Chapter 4 - August 21 - 25, 1979

It wasn't really a two person job, but they made it into one. Sandy stood on top of a short ladder, restocking cans of diced tomatoes, while Di stood below on the ground, handing her the cans from the box.

"So have you been back to the U lately?" Sandy asked.

Di shrugged. "The last time I was there some guy's girlfriend chewed me out and told me that everyone knew what I was up to, so I'm staying away for a little while." She grinned up at Sandy. "I guess it's hard to make your own spontaneous meeting with a gorgeous future surgeon."

Sandy laughed. "You decided that he's going to be a surgeon?"

"Maybe." Di handed Sandy another can and leaned against the shelves behind her. "Somebody who saves lives with his bare hands is probably really gentle in bed, right? Careful!" She reached out and steadied the ladder as Sandy burst out laughing.

"You'll have to test that out and let me know," Sandy told her.

Di laughed and started to answer, but suddenly craned her neck and peered around the aisle, a grin spreading across her face. "Three good-looking guys just came in," she told Sandy, who was looking down at her inquisitively. "Take a look."

Sandy peered over the top of the shelf and immediately ducked back down. The super-athlete from the track a few days prior was standing there, watching the two guys he had come in with as they argued about something. She teetered and nearly tipped the ladder again, but Di held it still. "I've seen one of them before," Sandy whispered. "He was there when I was running at the middle school the other night."

Di folded her arms and rolled her eyes. "Apparently I have to start getting in shape." She squished Sandy against the shelves in her haste to join her on top of the ladder and poked her head above the rows of canned soup. Sandy chanced another peek, too. "Which one is it?"

"The one in the green shirt." It was definitely the nameless runner, looking tired and trying to hurry his friends into the store. The two other guys, one with long-ish blond hair and the other much taller with thick rimmed glasses, were still talking heatedly with each other as the runner shepherded them away from the door. Then he looked up and his eyes fell directly on Sandy and Di. Sandy gasped and quickly ducked, Di following suit a second later, but he had obviously seen them.

He came around the corner and into the aisle, followed by his friends. "Hey, I thought that was you," he said, pointing up at Sandy.

"Yeah," Sandy said, feeling like an idiot.

He came to a stop in front of the ladder. "Do you work here?"

Sandy nodded. "Yeah," she said again, reaching down and holding up a can of the tomatoes. Beside her, Di giggled quietly. Sandy elbowed her and nearly knocked her off the ladder.

The guy smiled. "Kinda funny to run into you again. What's your name? I never got a chance to ask the other night"

"Oh," Sandy said. "I'm Sandy."

"Sandy. Good," he said. He reached up and held out a hand for her to shake. "I'm John."

One of the other guys piped up suddenly as they shook hands. "His name is actually Bah," he said. "John is just the name he uses when he's trying to be sophisticated for the ladies."

John or Bah whipped around. "Hey, why don't you go get our groceries, huh? I thought we had a lot of stuff to pick up."

Di scrambled down the ladder. "I'll come help you!" She ushered the two guys out of the aisle, leaving Sandy and John/Bah alone.

Once they had gone, the two of them stood in awkward silence. "They didn't actually have to leave," he said.

Sandy came down off the ladder. "Sorry. What was your actual name?"

He shrugged. "Both, technically. Nobody who really knows me ever calls me John, but I've just found that it's odd to introduce yourself as Bah to strangers. You can call me whichever you want."

"Bah," Sandy said, nodding. "I like it. Like a sheep?"

Bah laughed. "Like a two-year old trying to pronounce the word 'baby,'" he said. "I wasn't doing anything interesting enough when they gave it to me to generate a better nickname. You know, I was worried that I wouldn't see you again at the track and I wouldn't get your name."

"Why?"

"Because when you meet a cute, athletic girl, you try to get her name sometimes. Right?" He grinned at Sandy as she ducked her head slightly, trying to hide her suddenly red cheeks. "I guess it's good that Strobel and O'Cee needed me to drive them here so I could run into you again, huh?"

