Off the Field

Chapter Twenty

I wasn’t exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, so I shrugged and leaned against the stairwell. “Why’d you do it?” I asked, gazing at her. “You were so mad at me. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d just let me deal with it – I definitely deserved it.”

“Because I’m your best friend, you idiot.” Mal capped her Gatorade, rolling her eyes as she tried to hide her smile. “Do you really think I wanted to deal with you moping around all the time? I couldn’t let your dad do that to us.”

Since her drink was closed, I felt it was safe to drag her into another hug, grinning as she squirmed and complained loudly. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “For everything. If there’s anything I can do – I can go punch Davis if you want –”

“You already did, you moron,” she said, her voice muffled in my shirt, but she stopped hitting my chest and surrendered herself to my hug, dropping her head on my shoulder. “I don’t want you to do anything, okay, we can work it out ourselves. You’ve done enough already.”

I winced. “I know. I’m sorry, Mal, I’m such an idiot.”

“You got that much right.”

“And I don’t deserve to be friends with someone as awesome as you.”

“Also true.”

“So flattery works?” I asked, looking down at her, and she rolled her eyes as she pulled away from me with a smile. I handed her the Gatorade, which again had dropped from her hand when I’d embraced her, and she promptly whacked me over the head with it.

“Someone needed to knock some sense into you,” Mal said with satisfaction as I yelped and rubbed the top of my head. “Now get on home. Your mom’s probably going crazy.”

She wiggled her fingers at me in dismissal and, grinning, I walked backwards to the front door, wondering how I was lucky enough to be her best friend and how exactly Jackson Davis could have refused to be her boyfriend.

When I finally came into the house, my mom immediately began to fuss over me, dragging me into the kitchen and scolding me for not putting ice on my black eye. I didn’t bother explaining to her that I’d been too preoccupied to give it a second thought and let her force me to sit down at the kitchen table while she retrieved an ice pack from the freezer.

“Hold this on your eye,” she said, hovering over me until she was sure that I was following her orders. She let out a sigh, smoothing my hair away from my forehead with one hand while she mumbled something that sounded like “Why are boys so difficult?”

Thankfully, my younger siblings weren’t around, so I didn’t have to endure their endless questions. However, Jack leaned against the kitchen counter, looking amused as Mom finally left me alone to go check on the laundry, and I shot him a one-eyed glare, daring him to say something. As usual, he disregarded this; shaking his head, he said,

“Man, only you would get away with something like this.”