I still couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye, but I was very aware of our surroundings. Even in the dark, I was already taking inventory. There were two indoor gyms and in the corner was the cage where I’d be sitting and trying to write out a lame and overly committed-to therapeutic exercise. I’d come in through one screen door, but straight across from us, another screen door led to three brand-new outdoor gyms. Leaning to the side, I could see that the last court had a volleyball net up and shit. That’s probably why Grant was here.

“Are you here for the net?” I asked.

I was aware of how he hadn’t moved since I jumped to my feet. He was still on the floor, and I got a glance in before I panicked, just quick enough to see my roll sitting on his jean’s zipper, right where a whole other type of bread was.

Ahem.

I made every effort to change my thoughts, because I could feel all the sexual-themed questions coming, and with my history with this guy, I did not want to take that on.

He grunted, finally standing up. “That’s all you’re going to say to me?’”

Well…what else was there?

I mean, besides the fact that for all the crap I took from Keith about “dating” my guy friends, I hadn’t dated any of them. Yet, this was the one guy who actually came close to entering that zone. The dating zone.

That’d been Grant.

And no one knew. No one.

They just knew he’d been my best friend for six summers in a row. They didn’t know we’d kissed on the hanging bench my last summer here, and we’d held hands on the walk to my car—right to where I had it packed with all my belongings. We drove our separate ways, and that was the end of our summer.

Grant went north four hours to finish his last year at college, and I went south to meet Damian. Life took a turn after that—a big, fast, and dramatic turn, and sometimes I felt like I’d taken that turn so fast, my car had rolled in the ditch and I’d never woken up.

My throat suddenly had an STD. There was burning, more burning.

“How’s Damian?” Grant asked.

We were going serious right off the bat.

“If everyone started using shiitake as a curse word, would we switch things and call them shit mushrooms?”

He snorted, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “You’re exactly the same.”