Sandy nodded. "I guess so." And then, because she could almost hear Di's voice in the back of her head hollering at her to find out more information about this guy, she asked, "so do you go to the U?"

He shook his head. "No, I finished college last year. I actually moved here to play hockey."

"Oh. For the... North Stars?" Sandy took a second to remember the name of the NHL team and impressed herself by being able to recall it.

"Nope. I'm actually on the team that's going to the Olympics in February. Our coach is from the area and so we all moved here."

"Oh... Wow!" Sandy said. "That's really impressive. So you're—I mean, you're some kind of... you're a superstar?"

Bah laughed. "I'm okay with letting you think that if you want. Do you like hockey?"

Sandy shook her head and regretted it a second later. This was clearly a guy who took his hockey seriously. She didn't want to offend him by saying she didn't like it. "I mean, it's fine. I didn't grow up here so I'm not as into it as some people might be. It's not my favourite or anything. I don't not like it—"

"It's okay if you don't," Bah said, cutting her off. "It's not for everyone, I get it. Where are you from?"

"Washington. Everett. I moved in with my brother this summer."

"Oh, so you're at the U?"

"No," Sandy said. "I'm..." She sighed and gestured around herself, struck with how underwhelming her life in Minnesota was. "I'm working here until I figure it out."

He nodded. "Nice. And the track? It clearly wasn't your first time out there."

Sandy could hear, faintly, the sound of Di and the other two guys laughing in some distant corner of the store. She smiled at Bah. "It wasn't. I was on the track team in my high school, but I'm out of practice now. Were you, too, or are you just...?"

"Generally very athletic, yeah," Bah said, grinning. "You didn't want to take it further than high school?"

Sandy shrugged. "I wasn't good enough at it. It was just fun." She raised her eyebrows at him. "Do you ever just do things for fun?"

"Oh, come on," he said. "I saw you sprinting your ass off trying to catch up with me. You weren't having fun."

Sandy started to respond, but the two other guys came around the corner pushing a cart, followed closely by Di, her hair sticking out about a half a foot on either side from her messing it up. "We got everything we needed," the one with the black-rimmed glasses said. "How 'bout you, Bah, you get a number?"

Bah cast his friend a look. "Not quite. We were talking about running."

"Well, that's boring," the guy said. "Right?" He nudged Di with his elbow, and she giggled. "I invited Di here to our little get together this weekend before we go to Europe."

"You're going to Europe?" Sandy asked, and Bah nodded.

"We've all been practicing together for about a month and at the beginning of September we're going over there to play a bunch of teams."

"They're hockey players!" Di piped up, her voice oddly high pitched.

"Yep," said the blond guy. "We are."

"I told her," Bah said. "That's a good idea, though, O'Cee." He turned to Sandy. "Do you want to come? We're leaving on the 31st, so it'll be this Saturday."

"It's invite only," the guy named O'Cee said. "We wanna keep it quiet so we don't get a hundred and fifty people showing up at our place." He grinned over at Di. "Don't take that to mean you're not allowed to bring any little friends you might have hiding around in here."

At that moment, Sandy remembered something Di had told her the day they had met, a story about how her sister had met hockey players at a bar. It hadn't been these hockey players, but she wondered if they were the same type of guys. She didn't have much time to think about this, because Bah and his friends were starting to leave.

"Oh—can I get your number?" Bah asked the question like it was an off-the-cuff, throwaway request, and his two teammates laughed behind him from the end of the aisle. "What? She's going to need directions to our place and... and everything," he said, gesturing around with his hands. "Whatever. Do you have a pen?"

There was a pen and clipboard on the ladder for marking off inventory information, but no spare paper. "Here—" Di said. She tore off one of the flaps off the box of tomatoes and handed it to him. "Write yours on half and she'll write hers on the other."

"We're never going to be able to close that box anymore," Sandy told her friend as Bah scribbled on the chunk of cardboard.

"You're not letting him leave without getting his phone number, Sandy," Di hissed.

When the phone numbers had been exchanged, O'Cee clapped his hands together. "What a productive day," he said. "Can I assume we'll see you ladies soon?"

