Page 58 of Finally Home
I’m confused and borderline concerned by the look on his face. “Okayyy?” I say, dragging it out. “And? Did you like her?” She hasn’t responded to anything I’ve sent her since I left Seattle, but I just assumed she was busy with her new position.
“Starling…” he says nervously. “She hit on me multiple times and said some not great things about you.”
Everything in me goes cold at his words as her behavior from the last few weeks runs through my mind on a loop. “Why would she do that?” I pause as something occurs to me. I don’t think I ever showed her a picture of you…” I whisper.
“What?”
I minimize the video window and look through all the pictures I’ve sent Ella since we started working together, but I don’t find any of Rhodes. “She has no idea that you’re my Rhodes. I talked about you all the time, but now that I think about it, whenever I brought up you or my life before Seattle, she’d change the subject. Honestly, most of what we talked about was work and Derrick. But even then, I can’t imagine why she would say anything bad about me.”
He looks unsure but waves me off. “Maybe I misinterpreted what she said.” A huge yawn overtakes him and as soon as I glance at the time I feel guilty. It’s almost one in the morning, and he has a game tomorrow.
“Rho,” I groan. “You should have gone to bed hours ago. You need a full night’s rest before the game.”
He looks at me with sleepy eyes that make my heart melt. When his hair is all wild, and he’s half asleep like this, it reminds me of when we’d pull all-nighters to cram for exams. Or the times we’d have movie marathons where we both inevitably crashed during the third installment of whatever series we chose for that week.
“I’ll go to sleep as soon as you open your gift, Starling. I want to see your face.”
I gasp dramatically. I can’t believe I forgot! I tear into the pretty blue wrapping paper and find a plain white box. Rhodes looks so adorably eager that his expression amps up my own excitement. Lifting the lid, a Carolina blue sweatshirt greets me.
“Thanks Rho,” I say with a grin. He always says I look best in blue, so the fact that he picked this out for me is sweet.
He chuckles. “Open it up and look at it, baby.”
Confused, I pull it out and inspect it. “Oh my God,” I whisper. The back looks like one of his jerseys with his last name and his number, eleven, embroidered in a brilliant white, and the same number but smaller is embroidered on the bottom of the right sleeve. On the front is a printed four-leaf clover with “Rhodes’s Good Luck Charm” embroidered over it, also in white. It looks almost exactly like the one I gave him, only his is white with blue embroidery.
“Rhodes…”
His smile is blinding, even from three thousand miles away. “Do you like it? I figured now we can be that sickeningly cute couple that matches, and this way you have part of me with you whenever I’m away, like I have from you. My forever Good Luck Charm deserves a little luck of her own.”
Stick a fork in me because I. Am. Done. A melted, mystified, puddle of goo on the rug. If I wasn’t already in love with Rhodes, this would have sealed the deal, and I wonder if this is how he felt when I gave him his hoodie all those years ago.
Eight years earlier
“Roly-Coly-Oly,” I sing as I barge into Rhodes’s dorm room after my impromptu skip day. I’m sure Daddy will lecture me later, but once I show him why I skipped, I know he’ll understand. Rhodes’s breakdown last night scared me. He’s as unflappable as they come, and even though I’ve only known him a little less than a year, I’ve never seen him upset like that.
Rho was lucky enough to get a single room this year after he and Derrick got into it over Derrick hitting on me repeatedly, so I don’t feel bad barging in. He made me an illegal copy of his key and told me to use it whenever I want. I do always knock first anyway, but this time I knew he’d likely be taking his pre-game nap and figured it was safe.
A large lump on the bed is my only hint that he’s actually here, so instead of calling his name again, I set the bag on his desk and lie next to him, pulling the blanket down so I can see his stupidly perfect face.
Butterflies assault my stomach with shocking intensity, but I take a metaphorical bug zapper to them and shove down the pesky feelings that always threaten spill out of my mouth when I spend too much time focused on how handsome my best friend is.
After spending what probably amounted to a creepy number of minutes admiring how the stubble on his jaw turns him from boy-next-door to rugged player, I run my finger gently down his nose. The sleepy smile he gives me attempts to revive the butterflies I just obliterated. “Hey, Starling,” he yawns, tossing an arm over my side. “Did you come to wish me luck before I leave?”
My face gets warm when I glance at the bag on his desk, so I’m sure my cheeks are pink with embarrassment. His eyebrows go up and something like heat flashes in his eyes, but it’s gone so fast I’m pretty sure I imagined it. “I, uh.” I clear my suddenly dry throat. “I actually brought you something…for luck. You can open it now if you want.”
He shoots up to a seated position, nearly head butting me in the process. “You got me a present? What is it?”
With shaky hands I give him the bag and watch him tear into it. You would think he’d been deprived of kindness his whole life with the level of enthusiasm he shows opening the gift, but that’s just Rhodes Gray for you. The boy gives one hundred and ten percent on and off the field.
Pulling out the sweatshirt, he gapes at it silently for several minutes—long enough that I start to ramble nervously. “You sounded so scared last night, Rho, and I hate that I can’t be with you at every game to alleviate some of that worry. You’ve always called me your ‘Wren Luck Charm’, and I thought maybe having a physical symbol of that luck might help keep the anxiety at bay. If you take this with you, you’ll always have a piece of home to keep you grounded in case everything gets to be too much.”
His warm hazel eyes mist over, which brings out the green and makes me wonder if I just screwed up. “Wren,” he chokes. A single tear rolls down his cheek and then he shifts me to sit on his lap, yanking me into a bone-crushing hug so fast I don’t even have a chance to process it. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
Relief has me relaxing in his arms while I also try not to fixate on the fact that I’m in his lap. We’ve always been pretty affectionate, but this feels different somehow. “It’s not too cheesy?” I ask quietly.
He sniffles, shaking his head. “It’s perfect, Starling. Now I always have the best part of home with me,” he murmurs as he runs his fingers over my name embroidered on the front of the four-leaf clover.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the very next night would change the course of our lives. That was the night I saw him kissing some random girl at a party and finally gave in to Derrick’s incessant flirting just to numb some of the hurt.