Page 69 of Brick Wall
“Hey!” I say as he opens the door to his place.
“Hey yourself,” he says, capturing me in a giant hug.
I may be biased, but my boyfriend gives the best hugs. I’m pretty sure his hugs could turn my entire day around, maybe even month. They are that amazing.
I throw my giant tote bag in the corner of his entryway and take off my shoes to make myself at home.
“How’s your day been?” I say, hinting at the subject I want to talk about.
“Oh good,” he replies.
“How did it go earlier—at the doctor?” I guess I’m bringing it up after all.
“Oh, good.” He waves one hand over his face.
“Good,” I reply, not trying to be too annoying.
There’s a moment of silence, and then he adds, “They gave me this contraption thing.” He points to his kitchen table, where a new, small black case sits.
I just raise my eyebrows for him to explain more.
“I need to use it tonight while I’m sleeping to monitor and measure my breathing.”
“Okay.”
“I should probably look at this stuff before I get too tired to figure it out properly.”
“I’ll help.”
We go over to the table, unzip the device from the black fabric container it was in, and read the directions.
“I went over everything today with a tech, but seeing anddoing are sometimes two different things,” Sebastian admits.
Sebastian figures his sleep will be harder tonight with the addition of the machine, which is probably the correct conclusion. I’m not too sure I’d sleep great either with a monitoring device on me.
“I’m going to finish setting up and then head to bed early,” he explains. “Uh…” he starts as I notice the blush in his cheeks. “You don’t have to stay tonight if you don’t want to. I know I will probably be annoying sleeping with this thing and will likely look weird, so we can say good night now.”
“I’d love to stay if you are okay with that.”
“I’m very okay with that.” He leans down to kiss me on the lips.
A few minutes later, I am lying in bed with a man who looks like an elephant—a very cute elephant, though.
He’s grumbling over on his side of the bed, and I fall asleep with a smile plastered to my face.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Annie
The sun hasn’t touched the sky yet, but I’m counting heads and taking a mental inventory of what players are here and who we are still waiting for.
I have about half of my sleepy volleyball players on the bus in a parking lot near the athletic center. We have roughly ten minutes before we leave campus to head to Logan Airport for two West Coast games this season.
There are two California teams in our division, ACC, and every other year, we make the long trip out to play them.
We are flying into San Jose for a game against Stanford tonight, Friday evening. We usually like to fly in the day before a game, but it wasn’t possible for this trip. Luckily, thanks to our new time zone, we should arrive with plenty of time. On Saturday, we will take a bus up to Berkeley to get ready for another game on Sunday afternoon, and then we will fly home that evening after the match. It will be a very short and hopefully very successful trip.
Two more of my players board the bus and give me a half-hearted greeting.
