his own days here. Funny about that smell. He hadn’t noticed it back then, but when he’d walked through the front doors a few minutes ago, it had hit him hard. The combination of young, sweaty bodies, perfume, old gym socks, books, chalk…It was the smell of his youth, of his heyday. A damn fine smell.
And then to bump into Emily? That really took him back. She’d been so easy to talk to. So funny. She’d had those long bangs. He remembered wondering how she saw with all that hair in her eyes. And she was always hanging out with her girlfriends. Giggling, passing notes, getting into the kind of trouble that got stern looks from teachers. Nothing more. Innocent. But then, hadn’t they all been innocent back then?
Yeah. Emily Proctor. She’d been great. A good friend. Maybe she could be his friend, again. It didn’t look like he was leaving anytime soon. The store was a mess and needed someone in charge. There wasn’t anyone standing in the wings. The job was his whether he wanted it or not.
He pushed open the door to the quad and set out for the gym. The trees seemed bigger, the grass scragglier, but the biggest change he noticed was the students. They looked so young! At twenty-six he’d never thought much about his age, but now the truth hit him that he wasn’t the hotshot he used to be. That star had tarnished with the snap of his right ankle. Every year, new and better players made first string, and the one thing that would have made Scott special, the chance to be ESPN’s youngest sports commentator ever, had slipped through his fingers like so much sand.
His gait slowed as he passed the science building. He wished he could just go. Cut out with no regrets, go to Bristol and take that interview. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did.
So the next best thing was to get the hell over it. Get on with the life he had, instead of dreaming about the life he was supposed to have.
A dose of Coach was exactly what he needed.
THE GRASS WAS STILL WET, which added insult to injury. No one should be up at this hour, let alone doing sit-ups in the grassy middle of the high school track field.
Only three more to go.
Emily glared at Hope, which was pretty easy to do considering Hope was currently sitting on Emily’s feet while she did her sit-ups. What Hope didn’t know was that her life was spared only by the fact that Emily wasn’t strong enough to knock her down.
“Come on, Emily. You can do it.”
“Go—” Emily forced her aching abs to lift her to a sitting position. “To—” She touched her elbows to her knees, and started a slow ascent back to position one. But instead of keeping her head an inch from the floor, she collapsed. “Hell,” she said breathlessly, but proud she’d made the effort.
“Come on, you wussie girl. You weak-assed lazy bones. Two more!”
She tried. And failed. Her groan echoed off the empty bleachers. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars to go away.”
Hope laughed. “Your money’s no good here, missy. I want to see another sit-up and I want to see it now!”
“Then go rent An Officer and a Gentleman. But first, get off me.”
Hope sighed heavily as she moved over. “Pitiful.”
“Let’s see you do twenty sit-ups.”
“If I had time, I’d do exactly that.”
“You lie like a rug,” Emily said, rubbing her stomach and feeling quite sorry for herself.
“Hey! I do ten pull-ups and twenty push-ups every day.”
“You do not.”
“I could do them. If I woke up in time.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, if I had a brother, he’d like cheese.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Just help me up.”
Hope jumped up sprightly, then held her hand out. Emily grabbed it, much as she had grabbed Scott’s hand two days ago.
“I saw him, you know,” Emily said.
“Pardon?”
“I said, I saw him.”
“Him who?”
Emily sighed. “Scott Dillon. Remember him? The point of all this torture?”
“Oh, him. You’re kidding. How? Where? What did he say?”
“I have to go shower.”
“Oh, no. You’re not leaving. You’re coming with me. We’re doing two laps around the track before we finish.”
“What do you mean, we? I’m not doing any such thing.”
Hope grabbed her by the T-shirt and pulled her toward the high school track. There were quite a few people jogging already, even though it was only just past six in the morning, on a Saturday no less. Some teachers, but mostly students circled the infield, almost every one of them looking tan and fit and wonderful in their little teeny shorts. Not her. No one laid eyes on her thighs. Ever.
She started jogging, if you could call it that. It was more a lumbering walk, actually. But Hope let go of her shirt, so that was something.
“So, tell me. Damn, girl, you sure do know how to build the suspense.”
“It wasn’t pretty, Hope.”
“Huh?”
“I was flat on my butt in the middle of the hallway outside my classroom.”
Hope stopped. Emily jogged past her. Slowly.
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Why were you on the floor?”
“Doing yoga.” She was too tired for sarcasm. After gulping a few breaths, she slowed her pace a wee bit. “Some kid, and I think it might have been Tommy Wells, crashed into me, and I fell.”
“And?”
“And Scott helped me up.”
“Was it incredible? Did your eyes meet and—”
“It was humiliating. I looked like death warmed over and he didn’t blink an eye.”
“He didn’t remember you?”
“Yes, he did. But it was nothing. A big fat zero.”
“Are you sure?”
“I was there.”
“Oh.”
They jogged in silence for a while. Emily might have said more, but her lungs were preoccupied with trying to save her life.
“I bet there was more. You probably just didn’t see it.”
“There was no more.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Emily didn’t argue with her. But she did move to the right as she heard an approaching runner. She also wiped the sweat from her eyes and pulled up her sagging sweats.
“Hey!” the runner said as he got to her side.
Oh, God.
“Emily! I didn’t know you ran.”
She smiled at Scott, who looked like he should have been on a box of Wheaties with his perfect chest and windswept hair. She thought about her own hair, elegantly swathed in a decrepit sweatband, with just a few insouciant tendrils plastered against her cheek. About the shirt she had so carefully chosen this morning, emblazoned with Bart Simpson shouting “Don’t Have a Cow!”
“Hey, Scott,” Hope said, looking far too pretty.
“Hope? Oh, man, this is old home week. You’re still here, too?”
“I