‘Heat of the moment.’ She shoots me a forced smile. ‘We’d just won a huge match. Spirits were high. It happens.’

May grabs her backpack and darts out of the door, but her words stay behind. My heart thunders like an oncoming storm. Am I pissed? Sad? Confused? I’m not totally sure any more.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Strawberries

May

I zone in and out endlessly during my Instrumentation lecture. God, what a snooze fest. I fight sleep every time I have this lecture. This time, I’m fighting off thoughts, too. Thoughts about the enormous pile of horseshit I just dropped on Colt.

By the time Dr Stearns utters the golden words, ‘And that’ll be all for today,’ I’m straight out of my seat and outside to the Diamond Quad. The fresh air, humid as it is, is sobering.

It’s one thing to touch another human being. It’s one thing to hook up and move on.

‘In fact, I don’t actually have to do any moving on,’ I ramble to Jordan as soon as I get to practice that afternoon, extra early. I texted her an SOS: pulling my hair out rn. i have updates. ‘Right? Because it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s just the physical. And it shouldn’t mean anything. I can’t be distracted during post-season, right. But with him … it wasn’t. It so wasn’t. Jordan, I don’t know what came over me, but it didn’t feel casual. At all.’

‘And that’s a bad thing?’ my best friend muses as she sticks out a leg in a runner’s stretch.

‘Terrible. I know you said I should understand that he’s scared, that he’s trying, but I …’ I shake my head, tucking a knee to my chest to stretch it. ‘That doesn’t change the fact that he’ll leave in less than a month, you know. And after everything that happened between us, that kinda shit tends to come to the forefront of your attention.’

‘Well, what’d you say to him about it? This morning?’

I wince. The shame is a sack-full of massive rocks that presses straight down on my chest. ‘I said … that. I said he’d leave, anyway. And that it was all in the heat of the moment. Which it was.’

For the first time, I think, since I’ve known her, Jordan is just silent for a minute. As she clambers to her feet, she finally speaks. ‘May … you guys are the definition of right person, wrong time, do you know that?’

‘Way to encourage a girl.’