Running Lean (16 page)

“M
an, I can’t wait. I
so
need to ride.” Calvin squatted beside his Yamaha and applied a wrench to the nut connecting his old throttle cable to the carburetor. His fuel tank and seat lay off to the side.

Flannery stood beside him in the workshop, running her fingers along the length of the new cable. “I hear you. I’d go crazy without my bike for so long.”

Sure, Flannery heard his words, but she didn’t hear his heart screaming for relief from the juggling act his life had become in the last week. Seemed the more attention he gave Stacey, the more she needed. Until Flannery showed up at the front door with the new throttle cable in her hands, Calvin rarely had a moment when he thought about something other than how to make sure Stacey felt beautiful and loved. It left him exhausted each night.

Calvin tugged the wrench and grunted. The nut didn’t budge. “Rusted solid.”

“Need some WD-40?” Flannery asked.

“Or a stick of dynamite.”

Flannery chuckled. “Where’s the spray?”

Calvin tried again, and the wrench bit into the flesh of his palm. “Cabinet next to the tool chest. Thanks.” He laid one hand on
the motorcycle frame for balance and tried his weight against the wrench.

Flannery rattled bottles and cans around in the cluttered metal cabinet. “Um, I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Whh-at?” Calvin said through another grunt.

“Does Tyler ever talk about me?”

“Sure he does.” He settled back on his heels and looked over his shoulder. “Find it?”

She handed him the narrow canister. “Really? He does?”

“Yeah—Oh. Wait. You mean like—”

“Like he might like me. More than just friends.”

Calvin didn’t want to have this conversation. Did she make the special trip with his throttle cable just so she could quiz him about Tyler? The only truthful answer he could give—that Tyler had never talked about the possibility of dating Flannery—would hurt her.

Again, he had to hold back his real thoughts to avoid hurting someone’s precious feelings. Calvin held his breath while he doused the throttle nut with WD-40.

“I know I’m asking you to, like, betray some best-friend code,” Flannery said. “I just don’t know what to do or say to him. Maybe if I knew whether it’s even worth my time …”

Calvin set the canister on the concrete floor a little harder than he’d intended. He stood, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Have to let that soak in a bit.”

“I shouldn’t ask. I’m just frustrated.”

“If Tyler wants to ask you out, he will when he’s ready.”

“He sees me as just a friend. I know he does.”

Calvin blew out his breath. He took the new cable from Flannery and examined the carburetor end.

“I don’t know how to act around him anymore.” Flannery’s voice sounded soft, not like her at all.

Calvin’s chest tightened. He wanted to turn away, fix his bike,
fly through the woods, and leave everything behind. He could smell the exhaust, taste the fresh air, hear his bike’s two-stroke song ringing in his ears.

“I’m sorry,” Flannery said. “I shouldn’t be burdening you with this right now. You’ve got enough on your mind with Stacey.”

“The thing is I don’t really know what to say.” Calvin knelt down beside his bike, set the new cable on the floor, and picked up the wrench again. “Do you want me to ask him?”

“Yes—no. Yes. I don’t know.”

Calvin grinned. Kinda funny that Flannery was just now trying to figure out how to be a girl. He applied the wrench to the nut again. This time it moved, but the wrench couldn’t grip the slick metal, and Calvin’s hand slammed down against the cylinder block. He cussed, dropped the wrench, and stuck his knuckles into his mouth.

“Ooh!” Flannery bent over the seat of the bike to look. “Are you okay?”

Calvin whirled away from her and paced to the back of the workshop, shaking his stinging hand at his side. “Why can’t
anything
be easy?”

Flannery followed him. “Are you hurt? Let me see.”

“Just scraped the snot outta my knuckles.” He held his hand out, palm down, for her to inspect. Blood collected in a bunch of tiny scratches. Soon the knuckles of his index and middle fingers would be covered in a deep purple bruise.

“Knuckles don’t have snot,” Flannery said, holding his hand in both of hers. “And these aren’t even bleeding much. Can you flex your fingers?”

He did it for her. The pain was on the surface, not deep.
Shake it off. Come on
.

She smiled at him. “I think you’ll live.”

Her humor didn’t make a dent. Calvin tugged his hair with his
other hand. His eyes stung.
Forget this. Forget everything. Just walk away
.

