Hearing her use the word fucking stuck with me for a few seconds, and I had to mentally replay the rest of what she said.
“You obviously don’t care about anything other than soccer and getting laid. Well, I’m not interested, Malone! I don’t know what you think you’re trying to prove or to whom, but stay the hell away from me!”
I swallowed hard, but any words that would make any difference just weren’t converging in my head. I couldn’t even think of a fucking Shakespeare quote. I went with desperate instead.
“You still need a ride home,” I said quietly. Hopefully.
“I have a ride home,” she barked. “With my friend, Heather.”
With that, she marched into the calc room and slammed the door in my face.
I stood there just staring at the closed door for a long time. The scene replayed in my head over and over and over again. I tried to come up with something to say to her when she came back out, but I had nothing. I had no idea what to say. Every time I heard her words in my head, it felt like I was being punched in the gut.
No, it was worse. I’d been punched in the gut. I’d take that over this.
“Malone!” I turned my head to see Clint walking down the hall toward me. “Coach is looking for you!”
I took a few steps backwards before following Clint to the locker room, tossing on my muddy shirt and heading out to the field. Coach yelled at me for punching Frankie, and I told him if Frankie learned to keep his mouth shut I wouldn’t have to bust his face. He wanted details, so I told him to fucking forget it. He told me to play nice on the field. I told him to kiss my ass.
Practice was…tense.
Afterwards, I went to the library without even taking a shower first…just in case.
She wasn’t there.
I reached up and rubbed my aching temples as the scene continued on a perpetual loop. I still had no idea what I could have done to make it any better.
Hamlet had his issues, but Shakespeare even has him ask, “Where be your gibes now?” Somehow, I didn’t think I could come up with a joke to make this better.
Now how was I going to get her to talk to me again?
CHAPTER 6
ASSIST
My phone rang as soon as I sat down in the car. I pulled it out of my soccer bag and answered.
“What?”
“I got that info for ya.”
Fucking fabulous. Too little, too late.
“The cell number is a Minnesota area code. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does.” What the hell? I dug a pen out of the glove box and found a receipt to write on in the center console.
“Okay, no Twitter or Facebook, but I got two IM accounts—one for Gtalk and another for AIM. It doesn’t look like the AIM account has been used for a long while. She logs into Gtalk most days, though.”
“Good to know.”
“I emailed you something that might be helpful as well.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Let me know if you have any trouble running it.”
“Okay.”