Read Online The Long Wait for Tomorrow by Joaquin Dorfman - Free Book Online Page B

cooing friends and family.
    Empty green replaced with folding chairs, caps and gowns.
    “Strange thing about the jocks.” Jenna put her elbows onher knees, rested her chin on waiting hands. “They never eat lunch here. On the bleachers. This is their home, and yet the only people you see here are the mathematicians, chess club, bookworms. I wonder if it was them that noticed the lack of jocks, or the jocks that noticed this wasn’t the place to be, come lunchtime.”
    “I don’t know.” Patrick pocketed his hands. “Never thought about it.”
    “Not that anyone comes out here that much anymore.” Jenna wiped some sweat off her neck and sighed. “Too damn hot. Whole reason they moved the season was ’cause it was too damn hot in the fall, now it’s too damn hot in the spring.”
    “I know.”
    “So what makes you think Kelly’s going to find us here?”
    “He’s looking for you.”
    “Kelly takes his lunch with the football team.”
    “Usually, yeah.”
    “But today …?”
    Patrick wiped his palms on his jeans. “You’re right. Nobody comes out here to eat anymore. I just wanted to get to you before he did.”
    Jenna let out a disbelieving chuff. “It’s not like he’s going around killing people.”
    “Less shocking, but no less strange.”
    “Probably nothing …” Jenna stood up. Bent down, scratched behind her left knee. “I remember once I spent an entire day positive I’d never heard the word
cat
before. I knew I had, of course. Didn’t seem to do any good, though, all that knowing.”
    “This is more than that,” Patrick said. “Or weren’t you listening?”
    “I was,” Jenna assured him. “I guess I’m just having trouble imagining it.”
    “Imagining Kelly McDermott?”
    “The
new
Kelly McDermott.” Jenna smiled at Patrick. “What do you suppose that even means?”
    Patrick never knew what to say to that smile. He only knew what he wanted to say, and that dog wouldn’t hunt.
    Instead, Patrick gazed across the football field. “I don’t know.”
    Jenna joined him, pulled her hair back. “In a few more weeks, this place is going to be our last high school memory. They’ll call us up one by one. Hand us our diploma. Bunch of us will probably send our caps flying in the air. Guess we’ll all be
new
then, won’t we? The new Patrick Saint?”
    Patrick nodded. “The new Jenna Garamen.”
    “The new Kelly McDermott, perhaps?”
    Patrick looked down at his sneakers. “As far as everyone else thinks, he’s just acting strange. I wanted to talk to you, here in private, because I thought you should know it’s more than that.”
    “Thank you.” Jenna reached out, gave Patrick’s shoulder a squeeze. “Thanks for telling me.”
    “It’s OK.” Patrick fumbled, reached down to pick up his case. “It’s no problem.”
    “It is hot out here, though.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Come on.” Jenna hopped down to a lower tier. Lookedup and extended her hand. “Let’s go find the New Kelly McDermott.”
    Patrick took her hand, sweaty palms locking together.
    He stepped down, felt her hand withdraw, said goodbye with his fingertips.
    “Yuk,” Jenna said, smiling.
    She wiped her hand on the back of her skirt and skipped on down to the bottom.
    Patrick tried to echo Jenna’s sentiments, and cautiously followed her lead.
    It was something he didn’t like to think about.
    Kelly and Jenna were together now. They had been for four years, and that was all that mattered. How it happened, the painful origins of an inevitable love affair, Patrick had safely tucked those memories away. Certain he wouldn’t be opening that hope chest anytime again.
    But then again, Patrick had never counted on the New Kelly McDermott.
    Jenna and Patrick had been walking across the parking lot when history folded back on itself. Patrick heard Jenna’s name, straight from Kelly’s lips. He turned, a sluggish one-eighty, straight out of a bad dream. Dread sinking in, even at the ninety-degree mark, when he