Ivy League

Chapter three

Dawn's pov

I didn’t tell anyone about the parking lot.

Not Marisol, who has been my best friend since sixth grade and has strong, vocal opinions about Brian Whitmore that I usually agree with wholesale. Not my mom, who's still doing careful math at the kitchen table every night, the water bill now joined by a second envelope I haven't asked about yet. Not even myself, really? I lied. Every time the memory surfaces, “he'd be proud of that backhand,”I shove it back down like a ball I'm refusing to chase.

It doesn't work particularly well. It never does with the things you're trying hardest not to think about.

***

Wednesday practice starts differently. Brian's already on the court when I got there,actually early this time, not just punctual and he's got two water bottles instead of one, and for a second I thought one of them might be a peace offering because he just sets them both down on his own side of the bench like it never occurred to him they'd read as anything.

"You're early," I said.

"You were early Monday," he replied. "I assumed that was the new normal."

It shouldn't feel like anything, this small unspoken agreement to show up first, to not make each other wait. But it does feel like something, and I didn’t examine why too closely.

Coach Reyes runs us through serve rotations, and this time we didn’t collide. This time, something clicks,not perfect,not like we've been doing this for years, but enough that when I poach a ball at the net, Brian's already rotating to cover the space I left open, like he read the play before I made it.

"Nice," he said,after we won the point clean.

It's one word. It shouldn't matter. It matters anyway, more than I want to admit, the way a single word can land different depending on who's saying it and what you've decided that person is allowed to mean to you.

***

Marisol corners me at lunch the next day, tray slammed down across from mine with the specific energy of someone who's been saving up a question.

"Okay, so," she said . "People are saying you and Brian Whitmore looked “cute”at practice yesterday."

"People are wrong," I replied, too fast, the way I've been saying everything too fast since Monday.

"Dawn." She narrows her eyes at me over her tray. "I've known you since we were eleven. You get this face when you're lying to yourself, not just to me. You've got the face right now."

"I don't have a face."I said. My voice trembling.

"You have several faces, and this is the worst one, because it's the one where you're mad at yourself for feeling something you've decided isn't allowed."

I stabbed my fork into my salad like it personally wronged me. "There's nothing to feel. He's my partner because Coach Reyes needs us to not lose regionals. That's it. That's the whole story."

Marisol didn’t say anything for a second, just watched me with the patient, knowing look she's perfected over six years of friendship.

"Okay," she said finally. "But for the record, I've watched you hate that boy with genuine, committed passion since freshman year. And I've never once seen you this “flustered”about hating someone."

"I'm not flustered."

"You're eating your napkin, Dawn."

I looked down. I am, in fact, absently shredding my napkin into a small sad pile of confetti.

I didn’t have a good response to that, so I just glared at her instead, which she took correctly, as a partial confession.

***

Thursday, Coach Reyes threw us into a live scrimmage against the school's second-string doubles pair, and it's the first time Brian and I actually look like a team instead of two singles players sharing a court out of obligation.

We're not perfect. I still crowd the net too aggressively out of old habit,he still calls the score in this clipped, formal way that makes it sound like he's reading a contract instead of playing a game. But when I go up for an overhead, he's already moving to cover the gap I'm about to leave, and when he gets pulled wide, I'm there to poach the return before it lands.

We won 6-2.

"That!”Coach Reyes said, jogging over with something close to genuine excitement on her face, "is what I've been trying to get out of you two. Whatever just happened keep doing it."

Brian looks over at me, and for a second the wall he usually keeps up,the composed, unreadable rich-boy mask slips, just slightly, into something that looks almost like real happiness, unguarded and a little surprised at itself.

"We're actually good at this," he said, like the realization is dawning on him in real time.

"Don't sound so shocked," I said, smiling, which I did manage to stop myself in time when I noticed.

***

After practice, he catches up to me at the equipment shed while I was racking my bag.

"Can I ask you something else," he said. "Personal, this time. You can say no."

I braced myself, half expecting some clumsy rich-kid question about my life that'll make me want to throw a tennis ball at his face. "Depends."

"Your mom," he said. "Is she doing okay? You mentioned the water bill on Monday night I heard you on the phone before practice. I wasn't trying to listen, the walls by the equipment shed just aren't exactly soundproof."

Heat rushes up my neck, fast and humiliating. I hadn't realized anyone could hear that call. I certainly hadn't realized it was him.

"That's not really your business," I said, sharper than I mean to.

"You're right," he replied, immediately, no defensiveness in it at all. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."

The apology, so quick and so genuine, throws me more than the question did.

"It's fine," I said, even though it isn't, not really. "We're fine. We're always fine. That's kind of our whole thing."

He nods slowly, and for a second I think that's the end of it until he said, quiet, careful, like he's testing whether the ground under the words will hold:

"My family's fine too. On paper."

Something in the way he says “on paper”makes my chest go tight in a way I don't have room for right now.

"What does that mean?"

He opens his mouth like he's about to actually answer a real answer, not the practiced, composed,non-answer he's given every other time someone's asked him something real and then his phone buzzes in his pocket, his whole face changed the second he checks it. All that softness closes up like a door slamming, fast and total.

"I have to go," he said.

"Brian”

"I'll see you Monday." He was already walking, already pulling his bag over his shoulder, already gone somewhere in his head that has nothing to do with the equipment shed or the scrimmage or the almost-honest thing he was about to say.

I watched him go, the SUV pulling up right on schedule, and I caught one glimpse of his face through the tinted window before it pulls away,jaw tight, eyes fixed somewhere far off, all the ease from twenty minutes ago completely gone.

Whatever was in that text, it wasn't nothing.

And whatever “on paper”was about to mean, I have a feeling I just watched him swallow it whole rather than let me hear the rest.