Page 121 of Play For Me

“It’s fine. Just stepped wrong.”

“At least let me—your knee?—”

I let out an incredulous laugh, the sound bitter and horrible. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to break my heart and then try and take care of me.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. A little spark lights in my chest and I wonder if maybe he’s going to take it all back. Maybe he’s going to explain what happened today and we can go back to how we were just a few hours ago when he left me in my bed this morning. Maybe he’ll?—

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice low and flat. “I’m so fucking sorry, Cecelia.” And then, before I can even look over my shoulder to get one last glimpse at his face, he turns around and walks to his bedroom.

I don’t know how long I stand there in his kitchen, motionless, completely in shock, wondering what in the hell just happened.

When I don’t hear anything from Solomon’s room, I have no choice but to leave him alone in his apartment.

I don’t go to the soccer facility for weight training. It might be the first time I’ve ever skipped a training session, but I just can’t make myself go back to campus. Instead, I go home, back to the house I share with my best friends.

I find the other Littles sitting on the couch, a spread of Thai food in front of them, something loud on the TV. “Ceece!” Cade calls when he sees me. “You’re just in time for…” he trails off, eyes sharpening. “CeCe?”

The others look over at me, their expressions morphing to the same worry I see on Cade’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Vega asks immediately.

It’s a struggle to get the words out. A struggle to not to burst into tears or throw up on the spot. I swallow, hard, and manage to say it.

“I think Solomon just broke up with me.”

THIRTY-ONE

SOLOMON

I don’t sleep at all that night. There’s a long stretch where I don’t really feel present in my own body. Everything is dulled and far away and things like time or my surroundings just don’t register. Eventually I come back to myself enough to realize that I’m in my bedroom, though I don’t remember getting here. I’m lying in bed in my boxers—probably stripped my jeans off the second I got in, because the restrictive denim would have felt like steel wool on my skin in the state I was in. It’s completely dark in my room. Apparently, I didn’t turn on a single light when I came in here.

I’m not so numb now, and the thoughts are starting to trickle in. The meeting with Devon. My father’s snarling face. Realizing Cecelia witnessed all the horrible things he said to me. Her telling me she would refuse to play soccer if they didn’t let me work through the tournament.

The hurt in Cecelia’s eyes when I told her to leave.

The hurtIput there.

You did the right thing,my old anxiety voice tells me. He’s louder tonight than he’s been in weeks. He’d been pretty damn quiet ever since I started things with Cecelia, like even his poisoncouldn’t withstand the sunshine that girl blasted into every area of my life.

But he’s back now, louder than ever, and he won’t fucking shut up.You only would have hurt her more down the line. Or embarrassed her the way you always embarrass them.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the voice. The memories of last night. Her face.

Sometime after six a.m. I give up the futile attempt at sleep and get up to get a glass of water. I hear snoring before I even get to the living room. My first desperate thought is that Cecelia stayed, in spite of everything, to make sure I was okay. But Cecelia definitely doesn’t snore like that, and she doesn’t wear Bart Simpson boxer shorts.

Jay. She must have called Jay last night. Even though I made her cry—God, I’m such a dick—she still called Jay because she wanted to make sure I was okay.

A flash of rage suddenly rockets through me and I turn and throw my fist into the wall. Jay jumps up on the couch, crying out. “Jesus,” he gasps, squinting at me in the dim light of the early morning. “What the hell just happened?”

I stare wordlessly at the dent I put in the wall as my hand throbs. Eventually I hold it up for him to see. Jay must put two and two together because he swears and climbs off the couch, then comes over to grab my shoulder, marching me to the kitchen. He pushes me down into a chair at the table and goes to the freezer to find ice.

Good thing I’m an athletic trainer with a freezer full of frozen gel packs.

Frozen gel packs I’ve been using on Cecelia’s knee. The urge to hit something else rises, but my hand is really throbbing now, so I grip the seat of the chair to keep myself still.

She twisted her knee when I kicked her out last night. It didn’t appear to be anything serious, she was bearing weight just fine, but she wouldn’t even let me look at it.

You don’t get to break my heart and then try and take care of me.