Page 71 of The Way We Swing Back

“Well?” he asked.

“I got in,” I said.

Silence followed. The great kind of silence.

Mrs. Quinn’s eyes shimmered. “Oh, Easton. That’s wonderful.”

Mr. Quinn nodded once. “That’s a big step. You should be proud.”

Zach raised his water glass. “Congrats, man. Seriously.”

And Gavin, his mouth stuffed with food, said, “HE SCREAMED LIKE A FOUR-YEAR-OLD WHEN HE SAW THE LETTER.”

I glared. “That was you.”

The rest of the night followed with a quiet happiness I couldn’t remember in years. I’d stayed in this house for months. But that night—with the envelope never straying far from my hands—was the first time I stopped bracing for someone to ask me to go.

Tanner came back from school on Friday, even though I’d told him a dozen times not to. He made some excuse about missing Gavin, but I knew he was lying even before he offered to buy Gavin, Maissie, and me ice cream after dinner.

We piled out of the Durango and wandered into the restaurant. Gavin had his hand wrapped around Maissie’s as Tanner and I walked in behind them.

My hand flinched toward Tanner’s when I saw it, an involuntary compulsion to match their body language. Instead, I pulled up my hood. I was not sure why Tanner had decided on ice cream while it was still this cold, but when a Blizzard was offered to me for free, I never said no.

After we ordered, the four of us took seats in the back corner, my back to the window, my leg near Tanner’s. The distance was inches but might as well have been a mile, a Calvin-sized barrier hanging between us.

“How’s school, Gavin? Going to miss any games this season?” Tanner asked as he took a sip of his milkshake.

Gavin licked his vanilla cone, ignoring the question.

Maissie answered for him. “He’d better not. He’d get dumped if he did.”

I snorted. “Since when do you care about baseball?”

She rolled her eyes at me before spinning the pink scrunchie on her wrist. “I don’t. But I’m not dating someone who’s too lazy to pass all of their classes.”

I tilted my head and nodded. “Probably fair. Glad you could get Gavin to not suck at life.”

“You know,” Gavin said between licks of his ice cream, “I liked the two of you better when you weren’t friends.”

Without processing Gavin’s words, the hair on my arms lifted before I realized why. My eyes darted to the counter, away from the conversation, to where the ghost of my father stood ordering.

Except I wasn’t positive it was a ghost this time.

He had the same red and navy Cardinals hat he’d worn since I was eight, with the words “St. Louis” written in cursive on the back. The beard looked longer than last time, longer than I’d ever seen on him. He studied the menu board like his biggest decision of the day was whether to get a waffle cone or the cherry milkshake he normally got.

My hands turned cold—colder than holding the Blizzard.

For a second, I let myself believe he wouldn’t see us. That he’d order, leave, and never know how close he’d come.

The others kept talking. Gavin said something that made Maissie laugh, and the rest of the table moved at normal speed while I dropped into slow motion, every sound arriving a half beat late.

Don’t turn around. Order your milkshake and go.

I counted his movements the way I counted my pitch count. After he ordered, he pulled out his wallet from his back pocket. The same cracked brown one he’d had my entire life, cash coming out of it before I decided what to do.

Then the girl behind the counter handed him his shake, and he turned.

I managed to get my fingers to the edge of Tanner’s green hoodie and pull on it. He laughed, swatting away my fingers; but when he saw where my fingers were pointing, he shot up, his hand going to my shoulder.