Page 52 of Catching Feelings

I want to bundle her into my arms, but the best I can do is cover her hand loosely with mine. “That all makes sense. It’s your right to talk to him when and how you want. But trust me—” My lips quirk into a gentle smile. “He couldn’t ruin tonight if he tried.”

She smiles back, interlacing our fingers. She doesn’t talk about this stuff much, and I don’t want to overstep, but…

“You said your mom’s been busy. Is that just because of her schedule? Or…?”

Sabrina snorts. “Yeah, it might have something to do with avoiding the implosion of her marriage. I’m hardly ever home either, so I guess I recognize that coping mechanism.” She makes a face. “And Dad has a new girlfriend already, and all he can text about is her? I don’t want to talk about that, obviously, and I feel weird giving him any information about Mom and our life that she might not want him to know, right? So, I just feel like nothing is normal except school.”

Suddenly her fear of rocking the boat at Hamilton Lakes makes a lot more sense. It’s her only remaining source of connection. For someone as people oriented as Sabrina, losing that would be devastatingly lonely.

I nod. “I get it. I don’t blame you for keeping yourself busy.” I look out the dark window of the diner, where our own pale reflections shine back at me like two moons orbiting each other. I string one careful word after the other, figuring something out as I speak it aloud. “What else can you do, when you’ve been left to start your life all over? We have to move forward. And sometimes we move the fastest when we’ve left the biggest pile of rubble behind.”

When I look back at Sabrina, her expression is more serious than I’ve ever seen, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on me. “Exactly,” she whispers. “What about you? How’s your adjustment this year?” With a twist of her mouth, she adds, “You’ve moved so fast, there must be a pretty big pile of rubble behind you.”

My mouth quirks with the same half smile, half grimace. “Yeah. But it’s been a lot better than I bargained on.” I reach out to cover her hand with mine, and she twists her palm up so I can trace along each finger. “I didn’t think I’d find someone who got me so quickly. Someone so ambitious, and generous, and full of joy and optimism. Not to mention gorgeous.”

She scoffs, but she’s smiling. “Really? You didn’t have a girlfriend who was all those things?”

I shake my head. I don’t even have to think. “Kate was… well, she was mostly great.” I shrug. Whatever happened at the end, I’m not gonna bad-mouth her to another girl. “Smart. Wants to be a vet, and she rescues every wounded stray she passes and nurses them right back to health. We had a good run. But I got the sense she was more interested in who she thought I was than who I really was? Like, the idea of dating a football player sounded fun to her, but I could’ve been any guy on the team. She didn’t really know me in the end.”

Sabrina interlaces her fingers through mine and squeezes. “What happened?” she asks.

I hesitate. Part of me wants to tell her—wants to tell her everything. But the other part is terrified to ruin tonight with the shadow of last year. I can’t risk my mistakes getting out and ruining the reputation I’m building this year with the teammates who trust me, the scouts who’re eyeing me.

Besides, Sabrina’s been unquestioningly on my side, giving me the benefit of the doubt and trusting me despite the rumors. She doesn’t need another worry.

What if it makes her pull away now that we’ve finally started something for real?

So I choose my words carefully. “I told you there was tension on the team at the end of the year, right?”

Sabrina frowns. “What kind of tension?” she asks, voice quiet.

My throat constricts as my mind replays the pain on John’s face as he fell. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “But the short version of the story is she took the other guy’s side. And… well, I try really hard to be a trustworthy guy. I keep my word. I have my friends’ backs.” I shrug. “It kinda hurt that none of that counted for anything in the end.”

Is she going to ask for more details? I hold my breath, just hoping she’ll take my word and my partial story. Then she shakes her head. “Damn. Is that girl gonna graduate?”

I blink. “What?”

“Because she sounds like a real idiot.”

I’m startled into silence, and then we both burst into laughter. Sabrina squeezes my hand, and some of my tension eases. It feels like something long frozen over in my chest has melted. Like I have the thing I’d been missing with Kate right in front of me. “Yeah. I can’t be sorry when it led me here.” And then I don’t want to talk about Kate any longer. Not on my date with Sabrina. “And you? Your last boyfriend? What was he like?”

“Never really had one.” She shrugs, as if that’s not detonating a huge bomb in my chest. “I guess even before my parents split up, some part of me knew there was something off. All this tension below the surface, and every now and then they’d weaponize things the other one had said against each other—secrets, or mistakes, or just stories that they told inside out—and I think a part of me was like, ‘Whoa, careful of that.’ ” She looks up to meet my eyes, something newly vulnerable in her gaze. “I always liked being around people: connecting them, lifting them up. But it took a lot for me to trust them to do the same.”

I swallow hard, gulping down the unexpected emotions rising in my throat. “I’m really, really honored you’re here with me.”

And then I’m looking into those wide blue eyes and seeing the glimmer of pain and hope and fear in them, and suddenly I don’t want to be separated by this Formica table for a moment longer. Real dates are nice and everything, but…

“You want to come back to the house?”

She raises an eyebrow at me, but now those eyes are glimmering with mischief. “Is it… safe?”

I laugh again. I laugh more around this girl than anyone else I know. “Ryan’s halfway to Madison by now. He’s driving with his parents to visit Zach for family weekend.”

“Lord, send them strength,” she says immediately. “I bet he’s halfway through the Hamilton soundtrack and trying to teach them how to harmonize on ‘Helpless.’ ”

I grin. “And maybe… when he gets back, we can tell him?” I blurt out the rest in a rush. “I don’t want to sneak around anymore. I don’t want to let him believe we’re just friends. I want to be with you for real.”

For a moment, all I can hear is the humming of appliances in the back, the buzzing of the fluorescent light above us, the whooshing of cars on the road outside. If this doesn’t land how I think it will, I can’t guarantee I’ll keep my promise to Dawson. Locking myself in the freezer never to be heard from again sounds pretty good right now. Or—