for him.

I didn’t tell him how much work I’d put into making them, how I’d gone through the curriculum myself and found key points, or how I’d gotten notes taken by another student in his class—because Lincoln’s notes were chaotic at best—and compiled all the information into bite-sized pieces for him so it wasn’t everything at once.

Finally, he handed them over, and as I grabbed them, he held on. “How come I haven’t read anything you’ve written before?”

I pulled harder on the notecards, and he finally released them. Since our first study session, which had been difficult and uncomfortable at best, we kept our conversations purely academic. We didn’t bring up personal things like family or friends, like how I hung out with his best friend often or how I was best friends with his sister.

It was better for me this way, because then I could pretend I wasn’t keeping a big ass secret from him.

Mick better be freaking grateful.

This school year couldn’t be over fast enough.

“That’s not what we’re here for.” I really only talked to one person about my work, and that was Crew. Not because my best friends weren’t interested, they really didn’t know much about what I wrote. But they didn’t have the same mindset Crew and I did about books, so it was more fun to talk with him about it.

“I know,” Lincoln said, his hands fiddling with the wrapper from his straw. “But you could, you know. I’d be happy to hear it.”

I eyed him dubiously over the notecards. “No, that’s okay. Let’s focus. You have a test this week.”

He had a test on Friday that was a big part of whether or not he would be benched.

Lincoln bit the inside of his cheek and sighed. “Fucking hell.” He rubbed his hand through his hair, and anyone could tell he was stressed.

“Hey, you got this. You just need to focus on only this.”

“I want to read what you write,” he said again, giving me a look I couldn’t decipher.

“Lincoln—”

“How come Crew gets to?”

I blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Crew. I’m sure you let him read what you write.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Lincoln flushed and shook his head. “I just don’t get it.”

Immediately, my hackles rose. “You don’t get what? That Crew might actually find me to be a nice human being?”

“What do you see in him?”

His question caught me completely off guard. What did I see in Crew?

Crew came over sometimes to discuss books, but more often than not, we found each other in the library or Brew House, the little coffee shop down the road.

We were nothing more than friends, and Crew knew that was the case, even though he had asked me out a couple of times.

He let it go now, and thankfully, he was a big enough person that he still wanted to be my friend, and I enjoyed his company a lot.

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