"Yes!" Di said, her eyes gleaming like she was fifteen years old and addressing Shaun Cassidy.

The boys left, and Di waited until they were out of the store to let out a squeal of joy. "This is so great!" She grabbed Sandy's hands and pumped them up and down in a little dance. "We're going to a party with some Olympic athletes and you're going to marry that guy!"

"Oh, wow," Sandy said. "Did I miss the part where he asked me to marry him?"

Di rolled her eyes. "He remembered you from the track. That's significant, Sandy. He was the one to ask for your number. These are all good signs. I'm so excited for you!" She waved Sandy's arms around some more, and Sandy laughed, caught up in her friend's enthusiasm.

When Sandy opened the door for Di on the night of the party, she could see that her friend was in something of a state. "Aren't you excited?" she squeaked, bouncing from one foot to the other as Sandy wriggled her feet into her shoes.

"It's a party," Sandy said. "We've been to parties before."

Di shook her head so hard her hair whipped around. "This isn't a high school booze and young boys thing, Sandy. These are men. It's different."

Sandy wanted to ask how, exactly, Di knew this, but decided against it. The two girls left the house and started walking in the direction of the address Bah had given her on the phone the day before. "It's so convenient that Bah lives just nearby. I think it's meant to be," Di said.

"Do you?" Sandy laughed a little. "He doesn't live here all the time, you know. They'll leave when the Olympics are over."

"That's what I mean! Of all the apartment complexes in all the neighborhoods in the whole Twin Cities area, and this is the one that has enough space in it for all these boys?" Di let out a dreamy sigh. "It's like a movie or something. It is!" she said, seeing Sandy shaking her head. "You'll see. You'll have a lot of fun tonight and you'll stop being such a downer because you'll see that you're living in a movie."

"What about you? Maybe it's you living in a movie. Didn't you like the guys who were in the store?"

Di screwed up one side of her mouth and hummed. "They were both very cute and very nice, but I don't know if they liked me. Besides, I don't want to be with an athlete."

"But these ones are obviously good enough to play in the Olympics," Sandy said. "I thought you said the problem was that you couldn't tell if they were good enough to do anything."

"That's right, but you always have to be careful around hockey players. You didn't grow up here so you don't really know how it goes."

Sandy stared at her. "How does it go?"

Di made a non-committal sound. "You'll probably see it tonight. I think it's the case for any group of people who are good at anything, but since we have a lot of hockey players and people who like hockey here, it seems like it's a bigger deal in Minnesota. Probably in Boston, too, but don't quote me on that. They're just... very aware of how much people like them. And they use it to their advantage."

"They use it to their advantage? In what? Street fights?"

"I'm serious! I know a lot of girls who were treated badly by hockey players because they felt like they were entitled to it. You'll see."

Sandy couldn't help but laugh. "I thought I was going to marry Bah. Now it sounds like you hate everybody who plays the sport he plays. I'm getting very mixed signals from you."

Di shook her head and raised a finger at Sandy dramatically. "You. Will. See. Just be careful."

Given this fairly ominous warning, Sandy expected to round the corner on the block where the apartment complex was and see a traffic jam and a lineup down the street of people waiting to get in and hold court with the hockey team. The reality was a nearly deserted street and Sandy's slow-dawning realization that she didn't know which apartment the party was in. Bah hadn't mentioned it. She stopped walking, considering this, and Di turned to look at her. "What's going on?"

"I don't really know where we're supposed to go when we get inside. He never told me an apartment number or anything."

Di, ever resourceful and apparently forgetting her suspicions surrounding hockey players, spotted a guy getting out of a car and carrying three pizza boxes across the street. "Hey!" she shouted, startling him. Di took off running, and Sandy reluctantly followed.

"Yeah?" He was very tall, but he looked a little younger than Bah or the guys who had been in the store with him.

"Are you on the hockey team?" Di asked. The guy nodded, looking confused. "Oh, great. I'm Di, and this is Sandy. What's your name?"

"Mike," he said.

"Great," Di said again. "Look, Mike, we're friends of Bah's, and he invited us tonight but he didn't tell us where everyone was meeting up. Do you think you could take us in?"

