She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed with her laptop, e-mailing excuses to her professors. Her long, dark hair is twisted into this thick knot on top of her head. There’s one lock that didn’t make it in, and it falls loose and curly against her long neck. Before I really know what I’m doing, I’m climbing onto the bed behind her and reaching for those rogue strands. I settle in behind her, one of my legs on each side of hers.
“Tunnels tonight?”
She frowns, tilting her head slightly back toward me. “We can wait for all that stuff until you’re fully recovered.”
I lift my hands to her shoulders, kneading gently. “Hell no. You’re on a deadline, after all. Gotta get all your wild and crazy out before you graduate.” She opens her mouth to respond, but then closes it. And I wonder if she can hear the slight edge to my voice when I talk about her graduating. Not that I have a right to be pissed about it, but I can’t help it. I don’t like having a deadline. I don’t like not having a choice about how much time I get with her. I decide to keep talking so she doesn’t have time to dwell on it. “Besides, it’s not like the tunnels are going to be physically demanding. If I can make it through practice, I can definitely walk down some concrete tunnels. And then who knows, maybe I’ll even feel up to some more physical exertion afterward.”
I lean down to kiss her shoulder, but her back straightens, and she shifts to look back at me. Ignoring that last statement, she says, “You’re going to practice?”
“First I’ve gotta go lift.” And I am so not looking forward to the sound of the weight room—all clangs and thuds and scrapes. It’s going to be a nightmare. But a necessary one. “Then practice, yeah.”
Her eyebrows furrow, and I can see her debating about saying something before she finally spits it out. “So, you’re not telling your coach at all? Do you think that’s smart?”
It would be cute that she’s worried, if she weren’t voicing the thoughts I’ve done a lot of work to keep myself from thinking.
“I told you. I’ve had concussions before. This one is so mild I’ll probably feel good as new within the next few hours.”
“Yeah, but if you were to hit your head again shortly after your initial injury, it could cause serious damage. You could die. It could—”
I lower my mouth to hers, cutting her off. For a moment she resists, not quite kissing me back, but not completely immune either. After a few seconds she relaxes and one of her hands travels up to my neck. I get a little lost in her mouth. In the softness of her lips. The taste of her tongue. The quickening of her breath.
I pull back before I get carried away and give in to the urge to toss her computer to the ground and strip her naked.
“I’ll be fine, Nell. I know my limits. I promise I’ll be careful. You’ll see. You’re worrying about nothing. You and me. The tunnels. Tonight.”
Her eyes flick over mine, narrow, but then finally she nods.
DESPITE WHAT I told Nell, I don’t feel good as new in a few hours. I take it easy during my workout. They’re unsupervised—at least technically—so no one will call me out for going at half strength. But even taking it easy, I’m exhausted before I get halfway through my hour. I’m worn out by trying to appear normal while my nerves feel more and more raw by the second.
When practice starts, I very nearly spill to Coach. But then I tell myself that it’s laziness talking. I’m strong enough to power through this. My reasons for staying silent are the same today as they were yesterday. So I stick to my guns and suffer through practice. I think it’s obvious to everyone that I’m not up to par, but I hope they chalk it up to a bad day rather than to the fact that I’m avoiding getting tackled as much as possible.
If you don’t catch the ball, not much point in someone taking you to the grass.
I even take a nap after practice, but it barely takes the edge off, which is why I’m exhausted when I get to Nell’s later.
I can tell by her worried look when she sees me on her porch that this isn’t going to be good.
“You ready?” I ask.
She fixes me with a silent, assessing gaze.
Maybe I should have canceled. I knew she would give me grief over “knowing my limits,” but I wanted to see her. So I figure I can take a little grief.
“Come on.” I hold out a hand to her. “I’m excited about this. Both of our first times, remember?”
“Mateo . . .”
“We’re just walking. It’s nothing strenuous. We’ll walk a ways in, explore a bit, and then we’ll leave.”
“And you’ll sleep?”
I jump at the chance to spend another night with her.
“If you’ll be my nurse again.”
Her eyes lift in a smile even though her mouth doesn’t, and I know I’ve won. In my truck, I flip my heater on to full blast. Some hint of winter is beginning to creep in, and the night air is crisp and there’s a cold breeze. She’s wearing a light jacket, but I can tell as I drive that she’s cold. So I flip the middle console up, and tell her to scoot over, and I drive onto campus with her huddled close to me. We park near the tunnel entrance by the north parking garage, and I find a Rusk sweatshirt in the backseat to pull over her head for extra warmth. It swallows her, falling all the way to her knees, but the dark red looks good against her skin, and I like seeing her in it.
Even with her jacket and my sweatshirt, she loops her arm around mine and snuggles closer. I lead her down to the mouth of the tunnel, which at first glance looks like an oversize drainage pipe. A concrete-covered ditch runs for about fifty yards before the entrance to the tunnels, and a thin line of water runs down the middle. As we stand at the entrance, the tunnel looks dark and dank. Hardly the most romantic place, but it pricks my sense of adventure, and some of my fatigue gives way to anticipation.
“You’re sure this is safe?”
“Now that you mention it, I keep thinking of that disaster movie where one of those underwater tunnels in New York collapses and there’s a huge wave of water coming down the tunnel.”
“Fantastic. Exactly what I wanted to think about.”
I laugh and pull out the flashlight I brought with me. I direct the beam down the tunnel, and it shines far enough to show that it splits into three tunnels a little ways in. As far as I can tell from here, they’re parallel, but that doesn’t mean they don’t branch off somewhere farther down.