had to be a code.
She left her bed, headed out to the trampoline to think. Halfway across the yard, she imagined a grid lining up the patio and the fence and suddenly she knew the numbers were map coordinates. Longitude and latitude. She recognized the pattern from his mapping program.
Inside her car—wearing sweats and running shoes, ready for wherever Cotton might lead her—she plugged the coordinates into the map on her phone. Driving, she followed the robotic directions spoken through her phone, making her way across town. A wave of uncertainty hit when she turned onto a small quiet road, but the bus stop on the corner reassured her. Cotton could be here.
Once she parked in a clearing just off the pavement, she studied her phone again. She zoomed in closer and saw that she hadn’t quite reached the marked location. She was going to have to walk the rest of the way.
This spot was unremarkable in all the ways a place could be overlooked. There were the same greens and browns that lined a hundred roads. Anonymous gravel beneath her feet led her to the insignificant patchy grass she crossed to reach the nothing special line of trees. It didn’t match the buzz of anticipation making her walk faster.
The shade of the trees felt cool and damp against her skin. She reached out and caressed the bark of a slender young tree yearning for the sunshine peeking through the thick branches above her head. A minute later she stepped out of the shade and into a long and narrow field.
All around her, woven within the grass and shrubs were hundreds, thousands—maybe more—of tiny blue flowers. She squinted and the whole world turned a fuzzy bluish-green.
“Hi, Ria,” Cotton said from the spot where he sat on the ground, out in the middle of the field, as if he’d been planted there.
“I found you.”
“I sent directions.”
As if that was all she needed. Numbers. Coordinates. A spot on a map. Apparently, he was right.
Ria walked through the field with her arms outstretched, wishing she could scoop up this place and hold it close. She found her way to Cotton. She stood, towering over him.
“I thought you would like it here.”
“I do, Cotton. I like it a lot.”
She sat next to him, keeping her arms pressed against her sides, hands in her lap. She studied his face, let her eyes travel down his broad shoulders, long arms, to his giant hands tapping the denim stretched across his knee.
“Cotton?” Her voice was small enough to blend into the flowers and stems.
“I’m listening.” His was deeper, sleepier, like it was nestled into the soil.
“Are these flowers a sign of your affection?”
“Yes. You asked if we were friends. I would like to be friends.”
“Oh, good. Me too. I thought you were upset with me.”
“I was upset thinking that your coach hurts you.” And here she was assuming it had something to do with Sean and her disloyal feelings. But no, it was back to Benny.
“I told you, he didn’t.”
“You said ‘not this time.’ So, not that day. But sometimes.”
He was right. He was the only person to say it, not ask. Questions from her teammates: What did he do? Was he mad? Are you okay? made it impossible to admit exactly what Benny did. They knew she’d messed up again, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing exactly what that meant. Pain always faded, but shame festered. It grew worse on the replay in her head.
Right now she didn’t have to deny it, but she might be able to explain.
“It’s not all the time. If you add up all the days, hours, dives I’ve spent with Benny, that would be an enormous number, like . . . pi.”
“The number pi? That’s not actually a large number. It has endless digits, but it’s not a huge quantity. It’s not even really a number, I don’t think. It stands for the relationship between a circle’s circumference and its diameter.”
“A number that’s not really a number?” Even though she had no idea what that meant mathematically, that might work for what she was trying to say. “Well, then, think of my diving like a giant pie. One that you eat. A pie-pie.”
“Pie.”
“Pie.” She echoed his echo. “So with that pie, the number of times he’s hurt me, it’s only a slice. If one slice gets dropped on the floor, there’s still way more good pie on the plate.”
“So diving is like pie?”
“No.” Ria laid back in the