Mike surveyed them, looking suspicious, even doubtful, but he eventually seemed resigned to the fact that Di would probably follow him inside if he didn't willingly take them. "Sure," he said at last. "I left my beer in the back of my car—can one of you just grab it so I don't have to take another trip?"

"Of course," Di said. "Sandy, quick—go get it."

Precariously juggling the pizza boxes, he handed Sandy his car keys. When she returned a moment later with a case of beer, he and Di were chatting. "... and isn't it just too much of a coincidence that he came into the exact store where she works on a day when she has a shift?"

Mike smirked at Sandy over the top of Di's head. "Yeah, that's wild."

Sandy bumped into Di's back with the case of beer. "Stop."

"I was just getting a character reference," Di said, dancing away from her. "Anyway, friends, shall we?" She walked in between them as they approached the building, nearly vibrating with excitement.

Mike pressed a button on the intercom near the door and they waited in silence. Sandy noticed that there were no names listed on quite a few of the apartments on the directory and wondered if those were where all the hockey players lived. Finally, there was a crackle and they heard someone say, "yeah?"

"It's Rammer," Mike said. "I brought your damn pizza and I also have Bah's..." he gave them another once-over before finishing, "friends, I guess."

Di craned her neck so her face was in front of the intercom. "It's Di and Sandy," she nearly shouted.

"Yeah, man. Di and Sandy are also here," Mike said. "Do you wanna buzz us up, or...?"

"You bet," the guy on the other end said. "Come on up." His sentence was punctuated by a loud buzz and the sound of the door unlocking. Mike reached around them and, hefting the boxes over to one of his arms, held the door open.

Sandy and Di followed Mike up a flight of stairs and down a hallway where they were able to hear the distant sounds of music playing. He knocked on an apartment door and, a moment later, the door was flung open, revealing someone who was presumably another hockey player. "Hey, Rammer. What did you bring?" The guy grinned at the girls.

"The usual, pizza and some girls," Mike told him. "Can you let us come in? She's been carrying that case this whole time." He gestured with his head at Sandy, who was trying to hide the fact that she was balancing the case of beer on her knee to give her fingers a rest.

The guy moved aside for them to come in. "Here, darlin', can I take that from you?" He helpfully took the beer from Sandy as she passed him.

"Thanks," Sandy said. She looked around, noticing that there weren't as many people there as Bah and his friends had made it sound like there would be. She turned to Di to mention this to her. In the few seconds it had taken Sandy to look around the room, Di had opened one of Mike's beer and was talking to the guy who had let them in. She looked busy. Sandy craned her neck, trying to see Bah, and noticed him sitting on a couch with a couple of other people. He glanced her way, noticed her standing there, and sprang to his feet.

"Sandy—hi!" he said, making his way across the apartment. "I wasn't sure you were gonna come. Were you able to find the place okay?"

Sandy nodded and gestured at Mike. "We had to get him to show us where everybody was, but other than that it was fine. How are you?"

He grinned. "I'm great. Here—come sit," he said, leading her back to the couch where he'd been sitting before. Sandy glanced over her shoulder at Di, who was, at that moment, throwing her head back and laughing at something the guy had just said. Bah waved his hands to make a guy sitting in the middle of the couch scoot down and sat. "I'll introduce you to everybody," he said, patting the cushion beside him.

The small living room was equipped with a couch and two armchairs gathered around a television, although no one really looked like they were paying attention to the baseball game that was playing. There were three more guys and one other girl sitting there who had all turned to Bah and were waiting to be introduced. "Everybody, this is Sandy," he said, gesturing at Sandy, who waved. "Sandy, this is Phil Verchota," he said, pointing at the guy sitting on his other side on the couch, "Buzz Schneider and his wife Gayle, Bill Baker, and you remember O'Cee from the store, right?"

Sandy nodded. "Nice to meet all of you."

"So you're the girl from the track?" Phil Verchota asked. "We finally get to meet you after having to hear from Bah about how there's someone out there running circles around him."

Bah made a skeptical sound. "I'm pretty sure that's not what I told you."

