Page 27 of So Long, Honey

“Good, thanks, Carson. I’ll see you tomorrow at practice.” I said scooping everything into my arms and walking back to Lorraine. She was exactly where I left her, but something was wrong. She looked pale, and her hands were gripping the bench to get her upright. I slid everything on the table and knelt in front of her.

“Rae, you okay?” I asked her, and she nodded, but I could tell it was just her brushing me off. “What can I do?”

“Nothing. I'm just a little dizzy,” she said quietly, inhaling a slow, methodical breath.

“You have to breathe out,” I said to her when she didn’t, and a little chuckle fell from her lips as she released a shaky exhale. “Good, do that again.”

She listened, slowly filling her lungs before exhaling all the air. After a tortuous few minutes, the color finally returned to her face and she opened her eyes to look at me.

“What happened?” I asked her, reaching for the soda to give to her. She wrapped her lips around the straw instead of answering me and sipped on the dark, sugary liquid.

“I just stood up too fast, is all,” she confessed, “I’m alright, I think I was just hungry.”

I watched her and tried to gauge whether she was actually telling me the truth, but I couldn’t tell. She was too good at hiding what she was really thinking.

“I bowled another strike while you were gone,” she chuckled weakly as I tried to find my bearings on the situation.

“Of course you did.” I shook my head and looked at the scorecard. “Are you sure that you’re okay?”

“Stop ruining my birthday with your worrying,” she responded.

“Says that girl who didn’t even want to celebrate her birthday today,” I laughed. “After this game, I’m taking you home. It's the end of the story.”

Lorraine nodded in agreement, but something was missing that had been there before… a light that had been snuffed out. I left her where she was sitting to take my turn, and all three of my balls went in their own direction, hitting one pin each and doing nothing for my score.

“I can throw a ball at fifty miles per hour, can’t make a bowling ball go in a straight line…” I said as I sauntered back to her.

“Bowling isn’t baseball. Maybe that’s why you’re so bad at it.” She shrugged gently and pushed from her seat on shaky knees.

I watched every move she made with concern. It was clear she was hiding something, that much I had figured out, but the ‘what’ was making my heart race faster than it ever had, and I wasn’t sure I could go much longer without plying her with questions she probably didn’t want to answer.

“You need to separate your feet and not force the ball to where you want it to go. It’s a soft and powerful swing, not an aggressive one, " she explained with a small smile. “Like this.”

I watched her struggle to carry the weight of the ball without a small stumble in her step, but when she lined herself up forthe throw, it was like watching the wind. Her movements were soft and gentle. It wasn’t like she was throwing a ball. It was like she was guiding it. Her hair licked at her neck, and her smile bloomed wide as all the pins crashed around, and she scored another strike. She turned to me proudly and arched her brow at me in a cute but cocky way that I had never expected from her.

“Rae, that was the hottest thing ever.” I held my hands up in the air and admitted defeat. “You really are the bowling Queen of the Wild West.” I mocked a bow, tempted to get on my knees and sell it, but she rushed forward to make me stop in a fit of laughter.

“They’re staring again. Stop it,” she giggled. When she leaned back away from me to catch her breath, my lips found the base of her throat. Her skin was colder than before but heated up on contact as she melted into me.

“I like it when they stare,” I whispered to her.

“Of course you do; you thrive on attention.” She scoffed, but she let me kiss her anyway.

Lorraine ended up winning the game. I hadn’t stood a chance against her skills.

Even wobbly and maybe even dizzy, she nailed every ball she threw. It was infuriating.

“Rematch next weekend.” I smiled at her as we left the bowling alley.

“Deal,” she cooed and slid her hand into mine.

FIELD

“Rae,” Ryan’s fingers wrapped around my wrist as I climbed the steps to my house. Today was fun but tiring, and all of my muscles were aching. I knew he was a ticking time bomb of questions just from how he looked at me from the bottom of the stairs.

“Thank you for today. I don’t think I’ve had this much fun on my birthday ever,” I said, leaning into his touch.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He asked again. He had asked twice while we were finishing bowling and on the walk home. “I’d hate for you to be sick and leave you. You need like soup or something, I can go-”