“Calvin?”

“I’m fine.”

“Cal …”

He raised his eyes to meet hers and lost it. The tears flooded out. “I can’t—My bike’s a wreck, my life is a wreck. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Though the glow of the fluorescent shop light was behind her, Flannery’s eyes glistened. “Maybe we should stop right now and pray.”

Pray. Okay. Yeah. He sometimes forgot Flannery’s family was so religious. Calvin swallowed against the knot in his throat and nodded.

Flannery inched closer and put one hand on his shoulder as she closed her eyes and lowered her head. “Lord, please help Calvin. He’s hurting, and I know he’s really worried about Stacey. At least make it easier for him to fix his bike so he can get a break and go for a ride. And help him with Stacey. I don’t understand what she’s doing to herself or why. Maybe Calvin can’t even help her, but she’s got to find a way to get some help from somebody.”

Calvin sniffed and squeezed his eyes shut hard. Maybe God would hear Flannery’s prayer—he sure didn’t seem to be listening to Calvin’s lately.

“Seems she doesn’t want to listen to anyone, no matter how nice they try to be or … you know. And I see Calvin pouring out everything he’s got for her every day. So help her. Help her to see the truth of what she’s doing to herself, and help all of us know what we need to do for her.”

Calvin pressed his thumb and index finger into his burning eyes and muttered the only words he could get past his clamped-shut throat. “Yes, God. Please.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.” With his fingers still against his eyes, Calvin breathed in and out, waiting for the tension in his throat to ease up.

“Oh crud,” Flannery muttered.

What? Amen and oh crud? Calvin looked up.

Stacey stood in the workshop doorway, silhouetted against the afternoon sunshine. “Praying for me? Seriously?” She gripped the doorframe as if to hold herself up.

“Of course we’re praying for you,” Flannery said. “We’re worried about you.”

Oh no. No, no
. Calvin closed his eyes against the coming train wreck. He grabbed two handfuls of hair and tugged hard. A wail passed through his clenched teeth. “God!”

No train wreck. No crashing, yelling, beating, or scratching. Just silence in the workshop and intense scalp pain. Calvin let go and looked up. Both girls stood where he’d last seen them, and both were staring at him. Stacey’s glare captured him.

“Uh, I should go.” Flannery’s voice sounded far away. “See you Monday, Cal.” She navigated the space between the motorcycle and Michael’s car and mumbled something to Stacey as she left the workshop.

Calvin spread his arms wide. “Yes, we were praying for you. If that’s wrong, I’m sorry. Well, I’m not sorry for praying, but—”

Stacey pointed toward the driveway, where Flannery had gone. “So, you
told
her?”

The answer stalled in his throat, came out as a pathetic squeak.

“What about Tyler? Did you tell him too?”

He inhaled and forced out the truth. “Yes.”

“Does the whole school know?”

“No! Stacey …” He walked toward her. “You talk to Zoe about stuff. I needed someone to talk to, to try and figure out what to do to help you.”

“I don’t need any help! Except with studying for my history quiz, which is why I came over here. Like we agreed. Or did you forget?”

He stopped next to his motorcycle, his tools, throttle cable, and the can of WD-40 at his feet. Yes, he’d forgotten. Flannery showed up with the cable and everything else went out of his head. Calvin let his chin drop to his chest. “Flannery brought my new throttle cable over. We were out here putting it on the bike.”

“And talking about me.”

No sense in arguing it. Calvin spread his arms again. “Fine. Guilty.” He stepped over the bike parts. “I won’t talk about our problems with anyone else ever again. I’m sorry.”

Stacey looked down, and her hair fell limply forward. She held her backpack at her knees. Her slender hands stuck out of the sleeves of a pretty green and blue top he remembered from last fall because it made her eyes look like jewels. Now the blouse hung on her like it was many sizes too big. And why was she wearing long sleeves in seventy-six degree weather anyway?

“Are we going to be apologizing to each other forever, Calvin?”

He rushed to her and wrapped his arms around her narrow shoulders. “I don’t want to,” he said into her hair. “Please, Stace, tell me what I need to do.”

