Page 39 of Never Forever

He kissed my sweaty head and Carrie’s beautiful one and stood back and beamed at us both.

After the dance, and once Dad understood that I was serious about Carrie, he’d dropped all the warnings and opened the door to her. The bottom line was, I loved Carrie, so he loved her. One night he insisted Carrie come over for Sunday dinner and she had been at every Sunday dinner ever since.

“Matt?”

It was James Johnson, the head coach from Boston University. The man who, at the beginning of the season, had come to see me compete. The man who had changed my life by offering me a scholarship.

He would be my coach next year and I was still a little star struck by him. Still a little unbelieving that I’d made the series of decisions that would take me out of Calico Cove and right into the heart of Boston.

“What a run!” He shook my hand, a grin splitting his face.

My high school coach, Coach Jenkins, came trotting over with the two other guys from our school who qualified for state. There was back slapping and hugs and it was officially too many people standing around me. I was raw and emotional, and it was an overload situation.

“Hey!” Carrie said. “I’m going to walk with Matt to the locker rooms. He needs to get in an ice bath pronto. We’ll see you all at dinner?”

Dad grinned at Carrie, knowing what she was doing. And maybe the coaches did too, because they let us walk off without a problem.

“What would I do without you?” I asked her, squeezing her hand.

“You’ll never need to find out,” she said.

Because we had a plan. She was coming with me to Boston. We put a down payment on an apartment on Ivy Street. Her agent was going to try to get her local work in plays and maybe some ad spots, while I went to school and ran track.

Neither of us could believe how lucky we were.

“Matt,”she said later that night in the bed of the truck. We were parked out behind the bandshell. It wasn’t that we needed to hide our relationship anymore. At least from my dad. This was just our spot. Our peace of heaven.

My hip flexor was killing me, so if she wanted sex we were going to need to be creative, but I would have to be dead not to want to lay with her in the back of this truck. Her arms around me. Her legs tangled with mine. The rest of my team were all off getting drunk.

I was getting drunk on her.

“I’m really proud of you.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said and kissed her head.

She laughed. “What in the world are you proud of me for?”

“Because you’re amazing. You’re smart, funny, brave...”

“Stop it. You’re ridiculous,” she said. She tapped her fingers on my shoulder, tracing the edge of my muscle where it ran into my bicep. I put my hand over hers.

“What?” I asked. Because that little tapping thing was her tell. She was nervous about something. Working up the nerve to tell me something.

“I’m not brave. At all,” she said quietly. “I…haven’t told my mom.”

“About what?”

“About…Boston.”

Slowly, I sat up. She had no choice but to sit up too. Her eyes were miles from mine.

“What do you mean?” I asked her. “We’re going to be living together.”

We had an apartment. We signed a lease. We put money down.

“She knows I’m going to Boston but she doesn’t know I’m going with you.”

I blinked, stunned. I didn’t know what to say. We were literally leaving at the end of the month.