The Hard Count (5 page)

* * *

I
didn’t want
my dad to know I had no idea where I was going, but I’ve been driving through West End for ten minutes, and I’ve regretted not getting Nico’s address for about nine and a half. The neighborhood is buzzing with activity, more than I thought it would. I’m not sure what I expected, really. Honestly, I’ve only driven through the area as a passenger during freeway closures and wrong turns when I was a kid. When I got my license, though, this was one of the places I was lectured about “not driving at night.”

I’m out of place. My blonde hair, my freckles, my barely four-month-old sporty two-door—a glance around the streets I’m passing through shows how much I don’t belong here.

I don’t belong here.

I feel guilty thinking it.

I slow to a stop sign and wait several extra seconds while a small dog passes into the intersection, but grows frightened and backtracks twice before committing and sprinting to the other side of the road. He stops around a front gate of a house, the yard dirt except for a large tin water bowl and a few dog toys lying on a yellowed patch of grass, and I comfort myself with the thought that he probably lives there. I don’t want him to get hit by a car.

With a heavy sigh, I turn down the last street. Just like the others, people are out on porches, and homes seem open, even as far as front doors propped wide open, welcoming strangers inside. The first thing we do in my neighborhood is lock the door when we step inside, yet here, in West End, where life is supposed to be scary, nobody seems to lock a thing, at least not during the middle of the day on Sunday.

I slow near the end of the street and take in the scene at one house where several kids are playing in the yard, splashing in one of those plastic baby pools. The lawn is immaculate—the edge of the grass trimmed perfectly, the color a deep green, the dirt freshly raked as if it’s a Disney landscape. Rose bushes are trimmed back for the fall, but their color remains green and they’re accented by seasonal flowers. I’m struck by the scene so much that I don’t realize I’m blocking a car behind me while I idle in the middle of the road. The abrasive blaring of the horn shakes me back to life, though.

“Sorry,” I mouth, waving in my mirror and pulling forward.

I’m about to double back to the beginning, not ready to give up, but a little less hopeful that I’ll find Nico by randomly circling his neighborhood, when a woman catches my attention. She’s stepping from an old, copper-colored Buick in the driveway of a house a few down from the one with the perfect yard, and she looks so familiar that I pull over and watch her in my mirror.

She’s wearing a bright red blouse and black pants, her hair piled high on her head in a bun. She flips open the back-seat door and bends down, a little girl climbing out soon and grabbing her hand. The young girl is wearing a fluffy pink dress, and her hair is split into two ponytails. It’s Sunday, and I’m sure they’ve just returned from church. My hunch is so strong that I wait for a few cars to pass and turn around, driving back into the neighborhood. I arrive at the house just in time for Nico to step from the passenger seat and walk toward the back of the car where he pulls open the trunk.

The woman eyes me as I slow my car, and she says something I can’t hear, but it gets Nico’s attention. He’s holding a paper bag to his chest, but he sets it back inside the trunk, brushing his hands on his gray dress pants and saying something over his shoulder.

I kill the engine, and instantly begin to sweat.

Say something. Something smart. Be nice. Please don’t be mad that I’m here.

“Hi,” I say, bright and cheery as if they’ve been waiting for me to arrive. The woman, who I am pretty sure I recognize as Nico’s mom from the few school activities I’ve seen her at, bunches her brow and smirks at me. She’s pitying me. Because I’m an idiot. And I just took that whole looking-out-of-place thing to an entirely new level.

“Uh, hi,” Nico says, his hand on his neck, one eye squinting more than the other as he looks at me sideways. “Are you…lost?”

“No,” I answer quickly.

My heart is beating so hard that I feel it in my fingertips, so I flex one hand then switch my grip on my keys and flex the other. I step completely from my car, shutting the door, then walk up to the end of the driveway where Nico is standing with his hands in his pockets, a light-gray shirt on, and a thin black tie loosened around the neck.

I open my mouth to try to fix my first impression, but then quickly realize that this is more like my hundredth impression, and none of it is going to matter if he doesn’t like the idea I’m about to throw out there on a prayer.

