Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 145402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 582(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 582(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
Katelyn looked up at his approach and flipped her notebook closed. "Neil, hello! I know it's only been a few weeks but it feels like forever. How was Christmas?"
"It was fine," Neil said. "How was yours?"
"Oh my gosh, amazing." Katelyn clasped her hands in glee. "My sister finally found out she's having a boy, so I spent most of my break buying things for him. Mom told me I'm going overboard but I know she's just as excited."
She'd told them last month that her sister was pregnant, but Neil hadn't held onto the details. He tuned her excited rambling out now, listening only for the key words that meant she was done detailing all her great finds and winter sales. It didn't take her long to remember they weren't here to catch-up, and she pulled herself together with a smile that was as sheepish as it was happy.
"So what's this about?" Katelyn asked. "You said you wanted to talk about Aaron?"
"Aaron needs help," Neil said. "I'm trying to get him some."
Katelyn sobered up in a heartbeat. "He's having nightmares again, isn't he? He said he was doing better. He promised that—" Katelyn gestured, frustration or helplessness, and pressed her fingers to her trembling lower lip.
"Nightmares," Neil echoed. It wasn't the turn he'd thought this conversation would take but he could guess what was tearing Aaron apart. "About November, you mean."
"He doesn't want it to bother him," Katelyn said. "He says Drake deserved worse than what he got. He says he's glad he did it. But wanting someone dead and actually being the one to kill them are two very different things. I'm willing to listen to him, and I want to do everything I can to help, but he doesn't hear me when I tell him it's okay."
"He needs to talk to Andrew," Neil said.
Katelyn gave a choked laugh. "He won't."
Katelyn knew what the upperclassmen didn't: that Aaron and Andrew could barely stand the sight of each other on a good day. Maybe she needed to know, since their fight was what was keeping her and Aaron apart. Neil favorably recalculated her odds of actually making it with Aaron in the long run.
"He has to," Neil said again. "They need each other. They just don't know how to take that first step. That's where you come in."
Katelyn searched his face for a minute, then said, "Why?"
"Why you?" Neil asked.
"Why you," she corrected him. "Aaron isn't..."
She was too nice to say it, but Neil had no problems filling in the blanks. "Aaron and I get along when we have to and avoid each other when we can. I'm not going to lie and say I'm doing this for his sake. I don't care whether he's okay in the long run. I care only about the team. We can't win without them. Does it really matter why I'm doing it so long as everyone walks away happy in the end?"
"It matters to me," Katelyn said. "I love him."
"So help me help him," Neil said.
Katelyn pressed her lips to a thin line as she debated. "I'm listening."
"Has Aaron ever told you about Dr. Dobson?" Neil asked. "She works at Reddin and she's the go-to shrink for our team. She's willing to run group sessions with Andrew and Aaron."
"Aaron's mentioned her before. He said she's a waste of time."
"Because he doesn't use her like he's supposed to," Neil said, neatly ignoring the hypocrisy in his accusation. "Luckily it doesn't matter what Aaron thinks. Dobson's seen both of them. She's treated Andrew for a year and a half now. If she honestly thought she couldn't reconcile them she would have said so. If we can get them both in her office at the same time, she can make them talk to each other."
"You want me to talk him into it," Katelyn concluded.
"You convince Aaron. I'll convince Andrew."
"Do you really think you can?"
"I have to," Neil said.
"But how?" Katelyn pressed. "I'm asking honestly, because I don't know how to talk Aaron into it. He wouldn't listen to me the last time I told him to get help."
"Then don't make this about him," Neil said. "Make this about you. You can fix this right here, right now. Stop being collateral damage and make him fight for you."
"I don't think I can use 'us' against him. It isn't fair."
"But this is?" Neil gestured at her. "Look, there's no way I can convince Andrew overnight, so you've got some time to think about it. But when Andrew is ready, you have to pick your side. Try to pick the right one."
He got up and left, and she didn't call after him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Classes on January 12th were a complete waste of the Foxes' time. Neil's lessons were early enough in the day that he made it to both of them, but he didn't learn a single thing. His teachers' voices were white noise; the words they wrote on the board morphed to diagrams of plays. Neil held his pen at the ready but didn't write a single letter in his notebook. He'd have to borrow notes from a classmate later, but today none of that mattered. All that mattered was that they had a one-twenty flight out of Upstate Regional.
First serve was scheduled for seven-thirty, but Wymack wanted them on the ground in Austin two hours early. He didn't trust winter weather, he'd said. Neil was sure he'd jinxed them with that paranoia. It was pouring outside, cold and hard enough to feel like ice, and Neil worried their flight would be delayed. They had a small cushion, thanks to a ninety-minute layover in Atlanta, but Neil was still afraid. If they missed their first game of championships over something so stupid as the weather he would never get over it.
It was raining too hard for an umbrella to do any good, so Neil pulled his hood up and jogged back to Fox Tower. He slanted a look at the sky, hoping to see an end to the charcoal clouds, and was rewarded with rain in his eyes. Neil scrubbed a hand across his face and darted through a gap in traffic on Perimeter Road. An athlete on his way down the hill to class slipped and fell with a startled curse. He was back on his feet before Neil caught up with him, but Neil learned his lesson and slowed down. He hadn't survived Riko's cruelty to be handicapped by impatience.