Page 46 of Lessons in Forgiving
My urge to shout,I knew it!(was this what Maeve felt like all the time?), wasn’t as pressing as the question burning on my tongue.
“And off the record?”
I didn’t know why I held my breath, but when his eyes batted open and their piercing green connected with mine, it almost knocked the wind out of me.
“You.”
The word seemed to echo through the room, and in that moment, my world became significantly smaller. Really, it felt like there was nothing else outside those doors. Like there was only him and me, and the dingy smell of a boys’ locker room.
The way it used to be.
Me?I wanted to ask, but it felt impossible to form even one-word answers.
“For a long time, it was you,” he went on. The past tense shouldn’t have stung. “And even after… everything.” He shrugged, unsure. “Youworked so well. With the draft coming up, I was kind of scared I’d mess up if I didn’t think of… well. Of you. So I continued, and just—” His eyes danced through the room like he’d rather be anywhere else, but the words still left his mouth. “Never stopped.”
There were a thousand things I wanted to say and do.
Kiss him, for one. Climb him like a tree, touch him until he’d make those agreeable sounds I’d been thinking about earlier. I wanted to tell him I appreciated his words, that I felt honored.
Honestly, that I was probably about two seconds away from falling in love with him if he kept this up.Again.
I didn’t do any of that.
The door swung open before I could react at all, and Coach Hepburn reminded me that we were, in fact, not the last two people on earth, and that Henry had a game to get to. “Pressley!” he shouted into our—mylittle bubble and burst it.
I tried to convey as much of what I’d wanted to say in the few seconds in which our gazes crossed, but it didn’t feel enough by a long shot.
At least they won that game.
CHAPTER 19
THEN, March: two years ago
Henry’s dining table was big enough to hold my printed-out research and his entire assortment of planners and calendars. Somewhere between the endless papers, I tried to compare my half-heartedly kept Google calendar on my phone to his passion project of a schedule spread out in front of us.
The vase in the middle of it all held the bouquet of peonies I’d been eyeing during my shift at Daisy’s—which doubled as a flower shop on the other side of the space—all day. I wasn’t quite sure how Henry had managed to buy them from the neighboring register without me noticing, but he had.
I trailed back to the mess of scheduling.
“Saturday?” I asked, gaze flicking up to him on the other side of the table.
His eyes flew across his papers, finger drawing over the calendar until it reached the Saturday I suggested. His head shook, my heart sank a little.
Though I wasn’t necessarily surprised.
“Can’t. Away game, so we’ll be gone all weekend.” He thought for a moment, continued to study the schedule. “What about Wednesday?”A week from now.
Hope shimmered in the green of his eyes when he looked back up. And I almost wanted to agree just to make them shine with something other than disappointment.
“Editorial meeting at thePost.” Like every Wednesday.
I didn’t blame Henry for the fact he kept forgetting about my plans when I could barely keep up with them myself. Despite his vigorous need for planning and control, he had more thanenough on his plate. He did not need to keep track of my appointments, too.
I doubted there’d be space in the calendar for them, anyway.
“They usually go late,” I reminded him. “And you need to be in bed by ten, right? With practice in the morning?”
Henry groaned, head falling back with the sound. “I want to see you, charm. Why is it so hard to see you?” He drove a hand across his face before it disappeared in his hair, messing his neat middle part up with another frustrated huff.
