Page 60 of The Do-Over
“And I didn’t say it back.” She was smiling.
“You said it the next day!”
“You remember that part too?”
“Yeah. I was stressed about it when I went home. I was wondering if I’d made a mistake. Not loving you—that never felt like a mistake. But admitting to it. Maybe you were judging me. Maybe you thought I was a sentimental fool. Maybe you were going to tell me you didn’t want us to see each other anymore.”
He thought back to that night. He’d stayed in his room, avoiding his father as much as he could. He hadn’t known exactly how his father would respond if he knew what was going on with Thea, but it definitely wouldn’t be good, and he didn’t want to find out. His father had a way of injecting his poison into everything that was good in Rob’s life, and Rob had been determined to keep his relationship with Thea safe from that.
Somethinghad gone wrong, though.
They hadn’t spoken since high school. Why?
They were supposed to go off to college together. That was the plan they’d discussed that day in the car after the pep rally. That was when they had first made the agreement.
Had she changed her mind?
“You told me you loved me the next morning,” he said, as much to reassure himself of that fact as anything else. “You weren’t ready to say it the night before because I took you by surprise, that was all. But the next day you showed up at my house.”
She nodded. “Even though it was Saturday, I got up early in the morning because I wanted to talk to you right away. I couldn’t just let it wait.
He smiled at the memory. It was so clear in his mind. “I woke up to the sound of you ringing my doorbell.” He had panicked for a moment before remembering that his father was at work and therefore wouldn’t be angry about the disturbance.
“It was the only time I ever came to your house,” Thea recalled. “You never wanted to have me over.”
“I never wanted to have people over,” he corrected her. “It wasn’t specific to you.”
“I don’t know why, though. Your house was perfectly nice. Nicer than mine.”
That definitely wasn’t true. He’d spent a lot of time at her house. It was small, but it was charming and well-maintained, and her parents and brother were lovely people. There was nothing to hide at Thea’s house.
It wasn’t the same at his.
Thea was smiling at him, though, and that smile allowed him to put aside the more painful memories of his past. “That was a good day too,” he said, remembering the time they’d spent together after their conversation.
“You remembered a lot based on that picture of the pep rally,” Thea said.
He nodded. “In my mind, it’s like this happened really recently. It doesn’t feel that way—I can feel the distance, if that makes sense. But when I think about it, it’s like I’m calling back something that just happened.”
“Try the next picture,” Thea suggested.
He looked at it. “This is the Illinois State game,” he said. “We lost this one, and it was a big deal, because we were picked to win. Coach was mad about it.”
“What else? Anything?”
“Extra practice that night. He kept us there until almost midnight. I remember there was snow on the ground as I was walking back to the dorm that night.”
Thea regarded him. “Think about what you just said.”
Rob reviewed it anxiously in his mind. Had he gotten the details wrong? He didn’t think so.
“The dorm?” she pressed.
He hesitated. He had said that without really thinking about it. “This was a college game,” he realized.
“That’s right,” Thea said gently. “That’s the first real breakthrough, Rob.”
It had come to him so easily, and now he tried to remember more—the name of the dorm, the layout of his room, the identity of a roommate. Nothing came to mind. “I can’t get anything else,” he said.
