me to do physical therapy at a place where nobody would be watching. Nobody would be evaluating how well I was progressing, what this meant for my prospects. And I wasn’t hiding it from you. I wasn’t allowed to tell a soul for fear someone would leak something, however innocent.”
I’m surprised by the anger in his voice, the edges that tinge the words, the flash in his eyes.
“But now my shoulder’s healed, and I’ve been doing extra pitching practices every afternoon—”
“Wait. I thought you were doing PT.”
Lies. Lies. Lies.
“I was doing the practices with my PT,” he says, the tension lifting his shoulders, curling them in. “It was all about evaluating my progress, my healing.”
“Well, I promise I won’t expose your hidden identity.” My bitterness eggs on the anger, twisting it as it gains force, sucking everything along.
Zeke shakes his head like he’s surprised at the words coming out of my mouth. “What are you talking about? I’m not a major league baseball player. I’m not undercover. I’m a high school student. These glasses? They’re real. I wear them when my eyes hurt from my contacts. My hair is always like this. The only thing that’s different is that I’m not wearing baseball shirts like I always do, but I did that for you.”
For me.
“You didn’t have to do it.” I hate how petulant I sound.
“No,” he says, his voice even. “I did it because you hate baseball. And I didn’t want you to hate me.”
What I hate is this moment. This moment that finds us in a shady clearing under the trees, just a couple of days after we woke up in each other’s arms. I want it to be Sunday morning. I want to have never posted that damn picture on my profile, to have never answered my brother’s call. I don’t want this to be how our story ends.
“Are you getting drafted?”
I don’t look at his eyes. I look at his mouth, those lips I adore. I watch the way he bites the corner, worrying it between his teeth.
“I don’t know.”
I let his answer rest in the silence, hover between us.
“I want us to be okay,” he says, and the words hurt. Okay is nothing. Okay is managing. Okay is like the faintest outline of what we used to be, the thin line on the tracing paper.
“We’re okay,” I mumble. Because it’s true. This? This is okay. Feeling like the stuff that’s supposed to be cushioning my bones (stupid biology class, I can’t remember a thing) is gone? That’s what okay is.
“I miss you.” His words are so quiet, and I can’t help it, I shut my eyes. Because I know that we’re only okay and my body feels broken and his eyes are so damn sad and this will never be fixed because the program is ending and everything is ending, but even so. I can’t help myself. I close my eyes and revel in those three words.
“Tu me manques,” I whisper back, my eyes still closed. And I remember walking through town with Alice on that first day, the day I’d told Zeke to eff off, the day I’d defined his whole person as a jock without knowing anything else. I remember telling Alice how much I love that expression: tu me manques, you are missing from me. I told her about how missing someone in French is about them being missing from you, not you missing them. And I thought I understood that stupid little thing; it’s something I tell people about all the time.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t. Because tu me manques is more brilliant than I could have imagined. Because missing Zeke feels like a part of my body is missing, like there’s an empty space where a vital organ used to live.
Before I know what’s happening, he’s bolted off the bench and his arms are around me and I smell the familiar scent of Zeke’s skin warmed by the sun and I can’t help it. I press my lips into that spot on his skin where his neck meets his shoulder. His neck. Son cou. His shoulders. Ses épaules.
And I cry.
Je pleure.
Gradually, Zeke directs us down to the bench and even more gradually, I stop crying. Once I’m calmer, my eyes still stinging, my body spent, Zeke smiles.
A little smile.
Un petit sourire.
He licks his lips, and then pulls the bottom one through his teeth. “I know,” he starts slowly, “that I’m supposed to be sad that you’re crying, but given that I’ve