“Here,” Aaron says, leaning toward me and wiping the corner of my mouth with his thumb. He pauses, still close. “Wing,” he says, and something in the way he says my name makes me stop chewing, stop breathing, it stops everything.
“Everything has gotten kinda crazy, huh? You and your running, the whole Riveo thing. Look, I’m supportive of it, I know what it means to you, I know what it could do for your family, but it hurt, it hurt a lot when you pushed me away. Hurt so much that I let Jasper and those guys talk me into a night out at the Clermont. And the hurt, it wasn’t just because of how I feel about you, although that was most of it. I was…” He pauses, and I can tell he’s searching for the right word. “Offended. I thought … I guess I thought I discovered you. Discovered what you could do. How talented you are. And then here you were, telling me you were better off without me.” He holds his hands up. “I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous. But I mean, all these years, Marcus never knew you could run like that? At first I was doing it for him, you know, because I thought it was what he would have wanted. What he would have done. And then, then I was doing it for you, because I loved seeing you run, loved seeing how happy it made you. And then I think maybe I was giving myself too much credit for something that was just yours.” He pauses again and takes another tentative sip of his coffee.
Maybe it’s the coffee, maybe it’s the conversation, but I feel more grown-up than I ever have in my whole life. I feel like we aren’t high schoolers in Atlanta, wearing the same clothes we went to sleep in last night, but like … like we’re lovers (just thinking the word makes my face hot) in a sidewalk cafe in Paris.
“Wing, you’re really good. You’re better than good, you’re great. And I wanna help you however I can,” Aaron says. “If that means running with you, great. If that means backing off and letting you do your thing, hell, I can do that too. You let me know.”
Aaron is watching me with so much hope shining out of his eyes I’m surprised it isn’t blinding me. I smile a small smile back at him and take another bite of beignet. The second bite is just as good as the first. I take a third bite and chew as slow as I can, trying to figure out how to tell Aaron that right now, running is everything. Racing is everything. Riveo is everything. I don’t have space in my heart for Aaron right now, because when he’s in it, he takes up the whole thing.
“Thanks,” I say eventually. “I think that’s what I need at the moment. Just to focus. Just for a little longer.”
Aaron grins behind his coffee mug. His smile is so big it peeks over the edges. The smile makes me think he doesn’t quite understand what I’m saying.
“Can I still come cheer you on?”
“Sure. I’d like that,” I say. Because surely there is no harm in him being a face in the crowd. “But, Aaron, I still can’t see you. I have to focus. And when I’m with you…”
I shrug, not having the words to tell him what happens to me when I’m with him, how suddenly nothing else matters, and that scares me. It scares me how much my want overrides everything else.
His smile fades like a rainbow in too-bright sunshine. “I get it,” he says, staring down into his mug.
“I’ve just got to win,” I say, hating the defensive tone that creeps in uninvited. “You know?”
He squints at me, scrutinizing me, like my secrets are written on my bones. Like if he stares long and hard enough he’ll be able to see into me and understand. I wish he could. It would make this so much easier.
“You do what you gotta do,” he says. “I know it’s important. But I’m here, all right? If you need anything? If you need … me?”
I do need you! I want to shout, but I clamp the words down tight, lock them in my heart, and nod.
“Thank you,” I say instead.
He raises his now-empty mug in a salute. “Anytime, Wing-a-ling. Anytime.”
CHAPTER 55
I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by balloons and streamers and the cupcakes we stayed up all night baking. Our living room looks like a party for a four-year-old. Monica is pacing back and forth in front of me, and Granny Dee and LaoLao are on the couch, each of them sitting so tense and upright they look like sentries. They haven’t said a thing since my mom left to go pick up Marcus from the hospital. Not even when I dropped not one but two cupcakes on the floor. Not even when I spilled tea. Not even when I hugged a balloon so tight to my chest it popped.
The front door swings open and I hear my mom chirp, “Welcome home!”
I can’t make out my brother’s reply as my mother wheels him in his wheelchair toward us. We’ve put boards down the front porch steps as a makeshift wheelchair ramp. Thank goodness his room is on the ground floor, so that we didn’t have to move his things all around.
“Welcome home!” I try to shout, but he looks so sad, so lost, that my voice comes out feeble. Granny Dee and LaoLao stay silent.
“Come on, you two,” my mom says to them, wheeling Marcus next to me. “Where’s your festive spirit?”