I exhale quickly and the rapid passage of air flaps my lips which makes the little girl still standing with Nico’s mom giggle. Nico turns to look at her, and when he faces me again, his smile is less sympathetic and more amused.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t really expect to find you, I guess,” I say, shaking my hands before folding my arms over my chest.

“Mijo, we’ll be inside. You talk to your friend, okay?” the woman says, leading the little girl through the front door, which she leaves open behind the screen. I laugh lightly at my thought about it, but shake it off quickly and step closer to the car trunk, which has several bags of produce inside.

“There’s a farmer’s market once a month, after church. My mom…she goes kind of nuts,” Nico says. I catch how he runs his hand through his hair and his cheek reddens as if a trunkful of groceries is something to be ashamed of. I can’t remember the last time my mom or dad brought a bag of any kind of food into the house that wasn’t from a fast-food joint.

“She must cook a lot, huh?” I say, bending in and lifting a bag.

“She does, and you don’t have to carry that. I’ve got them,” he says. I hold up a hand quickly though and cock my brow.

“Don’t make me argue with you over this, too,” I say.

He breathes out a short laugh, then gives in, lifting two bags to my one before guiding me up the driveway into his house.

The difference between our two worlds is impossible not to notice the second my feet step onto the bare concrete floors of Nico’s home. I look down to confirm, my eyes scanning the deep-gray floor still marred with marks from where carpet probably once stuck to the edges. This isn’t some designer feature Nico’s family decided to try after watching one of those home shows on cable. This is just what it is—a bare floor, cold and cracked, but swept immaculately clean.

I’m caught sliding my foot over one of the foundation cracks when Nico clears his throat, reaching for the bag in my arms.

“Oh, sorry,” I say.

His smile is modest, maybe a little embarrassed.

“Makes it easy to clean. I can literally hose it off if I want,” he says. I pinch my brow pretending not to follow, but he rolls his eyes. “I know you were wondering about the floor.”

“Oh…yeah, it’s just…different,” I say.

“It’s shit poor, but whatever,” he says, walking past me and back through the front door to the car. His bluntness stuns me, so I fall a few paces behind.

I open my mouth once or twice, trying to find the words to make it better, but when Nico lifts the last bag from the car and shuts the trunk, I decide I should just let him have the last word on this topic. I jog back to the front door and hold the screen open for him and follow him back into his kitchen, where his mom is unloading the bags into the refrigerator.

“Thank you for helping,” she says to me.

“My pleasure,” I smile. She graces me with a smile that tugs her cheeks high and forces her eyes to squint. It’s a real smile, different from the one my mom wears, and it makes me feel good to have earned it from her.

“I’m Valerie, by the way,” she says, rubbing a towel over her hand, then taking mine.

“Nice to meet you. Reagan,” I say. She nods with a tight smile, and her eyes squint like her son’s do.

Nico grabs a soda from the fridge and holds one up for me. I shake my head no, but he tilts his head to the side and wiggles the can in his hand one more time.

“Okay, yeah. Thank you,” I say.

He reaches in to grab another cola, handing it to me and shrugging me to follow him to the front room, away from his mom. The little girl, now free of her ponytails, barrels around the corner from a short hallway that I can tell leads to what looks like three small bedrooms.

“Is that your sister?” I ask.

“Niece,” he corrects quickly.

I let that soak in, mentally working up to my next question, but Nico fills in the gaps for me.

“My mom watches her for my brother. She stays with us most of the time, but…sometimes…when he has a place,” he trails off, sitting on the arm of an old sofa backed against the front wall and looking out the main window, his eyes careful not to meet mine as they dart around. I can tell he doesn’t want me to ask what he means about his brother, so I let him have the last word on that topic, too.

“What’s her name? Your niece.”

Nico looks down at the soda in his hands, pulling the tab back and bringing it to his lips quickly to suck away the fizz. His eyes flit to mine for a second, just long enough for a half grin to dimple his cheek.

“Alyssa,” he smiles, and it strikes me how much his looks like his mom’s.

“She’s cute. Is she in kindergarten?” I ask.

“Next year…maybe. She’s a summer birthday,” he says, taking another big drink.