"Yeah, well, I'm not about to repeat the story you told the whole team about how you were able to beat a girl you'd never met in a foot race."

"I didn't really tell them that," Bah told Sandy, turning to look at her apologetically.

"Yeah, so how do we know that's what happened?" Jack piped up, and Bah, unable to form a response, threw one of the couch pillows at his teammate.

For a while, Sandy sat and listened to the boys talk, unable to contribute anything to a conversation that was mostly about hockey and their mysterious coach, Herb. After a while, Gayle Schneider stood and caught Sandy's eye. "Want a drink?" she mouthed. Sandy nodded gratefully and followed the other girl into the kitchen.

"Sorry about them," Gayle said, digging in the fridge. "Sometimes they get wrapped up in their own little world and forget that not everybody's life revolves around hockey." She poured a glass of Coke with a generous splash of rye and handed it to Sandy. "You'll get used to it after a while."

"Thanks," Sandy said, taking the glass and leaning against the counter. "I never really expected to feel like an idiot listening to people talk about sports."

Gayle laughed and set to work pouring herself a drink. "There's a science to it, definitely. Me and Buzz have been together since high school so I'm used to it by now, but there are still times when I just want to scream at them to talk about movies or TV or politics or anything else."

"Since high school? So that's... how many years?"

"Seven," Gayle said. She shook her head. "Man, we're getting old, huh?"

Sandy laughed. "That's great, though. And has he been serious about hockey for that whole time?"

"He has," Gayle said. "We've been moving all over the place for the different teams he's been on since the last Olympics." She held up a hand and started counting them off: "Springfield, Birmingham, Oklahoma City—we didn't stay there long enough to even find a place to rent, then Hampton for the rest of that year, and then we were in Milwaukee for a couple of years, and now we're here. We're a travelling band, Buzzy and I."

"Wow," Sandy said. "And you don't mind moving around that much?"

Gayle thought about it for a moment. "Well, not really. I mean, we get to see all different parts of the country. All over the world, really. Buzzy says we've gotten to meet just about everybody in hockey over the past couple of years, and sometimes I feel like that's not a joke. Anyway, I can find work just about anywhere, so it's not an issue for me. But there's apparently only a few places that want Buzz to come play hockey, so it's down to him most of the time." She shrugged. "We make it work."

The idea of that seemed unfair to Sandy. She wasn't sure she'd be happy with having that little choice, and, failing to find a way to express this without sounding judgmental, Sandy said nothing, deciding instead to look around the room for Di. She found her chatting animatedly to two guys near the window. Di winked and grinned at Sandy, and then jerked her head in the direction of Bah, who was still sitting on the couch and talking with his friends.

Having noticed her looking over at Bah, Gayle slid along the kitchen counter and nudged Sandy with her shoulder. "So what's the story with you and Bah?"

"It's—" Sandy was suddenly struck by how little there was, in terms of substance, to "the story with her and Bah." She shook her head. "We really only talked the once, when he came into the store where I work. Now that I think about it, it's kind of amazing that he invited us at all. My friend and I," she said, pointing over at Di when Gayle looked confused. "She came with me, but she's mingling."

"Smart girl," Gayle grinned. "I hope you don't think I'm nosy or anything for asking. Buzz was telling me last night how he was surprised that Bah all the sudden was talking about how he invited a 'nice girl' to the party." She lowered her voice as she spoke to mimic the boys', and they both laughed. "He doesn't usually have much to do with girls during hockey season, so it was just interesting to us. He's not, you know, boring or anything like that," she added, catching something in Sandy's expression that she hadn't been projecting. "He's just really dedicated."

Sandy took a sip of her drink, considering this. "Have you known Bah for a long time?"

Gayle shook her head and shrugged. "We're a little older than him, but we all grew up in the same area, on the Range. Kind of in the north part of the state," she clarified. "So they've—Buzzy and Bah and the other guy from the area, Pav—been playing against each other for basically their whole lives." She shrugged again. "I wouldn't say I know him well, but I've known of him since high school. It's kind of the way it goes in small towns like where we're from. You're not from Minnesota, right?"

