Page 26 of Foul Line

I don’t know why this angers me, but I can feel my hands start to shake. He hopes I like Hayes back? What about himself? “Screw you.”

I try to push past him again, but it’s still fruitless. He maneuvers me against the wooden fence lining the road and blinks. “I realized something this morning or last night or I don’t know, one of the many times I’ve thought about you. My family isn’t known for saying I’m sorry. They just do whatever they want, damn the consequences. I swear when my parents walk through the house, it’s like the foundation starts to crumble before my eyes, and I started to wonder what two little words might do for them. For them to each other, for them to me, and from me to you. What if my mom just told me she was sorry she took the vacation with her twenty-something year-old boyfriend instead of being around for my birthday? Would it matter? Would it make everything okay?”

I swallow. He’s pressed against me, his fingers like a vise around my wrist.

“I thought about it and thought about it, and I don’t think it will, Tessa. I don’t think apologies really make a difference in the long run.” His throat works. “But then I thought about what it might mean if they just attempted to tell me they were sorry, like they actually made the effort to try to make things right. Obviously, it would be better if my mother had decided not to go on the vacation in the first place, but that can’t be changed now, no more than I can change what I did to you. But I’m going to pull something an Ivy has never done before.” He reaches up, wraps his fingers around my ponytail and tugs a little. “I’m going to apologize. I’m sorry, Tessa. Fuck. I’m an idiot. I know it won’t change what I’ve done. I can only hope that you see that I regret it. It’s just that it’s always been the five of us. Trying to maneuver around the problem that there’s someone else I want to let in like that, but my best friend doesn’t, I got lost. I shouldn’t have let him make that decision for me, and I’m sorry.”

My vision fractures before me. Heat gathers behind my eyes, and I try to blink it away. This is not the time for crying. This is the time to tell him to fuck off. The only thing is, I don’t want to. I still don’t trust him, but the guy I napped with in the car has to be there somewhere. The guy who invited me, the only girl ever, to his parents’ house for a dinner party, he has to be there, right?

I clear my throat. “How can Lake have that much say over what you guys do?”

He lets his hand with my hair in it drop to my shoulder. My skin pricks at his touch. “It’s just a crazy bond, Daddy’s Girl. A crazy, crazy bond.”

“I don’t trust you,” I tell him.

“For me, the part that hurts the most is knowing that you don’t. It’s also knowing that at the first chance I got, I jumped right into the usual Ivy M.O. Think about myself before others.” He shakes his head. “I really wanted you to play more basketball, Tessa. You’re so good.”

His words and his actions don’t match up. He never even bothered to look at me while I was riding the bench. “It hurt like hell to watch you guys win Championships and not even be able to say that I helped at all. I was just a seat-warmer.”

“You deserved to play.”

I shrug away from his touch. His hands clench at his sides as we stare at one another. “You were right about one thing, Ivy. Apologies don’t always change anything.”

I turn away, facing down the road to camp. I start at a walk, then begin to run again. The need to get away keeps my feet hitting the road harder and faster. If I stay there too long, I’m afraid I’ll fall right back into his arms again.

It’s so hard for me to give up on the Ballers and just say they’re assholes and that’s that. There’s so much more to them. I’m not saying what they did was right. I’m just saying maybe they were lost and confused, caught between the past and the present, and a friend and someone more.

Or maybe I’m way, way off.

Once I’m back in my cabin, I take a shower. I didn’t bring many clothes with me, nothing like the closets I have back home, but I dress in one of the nicest shirts I brought before texting Chase. He told me they’d be hanging out all day, and since the more I stick around the basketball part of camp, the more likely I am to get accosted by a Baller who wants to tear me down or apologize to me, I figure the lacrosse side is a safer bet.

Once I cross over the short wooded area that separates the two beaches, I feel freer. The guys are all hanging out outside their cabins on picnic tables and even using the small grills that are situated here and there on this side of the camp. When Chase sees me, he gives me a wave and runs over. “Hey,” I tell him.

He gives me a short hug. “I was worried you wouldn’t come over after this morning. The guys all think they’re dicks by the way. They decided they didn’t want to go back to the mess hall today, so we went out and bought some food to grill.”

His teammates all say hi to me, and I think he’s right. They seem to be happy to have me over here. None of them say anything specifically about what happened that morning, but they’re all intent on making sure I’m fed and welcomed.

While I listen to some of their college stories, I get a text. I reach into my pocket where I’m sitting at a picnic table and pull my cell phone out. It’s Hayes, and it’s a text just to me, not like when I used to receive Baller-related texts with everyone on the thread.I’m at your cabin. Where are you?

I’m with Chase.

It takes a few seconds for another text to come through.I’m coming over.

I look up to find that Chase is already looking over at my screen. “Do you mind?” I ask. He looks away. “He punched Lake earlier. If that helps.”

He turns back around, his eyebrows in his hair. “Yeah?”

“So I hear.”

“Then yeah, I think that’s fine. If he ends up being a dick though…”

“I don’t think it’s Hayes we have to worry about.” I send Hayes a text to come over even though I’m sure he probably wasn’t waiting for a confirmation from me. I was right. Not thirty seconds after I send the text, I see him breaking through the wooded area and onto the beach.

I watch him come toward us, and someone behind me asks, “Is this okay?”

Chase tells them it’s fine, so everyone goes back to talking. I try to gauge how his conversation went with Lake by the look on his face, but there’s a reason why they call him Ice Man. He leans against the picnic table right to my left but doesn’t say anything. I look back at Chase’s teammates and try to get back into the conversation. With Hayes here, though, it’s difficult. My attention keeps getting drawn back to him.

A little while later, a cooler full of drinks is brought out, and a bonfire is started by the beach. All pretenses of the guys trying to act as if they’re here for lacrosse seems to burn up alongside the wood they’ve gathered. I haven’t seen one lacrosse stick in any of their hands all day, for the past few days even. Though, I suppose they could be working on their stuff while I’m at camp doing basketball things.

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