The next day, Katie had been unable to stop herself. So she repeated her most shameful act as a mother. Stretching across Devon’s bed, she dug for it, breathlessly. And there it was, though wedged much, much deeper: the I Heart Everything diary, Victorian-novel-thick, its velvety cover rubbed worn in spots.
When she opened it, she saw it was no longer the training log it had been a year and a half ago but seemed filled with thoughts, feelings, phrases jumping out at Katie—so nervous! And next year, trig and there’s more homework than ever—but she unfocused her eyes, vowed not to read anything but the most recent entry.
And there it was, dated the day before and written with silver Sharpie:
It finally happened. I’m a woman. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
The pressure of the pen leaving marks on three pages to follow.
And that was it.
A complicated but palpable relief spread through her.
To know that, deep down, Devon was just a teenage girl in the throes of her first period. A regular girl, with feelings, big feelings she couldn’t explain.
It was late, and Teddy had finally left, but Katie could still hear Eric outside, returning phone calls, his voice echoing up to the bedroom where Katie sorted laundry.
She waited for him until she couldn’t wait any longer, her eyes dry-socketed, her body giving way.
Sometime later, she woke to his hand resting on her stomach, his body collapsing beside her on top of the comforter, the bedside lamp still on.
They both climbed under the sheets wordlessly and she burrowed up against him, sighing in his ear.
She was glad she had him to herself at last. His familiar smell, cotton and shampoo and the faint secondhand tang of the Kools his technician Jimmy smoked at SoundMasters all day.
And later, the lights off and the house quiet, he threw his heavy arms around her, which was her favorite thing.
Just sunk back into sleep, the light off and socks tugged free, she heard his voice, and it was almost like a dream voice.
“I saw one of his shoes.”
“What?”
“I saw it. One of Ryan’s shoes. On Ash Road.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered, pushing against him, claiming the cool space on the sheets between them.
“He got hit so hard he was knocked out of them. One rolled down into the ravine. They missed it the night before. But there it was.”
“That’s not true,” she found herself saying. It just seemed too awful to be true.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Forget it.”
He was still whispering in her ear for a while, saying things that Katie couldn’t hear, his mouth on the back of her neck.
She wasn’t sure why, but they were breathing so hard, like there wasn’t enough air for them both.
Chapter Six
“Kirsten, tell them what you told me. About Saturday night.”
All of them were straining toward each other, phones in hand.
Gwen, Molly Chu, Becca Plonski, all the regulars, their tinted water bottles tumbled at their feet.
Katie had stationed herself far from everyone, her laptop propped on her knees. With Drew off in the rec area, absorbed in the timeworn Puzzle Bobble video game, she could put her earbuds in, focus on the screen, and get some work done. And not have to talk about things.
But they were unusually loud today, a level of animation usually reserved for an injury, a bad call at a meet, the time Missy Morgan’s mom was ejected for spitting on a judge.
“…at Randello’s. They were in the corner booth. Everyone knows that’s the engagement booth. It must have been just a few hours before the accident.”
It was Kirsten Siefert. Standing above them, holding court. She almost never came to practice and had asked on her first visit where the pommel horse and rings were (At the nearest boys’ gym, ten miles over, Gwen had snapped). Today, however, she brought an invaluable tale from Saturday night.
“He looked as adorable as ever, but Hailey did not look her best. Sweats and no makeup. A girl with those shoulders needs to wear makeup. Greg and I decided he must’ve sprung it on her. Maybe she suspected something, because she couldn’t sit still, practically jumping out of her seat the whole meal, didn’t touch her primavera. Boy, did that sweet boy make her wait!”
The story felt more than a little gilded, but it was sad to hear, just the same.
Hell, let’s do this thing had been Eric’s proposal all those years ago. The circumstances so different, a beer-can pull tab as an engagement ring, cutting her finger so badly it bled for hours, and they didn’t care. I never thought I’d get married, Eric kept saying, dazed and smiling. I never thought I would.
They’d known each other five months.
“So how did he do it?” Molly asked, huddling closer to Kirsten.
“I didn’t see the actual proposal part,” Kirsten said, puncturing the moment for everybody. Then, trying to recover through sheer conjuring, she added, “We were waiting for an engagement ring in a tiramisu. Then champagne. What a romantic guy, right? And a gentleman. You know, Ryan always opened the door for me.”
“Me too,” Becca said, rubbing her wrists together. “He always did. Every time.”