“What are you doing here?”
Those were the first words he’d said to me in thirty days. Not hello. Not good-bye. Not how are you doing.
What are you doing here?
It made me ask myself the same question. What am I doing here?
Trying to act like the pain of seeing him wasn’t about to murder me, I got back to pretending to arrange items in the next box I had sitting on the table. “Packing. I’m sorry. If I’d known you’d be coming back today to pack too, we could have worked out different times so we didn’t have to . . .” I swallowed. “You know. Do this.”
“I’m not here to pack.” Soren’s voice was guarded as he stayed where he was, a distance away from me.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I needed a shower.”
When he motioned at himself, I noticed the state he was in. Dirty, sweaty, disheveled—like he used to come home from practice. Instead of the red-and-white one I was used to seeing him in, he was wearing a black-and-white uniform today. The gear bag had changed too. A different number was embroidered below his name.
He must have caught me staring because he patted the new number before dropping the bag on the floor. “I got drafted.”
“To which team?”
“You already know which team, right? That’s what you shouted at me over the phone last month, at least.” His eyes refused to come my way, his body seeming of the same mind. I noticed him backing into the wall behind him.
“I owe you an apology for that call.”
“You owe me an apology for a hell of a lot more than just that call.” As soon as it was out, he grimaced, grinding his jaw.
“So the team in Miami?” I stayed focused on packing so I didn’t fixate on the pain surging inside me.
“Good luck to them. They’re going to need it when playing against me.”
My head lifted.
His shoulders moved. “The Miami team was hoping to sign me. Hoping. If I made it to number three in the draft.” That was when his eyes finally met mine. They didn’t stay there long. “I went number two.”
“Number two?” I repeated, struggling to make sense of what he was saying.
“Some leftie pitcher got the number one pick.” Soren huffed. “Too bad for him, because Texas sucks in the summer.”
My hands were still wrapped around the vase I’d been setting in the box. “You aren’t leaving?”
He scooted his hat farther down when I caught his forehead creasing as he watched me pack. “I’m not leaving.”
He wasn’t lying or messing with me. I could tell by his face. I’d been able to tell from the very beginning, actually. Soren was the open book—I was the sealed shut kind.
“But . . .” That was all I could come up with. I had nothing else.
“You have no idea how the draft works, do you?”
“You get drafted?” I said, still reeling. I might have known a bit more from what I’d learned from Soren, but not much.
“I explained it all to you.” He shoved off the wall and wandered into the kitchen. “That one night after . . .”
Thankfully he was in the kitchen, so he didn’t see the heat rush into my face from what he was getting at. Having the mattress right in front of me made it that much easier to picture.
“I might have fallen asleep,” I said. “Like I tended to do after . . . that.”
He snorted. “Probably not the best time to go into a drawn-out explanation of the complicated draft process.”
My feet shifted. “So you have no say at all?”
“In team? Not really.” His voice echoed from the kitchen. “But I do when it comes to saying yes or no, and I meant what I said when I told you it was a conversation we’d have together if I got drafted by a team way the hell away from here.”
When he emerged from the kitchen, he had a couple bottles of water and a fresh package of his favorite food. I’d never been able to pass a display of Nutter Butters in a grocery store and not think about him.
“Of course we break up and I get drafted by a local franchise.” He ripped open the end of the bag after setting the waters on the table. “God, I hate irony.”
Letting go of the vase, my hands curled around the edge of the box. He wasn’t moving to Miami? A local team had picked him up?
Everything I’d feared happening hadn’t happened at all.
I’d lost him, but for all the wrong reasons.
I shook my head as I got back to packing, pretending my life wasn’t falling apart all over again.
“You got picked second?” I asked in an attempt to carry on a casual conversation as I finished what I needed to get done.
“Pretty great, right?” His chin lifted as he pulled a handful of cookies from the package.
I gently placed my favorite coffee cup into the box. “Actually, I can’t believe you didn’t get picked first.”
He was quiet for a moment, watching me. “See? That’s what I love—loved—about you.” He cleared his throat and took a drink of water. “Always thinking I was better than anyone else did. Even myself.”
“That’s because you are. You are better than anyone else.” My hand gestured at him, but I was having a difficult time looking at him. It was hard to look at what I’d lost—especially when it was three feet away. “I’m sorry for what I said—the way things went down. I should have given you a chance to explain instead of ruining this—us.” A sigh sneaked out as I focused on packing one item at a time. “The best thing I had going for me in my life.”
“Also had that international supermodel standing, too.” Instead of stuffing his mouth with that handful of cookies, he set them on the table. It was the first time I’d seen him too distracted to devour a fistful of his beloved cookies.
“What we had? So much better.”
“Dream lost its shine now that you’ve achieved it?”
My head shook. “No, I still love what I do. I just loved us, you, that much more.”
He was staring at me, standing so close. My body felt like one aching bruise from having him so close yet accepting he was totally out of reach. I needed to finish packing and get out of here before I said or did something truly pathetic that would end whatever dignity I still had, and put him in the uncomfortable position of letting me down gently. Or not so gently, as I supposed he’d earned a right to.
“Are you not packing up your stuff?” I asked, indicating the two other boxes I’d brought along but wouldn’t need. “Isn’t this the last day we have on the lease?”
Soren slid into one of the mismatched chairs circling the table. Not his old favorite, I noticed. Instead, he’d picked the one that used to be mine. “It was. Until I renewed it for the next year.”