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  “My Saturday’s pretty clear. What works for you?” Graham said something else, but his words were muffled.

  “What was that?”

  “Sorry. I just got back from a run. I had to ditch the sweaty shirt.”

  “Ah, okay.” Connor swallowed. “Saturday.” The word burst out. “I have to work at the shop until two, so I can be at the school by two thirty or so. Will that work?”

  “Sure. I’m easy.”

  “Con-Con!” Abby, awake from her nap, burst into his room, blonde hair bouncing in twin ponytails. “Make Kory let me play.”

  Connor covered the speaker on his phone with his hand. “Abs, I’m on the phone.”

  “But, Con-Con, I want to play and Kory says babies can’t play his game. Tell him I’m not a baby.” Her round face flushed with indignation.

  “Little sister?” Graham asked.

  “Yeah. Give me a sec?”

  “Not a problem.”

  Connor turned his attention to his littlest sister. “What’s wrong, Abs?”

  “Tell Kory I’m not a baby and I can play with him.”

  “What’s he playing?”

  “The game with the shooting. I want to shoot too.”

  “Abby, you’re not quite big enough for that game yet. You’re not a baby,” he reassured her when her face took on an adorably mulish expression, “but that game is for big kids.”

  “But, Con-Con—” she began.

  “Tell you what. If you go watch your video now, after dinner I’ll play princesses with you, okay?”

  She thought about this, her little mouth pursed. “Okay,” she said, “but Kory can’t play with us. He’s mean.” She stomped out, curly blonde ponytails bouncing on her head.

  “Sorry about that,” Connor said into the phone.

  Graham’s voice was amused. “No problem. Did I hear you agree to play princesses with your little sister?”

  Connor cringed. Oh yeah, he had lost any and all coolness points. “Yeah?” And, to top it all off, the talking in questions thing was coming back. “Can you maybe forget that you heard that?”

  “No way, I think it’s sweet.”

  Sweet? So not a good image. “Yeah, well, you’re not the one who’ll end up wearing a tiara and serving imaginary tea to dolls.”

  Laughter exploded through the phone. “I would pay to see that.”

  “There’s not enough money in the world.”

  Graham’s husky chuckle sent little thrills down his spine. “Hey, my mom is hollering at me for dinner. I’ve got to go. Saturday, two thirty, right?”

  “Yep. See you then.” Connor disconnected the phone as his little sister started wailing. He got up and went downstairs to load the washer and start dinner.

  HE’D GOTTEN everyone fed and switched the laundry over when Allyson showed up an hour later. He hated—hated—that his first reaction was anxiety, followed closely by guilt. She stood on the other side of the screen door, hands clasped in front of her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Sorry.” He waved her in. “It’s homework time and Kory’s driving me crazy.” He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. Luckily, Kory chose that moment to bitch about stupid English essays.

  Abby sat in the middle of the living room with a stack of coloring books. She waved at Allyson. “Ally, Ally, I’m doing homework too.”

  “I see that.” Allyson stopped to examine one of the pictures. Abby was in the middle of a green phase. Each illustration in front of her exploded in different shades of green. If Dr. Seuss could have green eggs and ham, she could have green kittens and puppies.

  “Want something to drink?” Connor asked.

  Allyson shook her head. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  For crying out loud they were acting like a couple of strangers. They’d been going out for months.

  In so many ways Allyson was the perfect girlfriend. She was as busy with school and extracurricular activities as he was. While he was junior class president, she was vice president. She was student council president to his treasurer. In the winter, she was the Green Valley Vikings’ top girls’ basketball point guard. She was as ambitious and determined as he was. To top it off, she was beautiful, easygoing, and fun.

  And, though it kind of sucked at the moment, she faced things head-on and didn’t back down.

  They took their seats on the couch, one on either end, with enough room between them to hold Abby and the twins, with room to spare. “So, what’s up?”

  “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  “What? No I haven’t.” He crossed his leg over his knee and noticed a hole in his sock. He put both feet back on the floor.

  “You are the worst liar I have ever met.”

  “I don’t—” he began.

  She cut him off. “Don’t bother denying it.” She twisted in her seat, angling her body toward him. “I think we should talk about what happened.”

  He closed his eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about. I needed….” He let his words trail off. How was he supposed to finish that sentence? I needed to prove something, and the experiment was an epic fail?

  “You kissed me,” she said.

  “I tried,” he corrected. He forced a laugh. “Clearly my moves need a little work. Smooth, I am not.” Let her think his reaction that night was embarrassment rather than panic.

  “Why?”

  He shifted. “Why what? Why do my moves need work?”

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “You are deliberately being a pain in the—” She shot a quick glance at Abby. “A pain,” she finished.

  “What do you want me to say?” They’d never had anything resembling a fight before. He didn’t know how to handle it. Her ability to confront people and issues was one of the things he admired the most about her. She didn’t back down, and she wasn’t afraid to push. For the first time, now that he was on the other side of that stubbornness, he wished she was the type of person to drop a topic.

  “I want you to tell me why you kissed me.”

  “That’s what couples do, right? They go out. They kiss. They make out. It’s expected.” He stared over her shoulder.