I fill the pause by opening my own can and gulping down several swallows, enough that the carbonation burns my chest, and I wince. Nico chuckles, but his smile fades quickly.

“You were looking for me?” he asks.

I was. That’s right. I’m here for Nico, to convince him. It seemed like such a cut-and-dry plan, and I felt so confident when I drove here half an hour ago. All audacity is gone now, though. I have a feeling, before too long, I’m going to end up begging.

“I’m here to tell you to try out for the football team tomorrow,” I say, managing to hold in the swallow that is begging to slide down my throat in front of him. Nico’s eyes don’t blink for several seconds, and his expression remains void of any sign that he heard me at all. And then the laughter comes.

“Uhhh, not just no, but
hell
no,” he says, laughing so hard that his mom peers around the corner to check on us.

“You okay out there? Can I get you guys something for lunch?” she asks.

“We’re fine, Ma. Thanks, though,” Nico says, dismissing her.

I never take my eyes from him, and I search for that last vestige of inner strength for me to be the girl who pitched this wild idea to her dad an hour ago.

“Why not?” I ask, setting the rest of my soda down on a small coffee table and standing with my arms folded in front and my posture as straight and rigid as I can hold it.

Nico laughs silently, locking his gaze with mine for a few seconds before blinking and glancing down. He sets his soda next to mine, then stands in the same pose as me, his smirk—his armor—in its place.

“For starters, I don’t need the football team,” he says.

“You’re right. But we need you,” I say, surprising myself. I practiced this on the way here, however short that rehearsal was. I knew I wouldn’t be able to trick Nico. I’d have to appeal to his empathy—I’d have to ask, make him feel needed and wanted. Frankly, he is.

His smirk drops a little at my reply, which makes my chest loosen just a little. I breathe in long and deep, but the longer he looks at me without speaking, the more my fingers twitch and my feet grow restless until I break my folded arm pose and bring my hands to my eyes, rubbing while I pace a stride or two in either direction.

“My dad needs you. The team needs you,” I say, opening my eyes to see him still staring at me, his smirk now gone completely.

I sigh, then tug my hair loose from the knot at my neck, scratching the sore spot where the band pulled it tight. Everything about me feels awful and uncomfortable right now, and I hate that Nico is looking at me. I’m already here, though, and I’ve already said the hard part, so I stare into his eyes and wait until his arms uncross, so I know he’s feeling a little off his game, too.

“Friday night…when I watched you with your friends?” I wait for him to nod; to know he’s willing to at least listen to me. “You guys were…you were really good,” I say through a nervous laugh. I suck in my lip, needing something from him to encourage me to keep going.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” he says, and my heartbeat kicks up at the mention of Noah.

My eyes fall to my feet, and I shift my balance, looping my thumbs in my pockets while I nod lightly.

“Thanks,” I say.

When I look back up, Nico’s gaze is now on the ground between us, and he’s chewing at the inside of his cheek, which means he’s thinking. I know he is, because I’ve seen him work through things in class—bide his time before he could speak and make a well-rounded, hard-to-argue-with point. I can’t let him hit me with a foolproof defense before I get one last shot at this.

“He broke the tibia and fibula; he’s going to be out for the season. My dad…” I stutter, my breath catching hard, because I know this move could be a defining moment for my father. Win or lose means in or out for Coach Prescott, and his fate is literally in the hands of his quarterback. “I know what I saw you do out on that field. I’ve watched my dad coach the best, and I know how they move. You…you look like my father’s been working with you for years.”

“Yeah, well, he hasn’t,” Nico snaps, his eyes still down and his mouth tight.

“No, I know,” I say. “But I showed him…”

Nico’s body jolts at my words, and I pause long enough for our eyes to meet. His are wide now, and I think maybe this is the only time I’ve ever seen him on edge, unsure of the next move or what side of the coin he needs to pick.

“I showed him the video I shot. And he can’t ask you to come out, because of your scholarship. It can’t be part of recruiting. But if you decided that football was maybe something you wanted to try…if you, say, stopped by his office hours in the morning and asked about a supplemental tryout…”

Nico doesn’t blink. He also doesn’t frown or smile or react in any way. But he hears me.