Sandy shook her head. "Washington—Everett."

"I figured," Gayle said, and a second later she giggled and said, "sorry, that sounded snotty. Anyway, long story short, we've known him for a while."

"Is he a good guy?" Sandy hadn't meant to ask the question so bluntly, but she felt like the conversation was headed in that direction anyway.

"He's a great guy." Gayle nodded in agreement with herself. "I always wondered why he never has a girlfriend, because, I mean," she gestured over at Bah, "he's a good-looking guy, right?"

Sandy nodded. "I think so."

"Right. And he's not a total bore to talk to like some hockey players can be. Buzz says he's smart. So we never understood why he was always single. When you figure out what his problem is, you should really let us know."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sandy said, laughing. "So in all the time you guys have known him, he's never had a girlfriend?"

Gayle shook her head. "I guess I exaggerated. Keep in mind that we're not keeping tabs on Bah all the time, but I've only ever seen him with..." She took a sip of her drink, thinking about it. "Two girls? Two girls—two separate times, I mean—who I was sure were his girlfriends. There could have been more, and maybe Buzz knows more about this than I do. Should I ask him?"

Sandy shook her head, mortified. "No, don't ask him anything. He'd tell Bah."

"He wouldn't if I told him not to," Gayle said. "He knows better than that by now." She grinned over at Sandy. "I'll keep an ear out for anything about you that comes up and let you know."

"Thanks," Sandy said, not sure if she even wanted this service.

Across the room, Bah seemed to notice how long Sandy had been gone. He looked around, spotted where she and Gayle were, and came over. "What are we gossiping about?" he asked, reaching around Gayle to grab another beer.

"We were just talking about you," Gayle told him.

Bah raised his eyebrows. "Is that so? Hopefully nothing too bad."

Gayle mimed zipping her lips closed, waved, and walked away to rejoin Buzz and the rest of the people around the television.

"Well, okay," Bah said. He turned back to Sandy and leaned next to her against the counter. "How about you? Feel like talking?"

"She said some really awful things about you," Sandy said.

He rested his head against the cupboards behind them and let out an exaggerated sigh. "You're killing me, Gayle Schneider," he said loudly. The people by the television giggled like little children. Bah grinned over at her. "Are you having a good time tonight?"

Sandy nodded. "It's nice that you can all hang out like this. Does everybody on the team live here in this building?"

Bah sipped his beer. "Nah. There's a few guys from around the city who are just living in their own places, and a couple of other guys kind of spread out around. And then Jimmy lives in the team doctor's basement."

"Who's Jimmy?"

"He's one of our goalies," Bah said. "It's so he doesn't have to pay a bunch of rent since we're not really making a lot of money, but we don't see much of him." He gestured around the room as if to indicate that Jimmy was not there, but, having never seen him before in her life, Sandy could not confirm this. She wondered if Bah was a little drunk. "Anyway, some of us figured it would be a good idea to try and find a place where we could all stay together."

On the other side of the room, Sandy saw Di, her court narrowed down to just one guy now, deep in conversation. Bah followed her eyes.

"Somebody's having a good time," he said.

Hearing the inflection in his voice, Sandy looked over at him. "So am I," she said.

He elbowed her gently. "I'm just bugging you. I know it's hard to come somewhere where you don't know anybody and just gel. It did look like you were getting along with Gayle, though."

"She's nice." Sandy swirled the remaining liquid around in her cup and downed it. "I asked her about you, you know."

He was leaning very close suddenly, his eyes locked on hers, and Sandy knew that Bah wanted her to kiss him. The idea of it seemed ludicrous. They'd just met, officially, earlier that week. "Yeah?" Bah said, grinning. "What'd you want to know? You know you can just ask, right?"

Sandy smiled, hovering on the edge of enjoying this flirtation. "It's just girl talk. Nothing you need to concern yourself with."

Bah leaned back a little bit to take a drink of his beer and laughed. "Whatever you say, kiddo."

