Page 25 of Catch and Cradle
Our shadows stretch out in front of us in the fading orange sunlight. I sigh.
“I thought I was more over the Ethan thing than I am.” I shake my head when I realize that’s not exactly true. “I mean, I’m over him. I’m definitely not pining away for him or anything, but it’s just...I opened up to him, you know? I told him about how hard things are for me sometimes, how dyslexia can make university a living hell, how juggling sports and assignments that take me twice as long as anyone else made me think I might not be ready for a relationship at all. I just...I thought he got it. I thought he knew what he was getting into. I thought we were going to handle it together. Maybe I didn’t prepare him enough. I mean, maybe he’s right that I didn’t try hard enough.”
“Hey!” Jane tugs on my arm. “That is not true. You did lots for that guy. You were a great girlfriend, and you were always honest with him, and you know what? Sure, he was always allowed to decide that wasn’t enough for him, but he did not have the right to do it like that.”
I nod and squeeze her hand as we turn a corner. “Thank you. This is why you’re my best friend.”
“Anytime, my dear. I hate seeing him get even a minute more of your time. This is your year. This is your night to be with your team and have fun, and I don’t want to let any of his stupid yammering get in the way of that, yeah?”
Only Jane would use the phrase ‘stupid yammering.’
“Yeah,” I agree. “You’re right.”
We’re only a few minutes away from the bar now. We spend the time talking about Jane’s boyfriend and how things are going for them—perfect, as usual. They’ve been dating since shortly after frosh week in first year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up married someday.
“Oh my god, it’s JIM!”
Iz’s shout interrupts our conversation. We’ve just turned onto the bar’s street, and sure enough, there’s a crowd of girls wearing sequinned booty shorts outside, holding a giant inflatable lobster over their heads.
I will never get tired of UNS life.
“JIM!” I shout. “Our beloved Jim!”
The four of us sprint to the bar. The red neon letters over the door spell out Mario’s in looping cursive letters. A few of the bulbs have been burnt out for years, making it look like the sign says Mari’s, but anyone who mentions it risks getting barred for life. For a giant, beefy Italian guy obsessed with sports, Mario is pretty sensitive when it comes to his bar.
That’s also probably why he’s blocking the doorway, refusing to let Jim inside.
“I have TVs in here!” he’s in the middle of saying when we catch up to the group. “You know I live for the Lobsters, ladies, but he’s going to have to stay outside.”
I glance around the crowd again to be sure, but I already noticed Becca and her housemates aren’t here yet. She always shows up for team events, but she’s known for heading out early. Becca takes the dedicated athlete lifestyle to the next level.
Hence her devotion to the ‘no dating teammates’ rule—which really doesn’t give me any reason to have a mix of hopeful and terrified butterflies dancing around in my stomach.
I don’t even know what I’m hoping for, or what exactly I’m afraid of. She’s my captain. I’m her teammate. It’s been that way for two years already, and there’s no reason to think it’s changing now.
Except for the way she looked at me in the locker room today. When I walked in and saw the smooth, pale skin of her back with her bright red hair pushed forward over her shoulders, I almost dropped to my knees. She’s that beautiful. She’s more gorgeous than I’ve ever even imagined, and I’ve imagined a lot. The freckles on her face match the ones dusted along the tops of her shoulders, and that tattoo was so delicate, so poetic, like a hidden piece of her I’ve only every glimpsed and finally got the chance to see spelt out across her skin.
“Che cavolo!” Mario’s exasperated voice pulls me back into the present. He lets out a stream of Italian words and strokes his thick moustache before throwing his hands in the air. “Fine, fine! You can bring him in, but he stays by the door. No dancing with the lobster on the bar.”
“So are you saying we can dance on the bar?” someone asks.
He shakes his head and mutters something in Italian again. “Always the crazy ones, this lacrosse team.”
We all cheer and stomp when he finally clears the doorway so we can head inside. We cheer and stomp a lot when the whole team hangs out. We also like yelling, singing, clapping, and banging random objects together. There are a lot of words you could use to describe the UNS lacrosse team, but quiet isn’t one of them.
Jim gets propped against an empty coat rack while the rest of us help Mario push a few tables together. Normally this place is packed to the rafters every night, but people are busy moving back to campus this weekend, so it’s a rare occasion when there’s room for the whole team to sit together.
I take a deep breath of that signature Mario’s smell: the tang of cheap beer with sticky overtones of sweet cider, lingering notes of melted cheese and tomato sauce from the pizzas the bar serves all day and night, and a trace of musk that fits right in with the sagging leather armchairs and scratched-up barstools dotted around the brick-walled room. Almost every available surface is covered in Italian flags and Lobsters memorabilia.
There’s something about stepping into Mario’s that feels like taking a load off your shoulders—or an inflatable lobster, depending on the day.
This is the first bar I ever got drunk in. Even when we’re not drinking, this bar is where our team celebrates every win and mourns every loss. This is where we go to unwind from a long training session or rev up for an important game. It’s where we share our fears and our hopes, where we laugh until we cry or cry until we laugh. This is where moments happen. Just a few feet from where I’m standing is the spot where I kissed a girl for the very first time in my life, under the glow of a hockey match playing on one of the TVs.
That was frosh week, a couple months before I met Ethan.
“Corona buckets all around?”
Now that we’re seated, Iz has taken over the role of conveying our order to Mario, probably so they can have an excuse to chat up a group of soccer girls by the bar. It seems like their habit of pursuing people who will inevitably turn into exes they awkwardly see around the athletics centre all the time is still going strong.