Page 2 of Hello Forever
It was right then that my night took a turn for the weird. Because one of those faces wasreallyfamiliar.
He was in the third row. My eye snagged on a set of handsome cheekbones and a cleft chin. A face I’ll neverforget…
“Oh my God,” I said aloud.It couldn’t be him, my mind chided. But it reallylookedlike him. Really.Alot.
CaxWilliams.
Naturally, the shot cut away before I was ready. The camera went back to a view of the basket, and a player about to try for a free throw. But I was no longer interested in the players. They were just a blur tomenow.
Instead, I sat there quietly freaking out, trying to decide if my subconscious had played a trickonme.
The last time I’d seen Cax Williams had been here in Ohio. We were sixteen. He’d been important to me back then, even if I’d never told him so. We went to the same church retreats from third grade up until the awful day when I lastsawhim.
It had been Labor Day weekend, and the church diocese had rented out a girl scouts’ camp to host the youth retreat. Cax and I had gotten caught doing something decidedly secular in nature. Although one of us might have said, “Oh,God.”
We’d been on a church retreat, for fuck’s sake. Not my sharpest hour getting caught with Cax in a liplock. The pastor in charge had stumbled across us in the woods. He’d had a proper fit and marched us into the office, where they’d yelled at us in separate rooms. Sin and hellfire andallthat.
They’d also called ourparents.
From what I could gather, our parents had vastly different reactions to our stupidity. After having stern words with my mom, the pastor had finally handed me the phone. And my mother hadlaughed.
“Oh, honey,” she’d said with a giggle. “I’m so sorry to laugh. But you’re going to have to work on being subtle. Do you want me to pick you up? The director said I could decide whether to bring you home a day early or to wait until tomorrow, likenormal.”
“I don’t need to come home,” I’d choked out. Not if I could stay one more night at camp with Cax. Even if they treated me like a convict, I still wanted to be near him. I needed to know if hewasokay.
“All right, sweetie. Don’t take their proselytizing too hard. And call me if you changeyourmind.”
That was how I came out—or got outed. My mom, who’d raised me on her own and had hippie tendencies, had been typically coolaboutit.
But Cax? He’ddisappeared.
I hadn’t seen it happen. The camp director sent me off to dinner after another long lecture and a few threats. But Cax never returned. I’d spent the last twenty-four hours at the retreat watching for him, feelingdevastated.
When I’d gone home, the news only got worse. I found that I’d been blocked from his Facebook account and from his phone. He never showed up at another dioceseevent.
Over the intervening years, I’d thought about him. I wondered where he’d gone, and if he was happy. I’d Googled his name a few times. But “Cax” was just a nickname. His real name was Henry Caxton Williams, and there were enough Henry Williamses on the Internet to populate a small country, so I never found areliablehit.
Now, several years later, I could swear I’d just spotted him on camera in a tinyMassachusettstown.
For the rest of the basketball game, you would have needed a hammer and chisel to pry me away from the screen. Every time the camera panned the crowd, I squinted at the third row. I spotted my mystery man each time, but I’d need another close-up shot to decide if it wasreallyhim.
In the meantime, I tried to figure out who he was sitting with. On one side sat another guy, his head down, as if he were tapping on his phone. And on the other side sat awoman.
None of this told me anything. But all of it made mecrazy.
Finally (finally!) there was another close-up of the team’s bench. And there he was—his brown hair as thick and shiny as I’d remembered it. His gorgeous movie-star chin. That masculine,kissablejaw…
The broadcast cut to a commercial break, and another shred of my sanity flew out thewindow.
But wait! Now I could search for him on the Internet, because I had a little more to go on. I typed “Henry Williams Barmuth University” into the search box. A millisecond later I was clicking on the first link that came up, which led me to a page at Barmuth.edu.Henry C. Williams, Teaching Assistant, HistoryDepartment.
Hot damn. There he was, looking back at me from the department’s website. I’d know him anywhere. The familiar, shy smile in the photo made me ache. It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself to wonder what happened to this boy who had accidentally broken my heart. I didn’t realize I’d gasped until I heard my mother’svoice.
“Axel? Is somethingwrong?”
I killed the browser tab so fast my thumb cracked on the button. “Nothing,” I said, determined not to be caught stalking my first love. Didn’t want my mom to know that six years later I was still thinking about the first boy I’d kissed. “Just watching aBarmuthgame.”
“Are they any good?” My mother stuck her head into the den and smiledatme.