It was an innocuous and playful term of endearment, but unfortunately for Bah, it had been Ray's favourite one for Sandy. It had been the last word she'd heard him say before she left him standing on his front lawn in Everett just a month before. Sandy felt her skin react to hearing it, and then felt a few other things. She was suddenly ashamed to be there, moments away from kissing this stranger who had done nothing but be good-looking and better than her at running. This lead into feeling guilty. The final thing Sandy felt was annoyance. She had every right to go out and kiss every good-looking runner in the country. In the world. She no longer had a boyfriend. She could do whatever the hell she wanted.

This cavalcade of emotions must have been playing out on Sandy's face, because Bah straightened up and gave her a concerned look. "Whoa, what happened just now?"

Sandy set her empty glass down on the counter. When Bah made a move to refill it, she shook her head. "I just—you know, I'm sorry, I just started feeling really sick."

"Oh," Bah said. He reached again for her glass, this time turning the tap on to fill it with water. "Here, drink some water. Maybe you just drank that one too fast. Did Gayle pour too much into it?"

She shook her head again. "No, I think I'd better just go get some air. Actually, I think I should just go home."

He looked alarmed at how quickly things had changed. "Are you sure? Do you maybe just want to go stand outside for a bit? I can come with you—"

"No, no. It's okay. Really, I'll be fine. Look, I'll call you, okay? I have your number." She was backing away from him, prickling with embarrassment as he watched her, wide eyed and holding the glass of water in one hand and a beer in the other.

Sandy had nearly reached the door before she remembered Di. She turned, and, finding her friend still standing near the window, she went over to her. Di beamed at Sandy, but her smile faltered when she saw the look on Sandy's face. "What happened?"

"I gotta get out of here," Sandy said, hearing how dramatic that sounded but not caring.

Di gave the guy she had been talking to a passing glance and nodded, barely missing a beat. "Let's go," she said.

Once they were outside, Di let Sandy walk about a block away from the apartment complex before grabbing her by the elbow and making her sit down on the curb. Sandy rested her forehead on her knee and took in a shuddering breath of cool night air. Di drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. They were silent for about a minute, listening to the sounds of the night around them. Then, Di said, "do you want to talk about it?"

Sandy raised her head and felt, to her surprise, tracks of tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them away, annoyed to be crying. "You didn't have to leave with me, you know. It looked like you were having a good time."

Di batted the idea away with a wave of her hand. "Don't be ridiculous. What kind of friend would I be if I stayed? I came with you. I just left you alone because I figured you'd want to talk to Bah. Did he—did he say or do something?"

"Oh." Having been feeling a rush of happiness at hearing Di refer to herself as her friend, Sandy was suddenly brought back to reality by this question. She hadn't considered how it must have looked for her to leave the party the way she did. "Oh, shit. No, he didn't do anything. He was just being nice. It was all my fault. I was—" she paused, considering how to explain this to Di and realizing that she'd have to tell her the whole story. "Do you want to know why I moved here?"

She told Di everything, from the summer she graduated from high school to what had happened while she was talking to Bah. It was an oddly cathartic feeling, hearing herself tell this long story to someone who had no involvement in it. She talked about things that only her family and Ray knew. When she finished speaking, Di let out a low whistle. "Oh my God, Sandy. I knew there had to be something more to your coming here than just wanting to live somewhere else, but I didn't think—wow. I'm sorry all of that happened to you."

Sandy shrugged. "It's in the past." She could barely finish the sentence. Based on the fact that she almost left a Looney Tunes-style, Sandy-shaped hole in the wall of Bah's apartment complex, it stood to reason that her life in Everett was decidedly not in the past. She sighed. "Well, maybe that's not entirely true."

"Do you think?" Di giggled, and then her face became serious. "You know, it's okay to not be ready to move on. You're allowed to take all the time you want. Nobody would judge you for that."

"I know." Sandy rubbed her cheeks. "I know. There's just a big part of me that wants to be done with all of it, and I think it's just because I'm worried that the longer I'm hung up on all of this, the more likely it'll be that I go back or decide that this wasn't the right thing to do." She unfolded her legs, laying them out on the road. "Your early twenties aren't supposed to be this hard."

