A couple of yards farther on, I picked up the other half of his phone cover. It was printed with the slogan MINNESOTA IS THE STATE OF HOCKEY. Sad.
The phone itself glinted in the sunlight—smack on the white goal line. I dusted off some of the lime before holding it out to him.
“You can look,” he grumbled.
I didn’t want to invade his privacy. But I was dying to know what had happened. And clearly he wanted to tell someone.
I peered at the screen. It was a text from someone named Lance. All it said was “Dude.” Attached was a photo of a dark-haired beauty with porcelain skin. She smiled sweetly into the camera, eyes bright. A cute guy with curly blond hair kissed her neck.
“Who’s the girl?” I asked, my heart sinking into my stomach.
He verified what I’d been thinking. “My girlfriend. Beverly.”
I nodded. “Who’s the guy?”
“My best friend.”
I looked up at him sadly. “Only two days after you left?”
“The same day I left,” he said. “I mean, that picture was from last night, but I already heard they got together the night before that.”
“So she didn’t waste any time after you broke up?” I asked gently.
“We didn’t break up,” he snapped. “I’m going to be down here for only a year, and then I’m going back to Minnesota for college.”
“Oh,” I said. Right. He wouldn’t be here long enough to get used to the heat.
“We weren’t going to have to do the long-distance thing forever. Less than a year. We were going to see each other at Christmas when I visit my grandparents, and maybe spring break. So we said good-bye two days ago, and I left in my car, right? My parents wanted me to sell it, if anyone would even buy it, because they didn’t trust me to drive it down here by myself. But I convinced them.” He was talking with his hands now. The car was important. He had this in common, at least, with boys from Florida.
“I was at a gas station in Madison when I checked my texts. I had ten different messages from everybody that she was cheating on me right then with my best friend at a party.” He pointed to the phone in my hands, as though this was all the phone’s fault. “I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. I tried to call him. I thought maybe I should drive back and confront . . . somebody. But what good would that have done?” He paused like he wanted me to answer.
“Right,” I said. Going back to fix it would have been like trying to repair a house of cards with a window open to the breeze.
He looked toward Ms. Nakamoto as rim taps raced across the field to us. While Will and I were missing, Jimmy was beating the rhythm for the band to march into the next formation.
“I ended up driving around Madison for an hour,” Will said. “I knew going back to Minnesota wouldn’t do any good. And I needed to get here in time to try out for drum captain today. But the farther I drove from home, the less relevant I was going to be to any of my friends’ lives. Then my dad chewed me out for being an hour late to the checkpoint in Indianapolis. He kept asking me where I was all that time. I was watching my entire life go down the drain, thank you.”
I set my sunglasses down on my nose so I could look at him in the real light of day. “Therefore, when you came to the party last night, you were looking for a good time. A rebound girl. I didn’t read you wrong after all.”
He folded his arms on his bare chest like he was cold all of a sudden. “I’m sorry, Tia. For the first seventeen years of my life, I did everything right. For the past forty-eight hours, I’ve done everything wrong.”
He hadn’t kissed wrong last night. I wanted to tell him that to cheer him up. Then I decided against it because he seemed to be counting me as one of the things he’d done wrong.
A lot of boys considered me the wrong kind of girl. I wasn’t offended. At least, I thought I wasn’t, until this came out of my mouth: “You didn’t do the deed with her just before you left, did you?”
“I . . . what?”
“She cheated on you the same night you left. Last night she was at it again. That’s why someone sent you this picture, right? Lance can’t believe her gall.”
“Right,” Will said tentatively, afraid of where I was going with this. Good instinct.
“Any guy in his right mind would be outraged at her and think, ‘Good riddance.’ But you’re devastated. You know what would do that to you? Finally having sex with her on your last night together. That’s where people go wrong—not doing it for a long time, and putting so much emphasis on the act that when it finally occurs, it leaves you an emotional wreck. She probably wanted to do it for months, but you refused because she was a nice girl. She told you she wanted one special night with you, and then she would wait for you until you came back for college. Really it was her way of tricking you into sex and taking advantage of you.”
“That’s enough,” he bit out. He held out his hand for his phone.
Feeling sheepish now, I gave it to him.
He pocketed it and picked up his drum.
I snagged mine by the harness and hurried back toward the drum line. Jimmy thought it was funny to speed up the beat until the band was practically running to their places rather than marching. That was going to annoy Ms. Nakamoto, who was probably nearing the end of her rope already. She would blame Will and threaten to give the drum captain responsibility back to me again. I started running myself, determined to prevent one tragedy today.
Will returned right after I did, taking over the marching rhythm from Jimmy. But the camaraderie between us was gone. He stayed utterly silent for the rest of the hour.
And I felt sorry for him. With only a little glimpse into his life back home, I could tell he was a nice guy. A hockey player and the drum captain, who had friends and a girlfriend. The friends he’d had and the titles he’d held were a big part of who he was. Rip him away from that and he wasn’t even a nice guy anymore. Down here he was just an unknown hottie with no tan and a temper.
By the beginning of the third hour, I’d had enough. Will wandered away from me and sat on the grass. I spread my towel out right next to him and sat down. He stubbornly slid away. I picked up my towel again and moved it closer. He looked toward the press box, chin high in the air, but he bit his lip like he was trying not to laugh.
“What I said was way too personal,” I whispered in his ear. If he’d been obsessing over our fight as I had been, he would know exactly what I was talking about. “I’m sorry. You said some personal things about me, and I pretended not to care when I really did, and then I jumped down your throat when you came to me for help.”