Page 53 of Old Fashioned
Or maybe I was just a lovesick fool and should be ashamed that I evencaredthat it had been one month.
Still, though, I’d held my stern outward appearance at school and kept quiet around my family as per usual, when I was with her?
I couldn’t pretend.
I massaged up her calf a little, smiling as I recounted the time we’d spent together. I didn’t know which I’d loved more — watching her work with appreciation from a distance, sneaking kisses when the other coaches had yet to show up to the locker room, learning her as a woman on the nights Randy had Paige and I got Sydney to myself, or marveling at the role she played in Paige’s life as her mother when I spent afternoons practicing with that little girl in their backyard.
I was learning her favorite flowers and memorizing the look of determination she wore when she worked in the garden. I was learning about her childhood, about her parents and her sister, about her life traveling before finally settling down in Stratford just in time to finish high school. I was learning who she was when she was with Randy, how she’d changed since, and the ways in which she wouldneverchange — like the fact that she was, had always been, and always would be a woman who was curious about the way things worked, like the bodies of the players she worked on and the vegetables she tended to in the garden and her daughter, who threw her for a loop because she changed and grew each day.
It was like slowly peeling off buttery flakes of a pastry, discovering new tastes with every layer, and I cherished each morsel.
The more I got to know her, the more I struggled to understand Randy — who, up until that point, I had respected. It wasn’t that Sydney ever spoke ill of him, but she didn’t need to. I knew all I needed to know about him, the way he treated her, and their relationship by how she responded to being treated the way she always should have been.
Every game he came to with Paige by his side, I would chance a glance at him, wondering how he could have been so stupid as to let her slip away.
He always met my gaze with the same intensity, as if he knew something I didn’t.
As I became more familiar with Sydney, I revealed my own layers to her, too — letting her pass through walls I never realized I had built and fortified.
My smile faltered a bit as that thought settled in, because I realized one subject I’d yet to even broach with her was the death of my father — specifically, the hard drive and the journal and my discoveries so far.
And I knew it was on purpose.
That part of me — the young man who was left without a father, with questions never answered — he was tender and raw and I did everything I could to never expose him. The need to protect my father’s legacy and my brothers and my mom andmyselfwas so deeply sewn into my being that it had sprouted roots.
But, something in my throat tightened that Monday night on my couch when Sydney leaned up, kissing my cheek before she scampered off to use the restroom down the hall.
I paused the TV, grabbed my laptop, plugged in the external hard drive, and opened the journal I’d been neglecting since Sydney had stolen my time and attention.
Not that I’d complained.
“Uh-oh,” Sydney said when she plopped back down on the couch beside me, leaning on the arm of the couch with one elbow. “Don’t tell me you got another new trick play idea or the sudden urge to watch defense tapes. We were just getting to the good part.”
She smirked, nodding toward the TV where the witches were paused on the screen, and I reached over to squeeze her knee.
“I want to show you something.”
Sydney rolled her eyes, but scooted closer, wrapping her arm under mine and reaching for her phone. “Fine. But I’m setting a timer, and after twenty minutes, no more football talk until the movie’s over. I don’t care how close we are to playoffs.”
“It’s not football-related.”
Sydney paused where she was reaching for her phone, her little mouth popping open into a softo. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to hide my shock.”
She was teasing, but when she saw the sincerity on my face, her brows tugged together.
“What is it?”
My heart stopped altogether on my next breath, and I held it, turning my laptop until she could see the screen.
I watched as Sydney’s eyes roamed, her frown deepening the more she looked. “I don’t understand… what am I looking at? It’s like…” She reached for the computer, pulling it into her own lap for a closer look. “It’s like an old processor or something. Is this Windows Vista?”
“Mm-hmm.”
She frowned more, shaking her head at the document I had open. “And this is… well, part of it is in Latin, I think? But…” Her eyebrows softened, lips parting. “It says your father’s name. It says… it’s talking about the distillery.” Sydney’s eyes slowly found mine. “Jordan, whatisthis?”
I swallowed, realizing the jolt of nerves in my stomach wasn’t because I was afraid to tell Sydney about what my brothers and I had found.
It was because I’d found someone Iwantedto share it with.