"Well, they're not for most of us," Di said. "I don't know what it's worth, but I think that as long as you feel like you made the right decision, you're exactly where you need to be. If that ever changes, then you should reconsider. Until then," she shrugged, "I think you should just have fun with me and take your time trying to get past what happened back there." She put her arm around Sandy's shoulders. "I'm glad you're here."

Sandy rested her cheek against Di's arm. "Me too."

Later, when she came back inside the house from seeing Di off, Sandy heard the phone ringing. Will and Jenny were still out, and, thinking that whoever it was must be calling for them, she let it ring. It rang again five minutes later while Sandy was in the shower, and then again when she was drying her hair.

Wondering if it was Will or Jenny and suddenly worried if something had happened to them, Sandy ran to answer it.

It was Bah. "I just wanted to see if you got home okay," he said.

"Oh." Sandy fiddled with the towel she had used to wrap her hair. "Yeah, we made it back. Was that you calling all those times?"

"Yeah. I was worried about you—you just left all of the sudden."

Sandy sat down on the floor with the phone. "Right. I'm sorry about tonight, Bah. I was pretty rude."

"No, no. If you weren't feeling good, you weren't feeling good. That's not your fault."

She had a feeling that Bah didn't buy her story. "Right," she said again. "Look, about that—"

"You don't have to explain yourself," he said, cutting her off. She heard the sound of a beer fizzing near the phone receiver. "I should apologize for coming on as strong as I did. That's not usually the way I am. I hope I didn't scare you off."

Sandy sighed. She wondered for a moment if she should just explain everything to Bah, but decided against it. They had just met, after all. Comparatively, he had nothing to worry about in terms of scaring her off. "No, you didn't. It's not that. You just—you said something that reminded me of somebody and I just wasn't expecting it."

"Hmm," Bah hummed. "Was this somebody, by any chance, male?"

"Yeah." Sandy rested her head against the wall and laughed. "You got me."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Sandy considered it for a moment. She had, after all, already told Di everything that night. Telling him the whole story might help make sense of the way that Sandy had acted. In the end, she thought better of it. As nice as Bah was, she barely knew him. "It's all right. It's just something that I'm working through."

"Okay," Bah said. There were a few moments of silence before he spoke again. "Well, anyway, I hope you feel better. That sudden nausea caused by nothing can be a real problem."

Sandy laughed. "It's a nightmare."

She heard, again, the sounds of Bah sipping a beer. "You know, after you left I had a hell of a time convincing Gayle that I didn't say anything disgusting to you to make you take off like you did. She thinks I'm a real pervert now."

They laughed together at this, and Sandy noted somewhere in the back of her mind that she liked the way it sounded. "She probably thinks that's the reason why you're single now. She told me tonight that she and Buzz couldn't figure it out."

Bah scoffed. "Well, I'm glad somebody's worried. Did she really say that?"

"Mm-hmm," Sandy said. "Don't tell her I said anything. I think that might have been told to me in confidence."

"I can't promise you that," he said. "I specifically told her to only say nice things about me, and this is a real betrayal. Did she say anything good at all?"

"Well," Sandy said, "she said you're a good guy and that you're too preoccupied to care about girls during hockey season, that's all."

"That guy sounds like a real asshole. You know, I've got plenty of time for girls. Maybe too much time."

The car pulled into the driveway, flooding the dark living room with light. "Good to know," Sandy said. "Look, I gotta go. My brother and sister-in-law are home."

"All right," Bah said. "I'll talk to you soon, hopefully. You know where I live now, so feel free to drop by anytime—I'm in 314 over here. Just come and ring the buzzer if you feel like talking."

Sandy used the wall to push herself into a standing position. "I might take you up on that."

They hung up as Will and Jenny came in through the side door, Jenny carrying a large bag of popcorn. "Oh," Will said. "I thought you were going out with your friend tonight."

"I did," Sandy told him. "I'm already home for the night."

"Why are you hanging out by the phone?" Jenny asked, offering Sandy some of her popcorn. "Who were you talking to? Was it a boy?"

Sandy threw a piece of popcorn at her, and Jenny ducked and caught it in her mouth.