Page 69 of Catch and Cradle

“Yeah, for sure.”

Another locker shuts.

“You ready to go?”

“All good! I’m starving. Can we stop at Subway?”

Their voices trail off into silence as the door swings open and then closes with a thud. My heart starts pounding like a jackhammer tunneling into my ears as a chant I can’t switch off fills my head.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You are so stupid, Hope.

I squeeze my eyes shut to block it out, but it continues.

So stupid.

I ball my hands into fists, ordering the voice to stop.

“I am not stupid,” I whisper.

I must look like a crazy person, but it helps.

I am not stupid.

Nobody is trying to hide anything from me. Nobody is taking advantage of me. I haven’t made a mistake. I overheard one small part of a confusing conversation, and I’m going to ask Becca to clear it up. That’s all.

I step out of the locker bay and pause instead of continuing to the showers. All of my sexy fantasies about slipping into a stall with Becca have faded. I want to talk to her, but not here. Not like this. I have too much dread curling in my stomach to have this conversation while she’s wrapped in a towel and dripping wet.

So I walk back to my locker instead and change out of my gear before leaving the room without saying anything at all.

* * *

The week is so packed with schoolwork and preparations for the Montreal trip that I don’t see Becca again until the extra training session two days later. I texted to let her know I wanted to hang out, but we didn’t manage to fit anything into our schedules.

That also means I didn’t get a chance to ask her about what I heard in the locker room.

I jog down the halls of the athletics centre on my way to meet her at the lacrosse supply closet. I’m already late. All my brainpower today has been exerted on a huge assigned reading, and I lost track of time. That doesn’t do anything to help the nerves twisting my stomach in knots.

I’ve gone back and forth on the conversation I overheard so many times I’m starting to lose my grip on what was actually said. Everyone knows Becca has always been more militant about the ‘no dating’ thing than anyone else, but she’s more militant about everything than anyone else. In the weeks we’ve been texting, I’ve realized what a huge part of her life the team really is. She plans her class schedule around lacrosse. She plans what she eats around lacrosse. Of course she’d take what might have been a generally acknowledged guideline and turn it into a core part of the team’s culture, especially if she thought it was protecting the team from harm.

When I think about it that way, it’s a very Becca thing to do, and it explains what I heard in the locker room without the need for any other motives.

I pick up my pace as I turn down another hallway and pass a group of guys in basketball uniforms. I try to keep my nose from wrinkling as I pass them. Girl sweat smells so much better than guy sweat.

I can feel my shoulders getting tighter and tighter the closer I get to the supply closet, my muscles bunching up with stress and anticipation. At this point, I don’t even know if I should bring the conversation up at all. I’m literally using the word motive in my head like this is some sort of crime investigation. Becca doesn’t deserve to be interrogated, and I don’t know how to tell her I overheard something while hiding in the locker room from our teammates without sounding like a crazy person.

I don’t want to hear somebody I care about call me crazy. Not again.

By the time I turn the final corner and find Becca standing outside the closet with an armload of practice gear, I’m on the verge of developing an eye twitch. I force myself to let out a long exhale before she notices me and try to smooth my expression into something passably normal.

The first thing she does when she sees me is frown and ask what’s wrong.

Clearly I didn’t do enough face smoothing.

“Sorry I’m late!” I say instead of answering. “I got caught up with schoolwork and lost track of time. Won’t happen again.”

“Hope.” She tilts her head to the side, her eyebrows furrowed. “Is something up? I’m not going to, like, play the hardass captain card and yell at you. Plus you’re only...” She shifts the gear around so she can check her phone. “Four minutes late. Everything is totally fine.”

She takes a step closer, watching me with concern. Even now, I can’t help getting distracted by how gorgeous she is. Her hair is pulled back into a high ponytail that emphasizes the strong features of her face, and she’s wearing casual practice clothes like me. If ‘hot and kind of intimidating sporty girl’ was a yearbook category, she’d be the only nominee.