Page 11 of Catch and Cradle
Sometimes I just sit down by the water and marvel at the movement of it all. Not much moves back home in the prairies, not unless you stop and watch the ripple of the wind in the fields. The waving stalks look a bit like water too sometimes, but they’re always rooted in the earth, grounded in place.
Steady.
There’s nothing steady about the ocean. It sweeps in whenever it wants and rolls and rages until it decides to leave. No matter how long I stare at the waves, I can never tell if I’m fascinated or terrified.
Sometimes I think I might be both.
The echo of footsteps in the empty street makes me lift my head and open my eyes. I’m sitting on the edge of the porch that runs the length of the big heritage home me and my roommates rent the top floor of. Down at the bottom of the street, I can see a girl making her way up the sidewalk.
Hope.
I recognize the army green sweats and white t-shirt she was wearing earlier. As she gets closer, her glasses glint in the glow from a streetlamp. She’s got her hands in her pockets, and the bob in her step is the picture of the phrase ‘out for an evening stroll.’
She’s so fucking cute.
I shouldn’t think it, but I do anyway. Hope Hastings is dangerously cute. She’s so cute, in fact, that the first thing I thought when I saw the phone on the floor of the supply closet was, ‘I hope it’s hers.’ I spent way too much of my summer trying and failing not to imagine what it would be like to see her again this semester. I pictured her smile, the sound of her voice, the way her glasses sit a little crooked sometimes and always make me want to reach over to straighten them. Once in a while, I’d even get so far I’d imagine trailing my fingers from her glasses to her cheek to her lips.
I grip the edge of the porch and squeeze so hard the wood digs into the heels of my palms. She’s the last person on the entire campus I should be thinking about. She’s my teammate. I’m her captain. We have rules for a reason.
Good reasons. Important reasons. Reasons I can’t ignore.
I push myself to my feet and head down the sunken stone slabs that lead to the sidewalk. She pauses for a second like I’ve startled her, and then she grins and waves before picking up her pace to meet me.
She’s gotten tanned over the summer, and the teal ends of her hair suit her so well. The last time I saw her—or rather, the time before I found her trying to steal an inflatable lobster earlier tonight—she had mascara running down her face, and her whole body looked slumped and broken, like an animal curling itself into a ball to hide its wounds. I’d never seen her like that. I’d never felt the need to protect her like I did then, the urge so strong it was more of an instinct than a thought. Other than when she was charging around the lacrosse field—and sometimes even then—I’d never seen her do anything other than smile and laugh.
She’s good at making people laugh. At team parties, she’s always the first one on the dance floor. She’s led her fair share of karaoke parties in the locker room. She’s always moving, just like the ocean, and maybe that’s why I’ve been fighting not to sit and stare at her the way I stare at the shoreline since the day she showed up for tryouts two years ago.
“Hey, Becca.”
She stops when we’ve reached the same square of sidewalk.
“Hey, Hope.”
A beat of silence passes. She glances at the houses around us, hands still in her pockets. I try not to look at her lips. I try not to remember how it felt to hold her that night she fell apart. It was only a hug. It’s what anyone would do for a heartbroken teammate, but I don’t think just anyone would be itching to hold her again even now.
“Nice street.”
A laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it, the tension in me searching for a way to escape. “I don’t know if I can take credit for the street, but thanks.”
She shuffles her feet and lets out an embarrassed chuckle. “Yeah. Right. I just, uh, there are some nice trees on this one. Seems like a nice place to live.”
The air between us is thick with something that really shouldn’t be there. I can feel it pressing in on every side of me, like insulation that blocks out the rest of the world.
“I like it,” I answer. “We only moved in at the beginning of last year.”
“So you have roommates?”
“Yeah. I live with Rachelle and Bailey. I guess I’ll have to move again when they graduate at the end of the year. I’m doing a fifth year to finish my degree.”
She did not ask for all that information, but it comes out anyway.
“Right, yeah, I remember you saying a few times last year that you’ve got some courses to catch up on.”
I nod. “Captain duties cut into my course load a little. Protecting Jim from kidnappers is a full time job.”
We both chuckle at the lame joke, and Hope glances down at the pavement again.
“Yeah, about that. We got a bit...carried away? I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think that I’m—that we’re not serious about the team. Lacrosse first is the Babe Cave’s code of honor.”