Free This Is Falling by Ginger Scott

hand
rubbing at his neck. “Made it kind of hard for me to sleep there.
For the record, that couch in the lobby is miserable.”
    My heart is thumping again, and I think it’s
actually jumping up and down in my chest, it’s so excited by his
answer. Which is bad, because it’s only going to make it harder for
me to tame my heart into stopping at friends.
    “Hey, Preeter! Ass back on the field, son!”
one of the coaches yells. I don’t want him to get into trouble
because of me, so I just nod him on.
    “You’ll stick around? Yeah?” he asks, pushing
his mask back over his head. I don’t believe in signs. If signs
were real, then surely I would have gotten a few of them to stop my
life from crumbling. But for whatever reason, my eyes center on the
small scratched letters etched on the side of his metal mask—N.J.P.
And Ty’s voice runs through my head.
    “That depends,” I say, still looking at the
letters on his mask.
    “On what?” he asks, his feet starting to
shuffle backward toward the field.
    “What does N.J.P. stand for, and when’s your
birthday?” I ask, my heart now in my stomach, begging and hoping
for the right answer.
    Nate’s lip pulls up on one side, and he tucks
his lower lip under his teeth as he backs away, and inside I’m
willing him—“Say it, just say it,” I’m thinking.
    “My birthday’s in October, and the J is for Jackson. What can I say, beautiful girls turn me into a
complete and utter fraud.”
    I turn back to the bleachers without saying a
word, and I can feel Nate’s eyes on me the entire way—watching me
climb back up to my seat, lean back, and cross my legs, making
myself comfortable.
    This is still flirting, and it’s going
to make being just friends damned near impossible. But right
now, I don’t give a shit.

Chapter
8
     
    Nate
     
    She stayed for the entire practice. She even
walked with me through campus, back to the workout room. It’s fall,
so we only have a few tournaments to play—exhibitions. The real
work starts in a month or two, but I still have a pretty full
schedule. It makes it hard to squeeze in extra
things… Rowe.
    The weekend is free, though. The dorms are
all full, because classes start on Monday, and everything about
this place feels exactly like I thought college would feel.
    “Hey, douchebag!” Ty yells when he comes
through the door, throwing his rolled up dirty socks at me. “Think
fast!”
    “You are such an asshole sometimes,” I say,
brushing them from my lap to the floor. Seriously, Ty’s feet
stink.
    “Yeah, well. Tell Mom,” he laughs. “Speaking
of, I talked to them this morning. They’re coming to visit in a
couple weeks. Taking us to dinner, and all that. I’m bringing
Cass.”
    My brother’s infatuation with Cass fascinates
me. He has never held onto a girl longer than a week, but she seems
to have found his weakness. What’s more amazing is how absolutely
normal she is. Girls have never been a problem for Ty. He was
homecoming king in high school, and that was after his accident.
The local paper thought it was this cool story, about how our
student body elected a guy in a wheelchair. Then the reporter
interviewed Ty, and his quote pretty much summed it up.
    “The chair might make people notice. But this
face is so pretty, girls just can’t help themselves,” he said,
right there in print. Mom told him he shouldn’t be so cocky, and
Dad just high-fived him. That’s Ty. I wish I had an ounce of his
confidence.
    “You should ask Rowe,” he says, his back to
me. That’s how I know he’s being serious, and not just teasing. If
he were giving me crap, he’d be in my face, relentless and crude
about her. But he likes her; he likes the idea of her and
me . And I like that.
    “Yeah? You think she’d go?”
    “Bro, I know she’d go,” he says,
turning around and throwing his dirty boxers at me now.
    “Fucking asshole!” I get him back when I
stand up and push his underwear on his own head as I leave