Nate just grins, and we lapse into a comfortable silence. It’s easy hanging out with him, and Addy, and the rest of Bronwyn’s friends. Our friends, she always says, but it’s not really true. They were hers first, and they wouldn’t be mine without her.
My phone buzzes as if on cue, and I look down to another text from Bronwyn. Has the game started?
Soon, I type. Cooper’s warming up.
I wish it were on ESPN so I could watch!!! Pacific Coast Sports Network does not, sadly, air in New Haven, Connecticut. Or anyplace outside a three-hour radius of San Diego. And they don’t live-stream online, either.
I’m recording it for you, I remind her.
I know, but it’s not the same.
Sorry :(
I swallow the last of my cookie, watching the gray dots linger on my phone screen for so long that I’m positive I know what’s coming next. Bronwyn is a lightning-fast texter. She never hesitates unless she’s about to say something she thinks she shouldn’t, and there’s currently only one topic on her self-imposed Do Not Raise list.
Sure enough: Is Nate there?
My sister may not live one room away from me anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still give her a hard time. Who? I text back, then glance at Nate. “Bronwyn says hi,” I tell him.
His dark-blue eyes flash, but his expression remains impassive. “Hi back.”
I get it, I guess. No matter how much you care about someone, things change when they used to be around all the time and then suddenly, they’re not. I feel it too, in a different way. But Nate and I don’t have the sort of dynamic where we talk about our feelings—neither of us has that with anyone, really, except for Bronwyn—so I just make a face at him. “Repression is unhealthy, you know.”
Before Nate can reply, there’s a sudden flurry of activity around us: Knox returns, Addy pulls a chair over to our table, and a plate of tortilla chips covered with shredded steak, melted cheese, and chimichurri—Café Contigo’s version of nachos—materializes in front of me.
I look up in the direction they came from to meet a pair of deep-brown eyes. “Game snacks,” Luis Santos says, transferring the towel he used to hold the plate from his hand to his shoulder. Luis is Cooper’s best friend from Bayview High, the catcher to Cooper’s pitcher on the baseball team until they both graduated last year. His parents own Café Contigo, and he works here part-time while taking classes at City College. Ever since I made this corner table my second home, I see more of Luis than I did when we went to school together.
Knox lunges for the nachos like he didn’t just polish off two servings of empanadas and a plate of cookies five minutes ago. “Careful, it’s hot,” Luis warns, lowering himself into the chair across from me. I immediately think, Yeah you are, because I have an embarrassing weakness for good-looking jocks that brings out my inner twelve-year-old. You’d think I would have learned after my one-sided crush on a basketball player landed me a humiliating post on Simon Kelleher’s About That gossip blog freshman year, but no.
I’m not really hungry, but I extract a chip from the bottom of the pile anyway. “Thanks, Luis,” I say, sucking the salt from one corner.
Nate smirks. “What were you saying about repression, Maeve?”
My face heats, and I can’t think of a better response than to stuff the entire chip into my mouth and chew aggressively in Nate’s general direction. Sometimes I don’t know what my sister sees in him.
Damn it. My sister. I glance at my phone with a stab of guilt at the string of sad-face emojis from Bronwyn. Just kidding. Nate looks miserable, I reassure her. He doesn’t, because nobody wears the don’t give a crap mask as effortlessly as Nate Macauley, but I’m sure he is.
Phoebe Lawton, another Café Contigo waitress and a junior in our class, hands around glasses of water before taking a seat at the far edge of the table just as the first batter from the opposing team saunters up to home plate. The camera zooms in on Cooper’s face as he brings up his glove and narrows his eyes. “Come on, Coop,” Luis murmurs, his left hand curling instinctively like it’s in a catcher’s mitt. “Play ball.”
* * *
—
Two hours later, the entire café is filled with an excited buzz after Cooper’s near-flawless performance: eight strikeouts,