She dropped her backpack on the floor and grabbed him. Her hands moved against his back and the neck of his T-shirt tightened against his throat as she tugged the fabric. “I just want you to love me,” she said against his shoulder. “Can’t we be like we were before?”

“That’s what I want too. That’s all I want.”

He squeezed her for a long moment, then took her hand and tugged her away from the workshop. They crossed the backyard to the gazebo his father had built for his mother years ago. The white paint on the posts and railings was chipping, but still caught the sunlight and dazzled his eyes. Calvin led Stacey up the steps and into the shade beneath the gazebo’s roof. They were far enough from
the house that only the faint breeze rustling the leaves of the oak tree broke the quiet. Azaleas bordering the nearby woods bloomed in shades of pink, tulips still stood proud in the beds around the gazebo, and Mom had already hung fern plants from the hooks in the ceiling. A tiny paradise. Here they could pretend everything was okay. For a little while.

Calvin guided Stacey onto the bench. He sat close to her and started to put his arms around her.

She rested a hand against his chest and eased away. “Calvin, what do you want?”

“Wha? I want to spend a little time with you.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. What do you want with us? Where do you see us going?”

“Do we have to talk about it now?”

Stacey wrapped her arms about her ribs. “All the arguments lately … I don’t want to lose you. I’m scared. I mean, next year, when I go off to study fashion design somewhere, what’s going to happen to us?”

Calvin leaned back against the wooden railing and trained his eyes on the knobby trunk of an oak tree in the middle of the yard. Why was she worried about next year? What about next week? “All I want is to have a normal relationship with a girl who really likes me and who I really like back. That’s all.”

“In other words, I’m just too much drama for you.”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I don’t even know where I’ll be going to college yet. What I mean is, I want to be happy now. I want you to be healthy and for everything to be okay with us. If we can get that working, then we’ll be able to deal with whatever comes later.”

Stacey lowered her hands, clasped them in her lap. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I thought I knew. I had it all figured out, what I was going to do start to finish. Lose weight, go to college, be
successful, get out of this place. I guess I thought it would be you and me, somehow. But everything seems to be falling apart. Calvin, I’m ruining things.” She sniffed and looked away. “I’m making things hard for you, and you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Calvin sucked in his lips. He had no answer for what she’d said.

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Stace, I’m right where I want to be.” He slipped his hands around her waist, and she let him. “I just want to be with you.”

A breath shuddered past her lips. Stacey opened her arms, let him in, and ran her fingers up his back. She hung on, her fingers like hooks over the tops of his shoulders. Stacey’s need wrapped around Calvin, swallowing him, until the rest of the world lost its meaning. Moment by moment as they kissed, Calvin’s thoughts and impulses hurdled further away from innocence.

Giving up his virginity would be worth it if he could take away all her doubts about how she looked and how he felt about her. Wasn’t that what she worried about? She wanted to be beautiful. He could prove it to her.

But not on the bench in the backyard gazebo, completely exposed to little brothers or a spying sister. Maybe they could go somewhere in her car—

What am I thinking?

Calvin straightened, laughed a little, and knocked his unscraped knuckles on the narrow bench. “Not very comfortable.” Stacey smoothed her blouse and hummed agreement. “But, man. That was intense.”

“Sweet,” she said over his assessment. She slipped her hand around his neck as if to pull him back. “With all my breath, I love you. With all my heart, I see you. With all my being, I need you, for all my life.”

Something inside Calvin quivered, fed by both confusion and
amazement. He blinked, said, “Wow,” then blinked again. “Wait … did you just make that up, just now?”

Stacey tilted her head as if the question didn’t make sense.

“That’s poetry,” he said. “It’s a gift. You’ve got a gift, Stacey.”

Her smile trembled. “Calvin, this is one thing I totally love about you. You
see
me. Most people don’t. That’s why I didn’t just make up words to be saying something romantic. I really do
need
you.”

The quivering sensation intensified and identified itself as fear. She needed him? Emotional connection, physical longing, sure. He got all that. But need? Her emphasis of the word eroded the passion he’d felt moments before.

She looked down and toyed with her impossibly clean fingernails. “And that’s why it hurts me so much when we argue. You’re the only person I can really talk to—well, there’s Zoe. But you know Zoe. She’s …” Stacey giggled and her whole body seemed to tighten.