Cole's memory comes back the way ice melts off a windshield.
He texts me at midnight.
today i remembered the beach
I write back, ok
A day later: today i remembered you don't eat cilantro
ok
Day five: remembered i kissed you in the car. you bit me
I look at the screen for a long time.
I write back, that one you can keep to yourself
He answers in two seconds.
sorry
Liv reads it over my shoulder and laughs into her pasta.
She keeps laughing for a beat. Then she actually looks at me.
Wren. Honest. You don't soften at all?
I look out the window. The practice field is below us. Cole is alone at the goalpost in a black hoodie, no jersey. The lights are off. He is just standing there.
The crowd that used to be around him every Friday night is gone. The chants are gone. The number on his back is gone.
He looks more like himself than he ever did under the lights.
Soft isn't the same as forgiven, I say.
I put my fork down.
I have to take care of myself first.
Sloane gets her expulsion the third week after the hearing. Greenport High terminates her enrollment, and the county is taking the criminal piece.
The morning she goes, half the senior class watches.
She rolls a suitcase past me. She stops.
Wren. You won.
I close my book.
I just didn't lose.
Her eyes go red.
You think Cole loves you. He feels guilty. When the guilt runs out he goes back to the field. He goes back to the life he was supposed to have.
I look at her tired face.
That's his to figure out.
She walks. She had a punch saved and the punch missed.
I pack up.
At the top of the stairs, Cole is waiting.
He has heard the whole thing.
I expect him to argue.
He hands me a paper cup.
No vanilla syrup, he says.
I take it.
He looks down at me.
I won't say I love you. Not yet.
I look up.
His eyes are very level.
I'll start by learning not to hurt you.
December. Greenport reopens the gym for Winter Formal.
The vacated state-final banner has been taken down. There's a clean rectangle of brighter paint in the rafters where it used to hang.
People keep saying it's a black eye on the school.
To me it looks washed.
Liv drags me. She says I have spent the year living like a war correspondent and I am owed one normal night.
I wear a long dark green dress.
I walk in. Two thousand square feet of teenagers, and a beat hangs.
Not awe. Awkwardness. The town doesn't know what to do with me yet.
For a year they laughed at me for chasing the captain.
Then they hated me for ruining the captain.
Now that the truth has been spread on the floor in front of them, they want to be careful with me. Soft eyes. Patient mouths.
I don't need it.
I go to the drink table. I pour a lemonade.
Behind me, a low voice.
Cole's here.
I don't turn.
The DJ shifts to something slow.
Cole stops three steps from me. Black suit. He doesn't reach.
He opens his hand.
The ring is in his palm.
Wren. I remembered this place.
I look at him.
Two years ago, at the homecoming dance. You wore a white dress. I spilled cranberry juice on Marsh's shoes on purpose because he wouldn't stop staring at you.
I can't help the corner of my mouth.
You were a child about it.
A small smile reaches his eyes.
I know.
He pauses.
I remembered the first time I kissed you. By your locker. You said if I posted anything, you'd freeze me out three days.
And the next morning you taped the homecoming photo to your locker door.
You did the three days.
You earned it.
He laughs. Short. He pulls it back.
Wren.
He extends the ring.
I don't expect you to wear it. It was always yours. I'm just giving it back to you.
I look at it.
I don't take it.
I don't walk away.
His hand stays out. The fingertips are barely shaking.
Cole, I say. I'm not going to be your girlfriend right now.
He nods. He had already taken that hit.
Okay.
But you can ask me for one dance.
His head comes up.
For one second the light in his eyes is so bright that my chest goes raw.
He puts his hand out, palm up. His voice is gone to gravel.
Wren. May I have this dance.
I put my hand in his.
One.
He holds it like he is afraid the joints are not used to it.
The DJ slows further. The lights drop low.
When I am close, he says, near my ear:
I remembered the last piece.
I don't ask.
He keeps going.
The thing I wrote on the back of the Polaroid. I wrote it because I figured out the drink. The night I went down — I was going to find you. I was going to tell you not to come to the hearing.
My fingers tighten.
He looks down at me.
Not because I didn't trust you.
His voice is low.
Because I had a recording of my dad and Marsh. They said if you kept pushing, my dad would have your mom moved out of Eastpoint.
The breath snags.
So you tried to make me run.
Yeah.
His eyes get red.
And before I could say it to your face, I forgot you.
The song ends.
The applause is a scatter.
I take my hand out of his.
He doesn't reach.
I take the ring.
I put it in my pocket.
His eyes do something small.
I'm just keeping it.
He nods, slow.
Not putting it back on.
I know.
He laughs once, looking down. His eyes are wet.
Just keeping is fine.
In March, Cole passes the medical clearance.
He doesn't go back to the team.
Penn State has been deferring his early decision since November; he writes them an email and asks for a year.
He starts coaching at the Saturday-morning youth flag-football clinic the rec center runs for kids who can't pay for camps.
People say he has lost his mind.
He hears it. He says, I had lost my mind before.
The day I bring my mom home from Eastpoint, he is on the rec-center steps tying a small kid's shoelaces.
The kid is asking him a question.
Coach. Were you really good before?
Cole thinks about it.
Before, I just won games. That's not very good.
What about now?
He looks up. He sees me. His hands stop on the kid's laces.
A small smile.
Now I'm learning.
My mother's MS has been steady since the new infusion. She is on her own legs, slow, but on them. The Subaru is at the curb.
She sees Cole.
She pats my hand.
That boy has been waiting on you a long while, Wrennie.
I know.
Cole walks down the steps. He stops a polite distance from us.
Mrs. Halloran.
My mother nods at him. Then she looks at me.
Wrennie. Don't let the past pick for you. Don't let other people pick for you, either.
She lets go of my arm.
She gets herself into the back seat of the Subaru.
Cole stands in front of me with his hands at his sides like a kid waiting for a verdict.
I take the ring out of my coat pocket.
His breath catches.
I don't put it on.
I put it in his palm.
I close his fingers over it.
Cole. The two years before this — I'm giving them back to you.
His knuckles whiten. The light in his eyes goes a step down.
If you want to start something now, you don't get to use the old part as collateral.
He looks up.
I look at him.
Starting today. You're Cole Whitfield. I'm Wren Halloran. You want to come at me, I'm watching how you do it.
He stands very still. Like he hasn't parsed it.
Then he laughs.
Not the lazy gym smile. Not the broken hospital one.
It's the one I remember from the alley. The boy who put himself between me and a crowbar in the rain and said Don't be scared.
He folds the ring into his fist like he is folding up a verdict.
Wren.
Yeah.
Can I drive you and your mom home today.
I glance into the back seat. My mother is pretending to look at her own knuckles.
Sure.
He starts to breathe out.
I add: You're in the passenger seat.
He freezes.
I open the driver's door of the Subaru.
The passenger seat used to be mine.
I look at him. The smile finally comes.
Now I drive.