My cheeks flushed. “What? What happened?”

“Dunno. All Josh said was that she didn’t want to go out with him anymore. She didn’t tell him why, though it’s pretty obvious. She must have met some guy at the party. Guess it wasn’t you.”

We got to history and I slid into my scratched-up desk with its dumb, attached chair. I could’ve guessed Eliza would want to break up with Josh. I didn’t think she’d do it right after we were together. If she were any other girl, I would be wracking my mind for the perfect line—some way to ask her out before anyone else did.

Even though she’d “made herself available” moments after I could have kissed her, and even though I’d really wanted to, Eliza wasn’t another girl. If there was going to be anything there it had to be real. Not little laughs or flirty sass.

Well.

Damn.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Carter until soccer practice that afternoon. He and I were the two captains (obviously) and one of our responsibilities was to lead warm-ups while my dad set up our drills. We had to do that, and then we had to make sure that all the underclassmen looked up to us for our charm and wit. As we jogged around the field, I panted next to him.

“I hear Daley is no longer a problem.”

“Technically,” Carter spat on the grass. “But I don’t trust that guy.”

“Eliza’s a good kid, though. She’s not going to let him do anything to her—”

“Josh doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who cares about consent.”

His tone crushed me as he picked up the pace. When Carter was upset, he ran. Sometimes, after a full soccer practice, he would even do a round loop from his house to my house, which was at least four miles away. I liked to shout at him out of my window, “Run, Forrest, run!” He usually didn’t hear me. That was probably a good thing. Carter hated to be made fun of.

Which was exactly why I did it.

Tweeeeet. Coach Dad blew his shiny whistle and pulled us into the center of the soccer field. I braced myself for what was coming. My dad had a strict attendance policy, and I’d been tardy to school again last Friday, which meant yet another detention from Mr. Hoover. I swear that guy just wants to be my best friend or something.

My dad’s unwritten policy stated that if any player had to miss any practice for anything short of a family emergency, their punishment the next time they came was a full practice of sprints. Our goalie, Mike Dawson, even had to do sprints when he went to the orthodontist to have his braces fixed. As a result, people missed practice less often than I wear the color pink.

“Maguire,” he called to me. He called us all by our last names. God forbid that he treat me any differently. “We missed you on Friday.” My dad pointed at Austin. “Banks, what do we do when we miss practice?”