  “It shouldn’t matter what other people expect. It’s our business, not theirs.”

  She had no idea. Everyone expected things from Connor. His parents. His friends. Teachers, coaches, the freaking community. He was the Golden Boy, after all. He hated the name, but he was damn sure he’d make the most out of it. It was that image and the expectations that went with it that were going to get him out of town. He stood up and shoved his hands into his back pockets. “Look, if you don’t want me to kiss you, fine. I won’t. It doesn’t need to be a big deal.”

  “Dude. Your girlfriend doesn’t want you to kiss her? Harsh.”

  He spun and glared at Kory, who smirked at him from the kitchen entryway. “Don’t you have homework to do?”

  “It’s done.”

  “Really?”

  “You can ask Kaleb.” Kory lunged for the video game controller by the TV.

  “Stop.” Connor held up a hand. “If your homework is done, then you can grab the clothes in the dryer and start folding.”

  “But—” At Connor’s arched brow, Kory sighed and dropped the controller. “Fine.” He turned his gaze to Allyson and flashed a smile. “If you decide to dump him, let me know.” He winked and darted up the stairs.

  Connor sputtered.

  Allyson stared after Kory, eyes wide. “How old is he again?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “He’s spent way too much time around Marc. The girls… they’ll have no idea what hit them when he hits high school.” She shook her head.

  Connor sat back down. The interruption helped break the tension, but now awkwardness hung in the air between them. After a long minute, Allyson said, “Connor, it’s not that I don’t want you to kiss me. Of course I do. But I want you to kiss me because it’s what you want. Until then, it ca
n wait. You’re too worried about what other people think you should do.” She leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, then stood.

  Chest tight, he watched her leave. He loved her. And he was a complete and utter ass because he didn’t know if he dated her because she helped his image or because he wanted her. The doubt made him nauseous. He pushed himself off the couch. “Okay, Abs, time for bed.” He had enough to deal with tonight without digging too deeply into his muddled psyche.

  Chapter 8

  CONNOR ARRIVED at the school a few minutes early on Saturday afternoon. Graham’s car was in the lot, but there was no sign of him near the shed. So Connor climbed the slight incline on the other end of the parking lot to the enclosed football field. And there he was, as if Connor had some kind of homing beacon leading to Graham. All week long it had been the same thing. No matter where he was, if Graham was in the general vicinity, Connor could find him. In the parking lot before school, in the halls, heading out to practice with the other soccer players. It was ridiculous.

  Though called a football field, the area also acted as a soccer field and a track and field arena. Graham ran along the track circling the grassy area, his gait smooth, his pace steady. It looked as though he’d been running awhile. Sweat plastered his long black bangs to his forehead and smeared the eyeliner he wore. Someday he was going to ask about that. What would make a perfectly normal guy wear makeup? Graham nodded as he glided past, raising and twirling his finger to indicate he was going to do one more lap.

  Connor nodded and walked to where Graham had set his stuff. Next to a backpack sat a bottle of water, a folded hand towel, and a scuffed soccer ball. He grabbed the ball, testing its firmness, and tossed it into the air a couple of times. He’d always wondered how soccer players managed to direct a ball when it bounced off their heads. He glanced over to make sure that Graham was on the far end of the track. He tossed the ball into the air again, and as it made its descent, he planted his feet. The ball rebounded off the top of his head and his jaw snapped shut at the force of the impact, making Connor bite his tongue. He spat pink-tinged saliva and retrieved the ball from the ground.

  No way he’d quit after one try, bloody tongue or not. Connor hefted the ball and whipped his head forward to try and get the black-and-white leather to shoot away from him. It worked, sort of. The soccer ball hit low on his forehead, nearly mashing his nose in the process. He stumbled back a couple of steps and rubbed at the red mark that he knew must’ve blossomed above his nose.

  “One more time,” he muttered. He tossed the ball higher, figuring the more time he had to gauge the trajectory, the better. He shifted and sprang off his right foot. The ball rolled off his shoulder and continued for several feet before a neon-green running shoe stopped its progress. Graham stood there, hands on his hips, and panting from his run.

  Graham did something with his foot that had the ball bouncing into the air and used his knee to knock it into his hands.

  Connor smiled, abashed. “Doesn’t it hurt when you guys do that in a game?” He tapped his forehead.

  “Match,” Graham corrected, tucking the ball under one arm. “And if you do it right, it shouldn’t hurt. Want to see?”

  “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

  Graham reached down to grab the hand towel and wiped his sweaty face. He ushered Connor toward the barren goal box. “First, you want to hit the ball with your forehead, but right at the hairline.” He reached out and traced his finger at the correct spot on Connor’s forehead, making pterodactyls burst into flight in Connor’s stomach. “If you head it with the side of your head or the top, you’ll end up with a headache. You know, like those action movies where someone bashes his head against an opponent and knocks that guy out but leaves the good guy conscious? It’s like that.”

  Connor thought about that. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Like this.” Graham tossed the ball and jumped into it, hitting it at the hairline, exactly where he’d said. The ball shot forward and went straight through the goal posts.

