And then there was the fear that he might never touch her again . . . or be touched by her.
As he stood in right field, waiting for the batter to swing at something, he thought he should have seen it coming, should have known the minute he kissed her the first time that it couldn’t last, that all his little fantasies were just that—fantasies. The first time he laid eyes on her, he knew—a woman like that would never settle for someone like him. How he had allowed himself to believe otherwise was a great mystery and had to be his greatest, crowning stupidity.
When the game was over, and his hope that she might come completely obliterated, he drove out to his mom’s to get Cole, thinking they could go for an ice cream.
Mom was sitting on the back porch, snapping peas. “Hey, Mom,” he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek.
“Jacob.”
He sat down next to her, stared out over the clover-infested yard.
“You doing all right?” Mom asked, without looking up from her work.
“Yeah.”
“Cole says you had a fight with the girl.”
The girl. Jake sighed, unwilling to have this conversation, and looked down at his hands. “I wouldn’t call it a fight.”
“Well, you can’t say I didn’t tell you so,” Mom said, shaking her head, and Jake couldn’t decide if he despised his mother or loved her for her keen, unwaveringly critical insight.
“No, I can’t say that,” he said, and with another sigh, stood up. “I’m going to take Cole to get an ice cream.”
Mom kept on snapping peas.
Jake found Cole in his room, lying on his bed and throwing a tennis ball against the wall. In usual fashion, he barely acknowledged Jake when he came in, but at the mention of ice cream, seemed to perk up a bit.
Neither of them said anything in the drive over to the Tastee Freez; Cole stared out the window. When they were seated in the orange plastic benches, and Cole was hunched over a double banana split, Jake asked, “So why are you in such a rotten mood?”
Cole shrugged, took a huge bite. “Tara,” he said through a mouthful of butterscotch-and chocolate-covered ice cream.
The admission surprised Jake; he couldn’t believe Cole was willing to talk about it. “What about her?”
Another shrug, another bite. “She dumped me. Sorta.”
“Then she’s stupid.”
“No, I’m a jerk,” Cole said, putting down his spoon.
“What do you mean, you’re a jerk? You’re not a jerk,” Jake said, figuring that in truth, Cole likely was a typical, fourteen-year-old insensitive clod. What male that age wasn’t? “What happened?”
“Robin said I should ask her to this dance. So I did, and she said yes. And I was gonna ride with Danny Futrell, but Grandma said no, ‘cuz she doesn’t like his dad, and she was gonna take me and all that, and that was just like really stupid. So then I started thinking about it, and I dunno . . . it just seemed really weird or something.”
“What, the dance? When is it?”
“It was last night,” Cole said, and picked up his spoon, took another bite as if that explained it all.
“Why didn’t you say something? I could have got you to the dance—”
“No, I decided not to take her.”
Jake groaned softly. “You called her, right? You made some excuse?”
“Yeah,” he said in a less than convincing manner. “I told her I had to do something for Grandma. She said I was a jerk and now she won’t talk to me. And I found out today she went to the dance with Danny Futrell.”
“Well, hell, kid, don’t worry about it—”
“I’m a jerk. No girl is ever gonna like me. Especially if Grandma has to drive me.”
Jake definitely felt the kid’s pain on that front and tried not to smile. He looked at Cole’s young face, could see the handsome man he would become and knew that girls would be sticking to him like white on rice sooner than he knew. “Girls are gonna like you fine, Cole. But here’s the thing. When you sign up for girls, you gotta expect to crash and burn now and then. Girls are strange creatures—they get upset about funny things and make us miserable. But it’s worth it in the long run, and I promise, you will recover from Tara. There will be another girl.”
“Except I don’t want another girl,” Cole said, twirling his spoon in the melted ice cream.
“So she’s pretty special, huh?”
“She’s got really pretty eyes.”
Man, oh man, Jake thought, as he reached across and helped himself to a spoonful of melted ice cream, he and Cole were exactly alike in that regard. Who would have thunk it? The two of them, captured by a pair of pretty blue eyes, unable to look away, running headlong and fast toward a massive wipeout.
“Robin says girls like presents when it’s not their birthday or anything. You think I should give Tara a present?”