Page 69 of The Hard Launch

He’s in red; fast and skilled, but he doesn’t take it too seriously. He cheers a lot when they score, yells like his heart is breaking when they don’t. He spends a lot of time laughing and shit-talking his opponents.

He’s more likely to pass the ball than shoot it, and he’s constantly running. He’s everywhere, but I don’t know that he’s seen that I’m here until he stops one time as he’s running past. He walks closer and grabs the fence in front, peering out to check that it’s me.

I wave, a little shyly. He walks backwards, running a hand through his hair.

“Hi,” he mouths. And then he runs off, looking over his shoulder to smile at me.

When the game is over, I walk to the gate where the players are all leaving, cleats slung over their shoulders, duffel bags in hand. I lurk to the side and watch as Jude says goodnight to his teammates before walking over to where I am.

Under his warmup jacket he’s damp with sweat; his hair— trimmed now, but still long enough to get into his eyes —is nearly wet with it.

“Is it weird that I’m here?” I ask when he stops, maybe ten feet away from me.

“No,” he says. “I like it.”

I take a breath and steady myself before I speak. “I want to apologize to you. I wasn’t very nice, and I said some mean things that I regret.”

“That’s all true for me, too,” he says. “I don’t know if there’s a worse feeling than knowing I let you down.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t have faith in you,” I tell him, “and I know I didn’t really have you in the first place, but if it’s an option, I would very much like you back.”

“Of course you had me,” he says, dropping his cleats and his duffel bag to the ground. “But you never lost me, not for a second.”

He closes all the distance between us, and then I’m in his arms, his mouth is on mine, and whatever’s going to happen tomorrow doesn’t matter.

Everything is a mess, but somehow, it’s still perfect.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

JUDE

“Are you sure you’re not using me to avoid reality?” Lacey asks, laughing, from beneath me. We’re in her bed and her alarm went off forty-five minutes ago, but I’m done letting work take over my life. I have new priorities, and one of them is soft, beautiful, and naked right now.

“I’ll show you some reality,” I tell her, blowing a raspberry into her neck. She squeals, and then sighs as I kiss my way up to her ear.

I don’t care what time it is in Greece. Or New York.

The bus is crowded. The first one that passed was so full it didn’t stop, so Lacey said we needed to jam ourselves onto this one.

“Or we could Uber,” she said.

“I want to do what you normally do,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Get ready to shove.”

And now we’re crushed together on a bus lurching downtown, Lacey’s head pressed against me largely to avoid the two backpacks encroaching on her personal space. But I like it there.

“Seeing a bit more humanity than you’re used to this morning?” she asks, looking up.

“A little,” I agree.

We stayed at her studio last night because one of the many things we agreed on after my soccer game is that my apartment is terrible, and going forward we’re choosing happiness and color over cold gray convenience. I got dressed next to her kitchen sink this morning, and she spent ten minutes trying to find a place to put my bag where we wouldn’t keep tripping over it. But I don’t mind how small her place is; it means she’s never very far away.

I put one of my AirPods in her ear, and we listen to the series of irate voicemails Edmund has left for me, laughing when we very much shouldn’t be. He’s not sure what kind of bullshit I’m playing at, but Mike is no longer returning his calls, he says. He’s awaiting word from Corday Ford’s lawyers while he’s there in Greece, trying to schedule an emergency board meeting. He’s got to deal with the fallout from my infantile stunt while he’s supposed to be at the Acropolis with his wife.

It’s really not funny. Except it is.

“Play that one again,” she says. “I like the part where he’s sputtering like a cartoon villain.”