  Graham scooped up the ball. “Second, when the ball is coming toward you, keep your eyes open and sort of watch it into your head,” he said with a motion like he was guiding a plane toward his face. “You always want to hit it. Don’t let it hit you. That way you have control of the direction and velocity.”

  Graham drop-kicked the ball, making it go straight up, and jumped into it, sending the ball at Connor. Instinctively, Connor grabbed it out of the air before it hit his face.

  “Uh-uh uh,” Graham said with a scolding wag of his finger, “no hands, remember.”

  Connor snorted. He threw the soccer ball up and watched the black-and-white hexagons spin as it fell. At the last possible moment, he surged into the ball. It smacked off his forehead in exactly the right place, and, unlike when he popped it off the top of his head, it didn’t sting. The same couldn’t be said for his tongue, though. The jolt of the ball snapped his jaw shut, making him bite his tongue. Again.

  “And finally”—Graham reached over and used two fingers on Connor’s chin to close his mouth—“keep your eyes open and your mouth closed. That way you’ll see where the ball is coming from and you won’t bite your tongue in the process.”

  Connor touched the sore spot on his tongue, then looked at his finger, checking for blood. “You couldn’t have told me that part before I’d bitten my tongue for the second time?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Graham grinned unrepentantly.

  “Nice. You ready to get to work on the shed? I hate to see what we’re walking into.”

  Graham nodded and stored everything but the bottle of water into the backpack. He twisted the cap off and took several deep gulps. He tipped the bottle toward Connor. “Lead on.”

  GRAHAM EYED the so-called shed they were supposed to organize and paint. It was roughly the size of a barn, with equipment-loaded racks and bins crammed into every space. One corner in the back was filled with a dozen lumpy boxes and an equal number of ratty equipment bags. A thick layer of dust covered the whole lot of it.

  “It’s going to take us the rest of the year to clean this up and get it painted.” Graham trailed his hands across a gritty shelf.

  Connor picked up a deflated football lying in the middle of the aisle. “You’re not lying. I’m pretty sure there are things in here that haven’t seen the light of day in decades.”

  “Where do we even start on something like this?”

  “I think,” Connor said after a thorough study, “that we should sort and organize first. Let’s figure out what can be used and what needs to be tossed. We can organize by sport, maybe. Then sort the stuff out in the court and use the bins to keep things separate.”

  “The court?”

  “There’s an old tennis court behind the shed. Kids go there to skip class and smoke or hang out after school. One of these days, it’ll probably get taken out, but for now it should give us enough space for our sorting piles.”

  Graham examined the contents of the shed. “We should start with the big bins here at the front and work our way back. The farther we get, the more we’ll need to see if Baxter can get us other storage options for the stuff that’s piled around. And I’m not sure cardboard is the best option. It’s sure to get moldy or something.”

  “If it’s not already.” Connor scrunched his nose. “Something in here is definitely rotting.”

  The work was dusty and dirty and boring as hell. Or it would have been if Graham had been doing it alone. Strangely, he found the time practically flew as he and Connor sorted through boxes and shifted metal bins full of balls and equipment.

  “How long do you really think this is going to take?” Graham asked when they paused after wrestling a rusty metal cart full of football equipment outside and onto the court. He rested against the door for a minute, enjoying the clean spring air. It was nice to clear away the mildew and dust accumulating in his lungs. He didn’t mind the work so much—it wasn’t particularly difficult—but the air
in the shed was getting to him. Lack of windows made it hot and stuffy, and there was no airflow to speak of.

  Connor used his forearm to wipe away beads of sweat from his forehead, leaving behind a gray smear of dust. It reminded Graham of the previous Saturday when he’d dropped his car off at the garage. Yeah, smudged was a good look for Connor. “At this rate? Maybe four or five weeks.”

  “I’ve got a tournament next month. Hopefully we’ll be done by then.” Graham wiped his dirty hands on his shorts and led the way back into the shed.

  “I don’t think you have to worry. Even if we’re not, Baxter won’t keep you from playing. He tends to make games and tournaments a priority.”

  “Did you catch how he called us pansies? I didn’t think coaches actually talked like that outside of cartoons or sitcoms.” Graham squatted to drag a neon-yellow tennis ball from under one of the shelves. He couldn’t quite contain the small shudder when a thick, sticky spider’s web stuck to his hand. Spiders. Nasty. He brushed the web away and tossed the ball into the basket of miscellaneous junk by the door.

  “That’s Baxter. I swear he’s been at the school since the Dark Ages, but he’s built a great athletics department.”

  “I know. That’s one of the reasons my family and I moved here.”

  “I heard Coach Mullin flipped when you transferred in. You’re kind of a big deal, huh?” As he talked, Connor shifted a big box forward. Its contents clacked with the sound of wood against glass.

  “Oh yeah, I’m a big deal all right.” Graham laughed. “Just call me Beckham.” He shook his head. It was cool that Coach Mullin was happy to have him—especially since he came in midyear and took over the previous starting goalkeeper’s spot—but it always felt weird to have someone tell him how great he was.

  “I don’t think this is sports equipment.” Connor tore off the yellowed and cracked packing tape. He pulled apart the flaps and saw what looked like several large frames wrapped in sheets of newspaper.