I consider the fact I haven’t seen or heard from Olivia since the game last week, not even at physical therapy.
“My buddies and I are going out tonight. You and Liv should come.”
Her lips twitch with a smile. “She hates being called Liv.”
“I’ll call her and convince her to go out.”
“You might have to drag her.”
“I’m willing.”
Rose laughs. “Need me to put in a good word for you? Or are you still pining over what’s her name?”
I shake my head. “You know me—the single life is the best life.”
“Amen,” she says. “No obligations, no acts of jealousy, no meeting the parents, or worrying about what next step you’re supposed to be reaching.” Her eyebrows rise, and her lips pucker. “I don’t know why so many do it. It’s like being told I can only have one flavor of ice cream or soda for the rest of my life. Sure, I like Sprite, but that doesn’t mean I never want a Pepsi or a Cherry Coke or a root beer.” The professor enters, and the conversations around us start to wane. “I’d say consider yourself lucky that she didn’t make you have to choose.”
Olivia
“Knockity, knock, knock,” Arlo says as he’s already entering my room.
I brush my hair back out of my face as I stack several dozen of the photos I’ve gone through into a pile.
Arlo peers around my room, taking in the bookshelves filled with books and pictures and trinkets, and queen-sized bed enrobed with a white comforter and white bed skirt and a million white pillows with different designs and textures. His gaze moves to the enlarged canvases on my wall of mom and me at the Grand Canyon, and another of us at the beach, and one of my favorites from when I was little and sat on the counter next to the stove where she’d feed me samples of whatever she was cooking. Then, slowly, his eyes travel to me and the boxes that are spilled across my floor. His gaze stops at the cat lying at my side. “It’s Friday night,” he says.
I take in his blue baseball hat he has turned backward and the stubble that seems to somehow enunciate his jaw and masculinity. He’s wearing the Blazer’s sweatshirt he’d gotten at the game last week that makes his shoulders and biceps and chest all look broader and more defined, though I’ve seen firsthand how well-defined each stack of muscle is. “You don’t have your crutches,” I cry.
He grins. “Nope.”
“That’s fantastic.” I start to move to stand up, wanting to share this excitement. The cat gets to its feet and then darts under my bed. “That’s really great,” I say instead of moving forward to hug him or high five or whatever I might do if I knew him better.
He nods. “I don’t look so gimpy anymore.”
“You didn’t look gimpy with the crutches.”
“I see you’re making friends with the cat,” he says.
“She only uses me for my body heat and food. I’m pretty convinced she thinks this is her house now, and we just live here.”
He flashes another wide grin. “What’s going on here? This is what my Dad’s office looks like when it’s tax season, except his mess is receipts he’s kept for twenty years.”
“It’s nothing,” I tell him. “I was just looking for something.”
“Good, because I talked to Rose, and you guys are going out with us tonight. We’re celebrating the end of crutches because last weekend, two of my roommates had a cold and refused to go out. This is belated and necessary.”
“You should celebrate. Plus, it will be another good way of putting yourself in a positive place where the odds are in your favor.”
“The odds?”
“Friends, fun—all positive.”
“Exactly. So you can come in sweats, or you can change. Your call.”
“I’m not really in the mood to go out.”
“You’d rather search through a bunch of old photos and letters and … recipes?” he asks, looking at one of the sheets with ‘Crack-Proof Cheesecake’ scrawled across the top. “Come on. You’re supposed to be delivering these tests that prove this curse isn’t real, remember?”
I glance at my phone, thinking of the photos Sophia posted from last weekend, and how I haven’t heard from her since her text that said she’d call. I’m not angry or bitter. I know how time gets away and that she’s busy with friends and school and a million other things. Then, I consider what pictures will be posted from this weekend—the stories I’ll be