Page 11 of Rookie Move
“Of hunger? It’s only seven thirty.” They often ate much later during hockey season.
“No, moron.Curiosity.” Becca snatched the food bags out of her hands. “This does smell good, though. How many kinds did you get?”
“Five. Three from the Garden and two from the Foo.” Say what you will about Brooklyn—it’s too crowded, it’s too trendy, it’s way too expensive—but when a girl needed some excellent Chinese dumplings, Brooklyn was the place to be.
Becca squealed. “Yay! I mean—I’m sorry that you had a five-kinds-of-dumplings day. Put on some yoga pants and I’ll pour drinks. Go! Quick like a bunny! Because you have some explaining to do.”
Georgia was too tired to argue. She went to her room and did as her roommate ordered.
“Our fridge smells weird,” Becca called from the tiny kitchen.
“Yeah,” she grumbled. “That mango we never ate? It’s gone bad. I need to clean it out. Not right now, though.”
“Ah.” Becca didn’t even have to shout, because theirapartment was small enough that they could hear each other from anywhere. “Hey—when I was answering your phones this afternoon, you got a call from some skydiving place in New Jersey. They had a cancellation for next week and offered you the spot. But I told them you’d be away on business.”
“Thanks,” she said, rooting in a drawer for flannel pants. Georgia had a lot of outdoor hobbies—skydiving and hang gliding and rock climbing. She was a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but most of those activities had to wait until after summertime. She could barely get to her dojang for tae kwon do once a week during hockey season. “How many nights is that trip next week, anyway? I’m afraid to look.”
“Six. It’s a doozie. And you have to pack a day in advance because the benefit is the night before.”
“Of course it is.”
“Now get out here and tell me everything about Leo Trevi.”
Georgia took her time changing. She didn’t really want to talk about it. Yet she was starving, so returning to the living room was inevitable.
At least when she got there, she found a candle lit on the coffee table and two places set. They didn’t have a lot of furniture in their living room—just an enormous but terrifically ugly sofa—brown velvet with pink roses. They hoped to replace it someday soon. Until then they played up its odd color scheme with pink floor pillows for extra seating. Becca had pulled one of these up to the coffee table for Georgia, who liked sitting there.
This is where they ate when they had time for a leisurely meal. Lately, dinner had been either consumed at their desks or eaten on bar stools at their kitchen counter. Their apartment lacked a proper dining table. There just wasn’t room.
“The first thing I need to know,” Becca said, helping herself to the steamed chicken and cabbage dumplings, “is why have I never heard the name Leo Trevi before?”
Taking her first sip of wine, Georgia realized the question wasn’t an easy one. She’d known Leo her whole life.And then in high school, they’d been inseparable. The Golden Couple. Somewhere in her father’s Long Island home there was even a clichéd picture of the two of them being crowned homecoming king and queen.
This morning, which now felt like a hundred years ago, she’d scoffed when DJ had said she never mentioned Leo. But she’d lived with Becca a year now, and never brought him up? Point DJ. The fact that she never mentioned Leo hadn’t seemed at all strange to her until today.
“Well,” she began, reaching for the jade dumplings, “Leo was my high school boyfriend.” It sounded so inconsequential when put that way, though. Leo loomed a lot larger in her life than a teenage crush. He was her first date. Her first kiss. Her first love.
Her firsteverything.
“He’ssohot.” Becca sighed. “Were you together long?”
“Three years. I dumped him on graduation day.”
Her friend gave a low whistle. “Jeez. Why?”
“Well...” Again, it wasn’t going to be easy to explain. “You know I had a really difficult time my senior year.” She’d long since told Becca that story. A few months before high school graduation, she’d been raped on a college campus where she’d spent spring break at tennis camp.
“Yeah. That must have been a terrible year, sweetie.”
“No kidding. There are parts of it that I don’t remember very well.” The first ugly weeks after the attack, she’d been a terrified wreck. It had been a blur of police reports, a hospital exam. Her father’s rage. Georgia didn’t like remembering it. It had taken her a long time to feel normal again, and dwelling on the past felt like inviting the shadows back into her life.
“Was Leo around after it happened? That would be a lot for an eighteen-year-old boy to take.” Becca rose up on her knees to refill her wine glass.
Georgia tried to decide what to say about that time that was fair to both of them. “Leo was amazing,” she admitted, reaching for more dumplings. “I didn’t go to school for a while. He’d come over afterwards and bring me thehomework assignments. He brought me cupcakes and movies to watch. He just sat there on the sofa and held my hand for about six weeks straight. And then when I went back to school, he drove every day and walked me into the building and then out again afterwards. So I’d feel safe.”
Becca sighed into her wine glass. “That’s pretty inspiring. It’s almost enough to restore my faith in men.Almost.” She hadn’t been lucky in her dating life, which was one of the reasons she and Georgia spent so many of their Friday nights eating takeout on the coffee table. “So why did you dump him? Or shouldn’t I ask? Please don’t tell me he cheated while you were laid up. I really hope this story doesn’t end like that.”
It didn’t, though. “No, he was perfect. Except that we’d been so happy before, and now we were both sad all the time.” There was a cloud over the two of them that hadn’t always been there. Before, Leo had always looked at her with laughter in his eyes. Whether they were playing tennis on the courts in the park, or singing along to the radio in his car, it was all fun and games.
