Love Match (12 page)

When the salads were cleared, new plates came out and the fun really began. Waiters carried out more platters with a variety of dishes. They didn't even bother to ask if anyone
wanted the food first. They started putting things on the plates until someone stopped them.

Maya didn't want to say no to any of it, which was good because they moved much faster than she did. Renee was the only one who could still see her plate by the time the first wave of waitstaff had passed their table.

Maya caught Diego eyeing Renee's small portions. He was probably spending more on this dinner than any other meal he'd had in his life. Maya wanted to pull Diego aside and explain that Renee simply didn't eat a lot, but there was really no way to do that without making it into something it wasn't.

Renee probably didn't have a full-blown eating disorder, but she did have some messed-up views about food and her body. Of course, if Maya spent all her time in a sport that required her to wear a tight bathing suit in front of hundreds of people, she might have the same issues.

“Isn't this better than that stuffy place we went to the other night?” Diego asked Renee.

She smiled brightly, turning on the charm. “So much better!” Renee punctuated her statement with a small bite of chicken. Diego smiled back at her, but it faltered just a bit when he looked down at her plate again.

“It couldn't have been any stuffier than the place Travis took me to on our first date,” Maya said, hoping to direct Diego's attention away from the food.

“It wasn't that bad,” Travis said.

Maya just looked at him.

“Okay, it was awful,” he agreed. “I was trying too hard.”

“Just a bit,” Maya said. “He took me to a private drive-in
theater with a movie projected up against a wall and a flood of concession snacks falling out of the glove compartment.” Maya recalled the night a bit more fondly than she made it sound. It was actually one of the best dates ever. No one had ever tried that hard for her, misguided as some of it may have been.

“That was
after
the ritzy restaurant I brought her to where she couldn't identify a single thing on the menu,” Travis added.

“That's not true!” Maya said. “I recognized the garden salad.”

Three of the four people around the table laughed uproariously. Renee smiled, but it was clear she wasn't in on the joke.

“Sounds like that place we went to the other night,” Diego said lightly. “I didn't even know what to order.”

“I would have helped you,” Renee said shyly. The only other time Maya had seen her so soft-spoken was when she once walked in on a phone call between Renee and her parents.

“What are you talking about?” Diego said, laughing. “You didn't eat anything then either.”

Three people around the table now got very silent. Diego was the only one who was still smiling. Renee's largely untouched plate suddenly took up a lot of attention.

Slowly, a realization washed over Diego. “Is there something … Do you eat?”

“Of course I eat,” Renee said. “I just prefer smaller portions. It takes some work to maintain this girlish figure.”

“Where I'm from, girls come in all different figures,” Diego said. It was a light comment, but Renee clearly took it harder than he'd meant it.

“Some of us have to work to look good,” Renee said softly.

“Renee, you're beautiful,” Travis said. “Diego, tell her she's beautiful.”

“No.”

Now
everyone
at the table was silent.

Maya was the first to speak. “Excuse me?”

“She doesn't need me to tell her that,” Diego said. “She needs to believe it for herself.”

“So … you don't think I'm beautiful?” Renee asked.

“I didn't say that,” he replied. “I just don't think your beauty has anything to do with the amount of food on your plate.” He cut into his steak.

Maya looked to Travis and shrugged. There was something so final about Diego's last comment that she started eating as well. Travis soon followed and even Renee started picking at her food once again. She didn't come close to clearing her plate, but she did eat more than Maya recalled ever seeing her eat before. That was a start.

“Where to now?” Travis asked as the valet brought Renee's car around. Of the two people in the group with cars, hers was the only one with a backseat.

“It's your town,” Diego said. “You tell me.”

“I don't know. I'm kind of tired.” Renee grabbed Maya, pulling her over to the driver's side of the car, whispering, “All is good. I'm ready to go solo with Diego.”

“Gotcha,” Maya said. She got into the backseat with Travis. “I'm kind of tired, too. Would you all mind if we called it an early evening? I've got a tough practice in the morning.”

Maya used the one phrase every Academy student
immediately understood. It ended all discussion without the usual prodding to change her mind.

Renee put the top down on the convertible as they rode back to campus. The noise from the wind gave sufficient privacy to the two couples since their voices barely traveled to the person beside them.

Travis leaned toward Maya so he didn't have to yell. And maybe so he could just be closer. “This was nice,” Travis said. “I'm glad we're friends.”

Maya rested her hand on top of his on the seat. “I am, too.”

Renee dropped Maya off at the dorm with Travis, who had offered to be a gentleman and walk Maya inside. It made no sense whatsoever since Travis had left his car at Renee's villa and Diego lived in the dorm next door. And yet it made complete sense as Renee drove off with Diego.

Since it was after eight, Travis wouldn't be allowed past the lobby. It was clear from the way both of them dragged their feet that they didn't want the night to end. Travis was the first one to acknowledge it.

“You look like you got your second wind,” he said as they reached the door.

Maya nodded. There wasn't more to say since she'd been lying about being tired to give Renee some cover. “I'm much more awake than I was leaving the restaurant.”

“Great! I want to show you something. It's my favorite part of the campus.” Travis took her hand, pulling her around to the side of the dorm.

Maya couldn't imagine what Travis liked about this side of
the campus. The villas and the sports complexes were far better. The scholarship dorms weren't exactly slums, but they were the oldest and least interesting buildings on campus

“Right around here,” Travis said as they came to the well.

“Oh,” Maya crinkled her nose. Most students in the dorms hated the well because it looked so out of place. The battered old stone well sat under a large concrete archway in the middle of nowhere. Both the well and the archway were gray and crumbling, serving as a stark contrast to the modern Spanish-style villas on the other side of campus.

Travis must have caught her look of confusion. “You know the story about the well, don't you?”

“There's a story?”

“Oh, yeah,” Travis said. “Over a hundred years ago the land here was all wilderness. The woods ran up to the property of a railroad magnate, some rich guy who owned pretty much half the state. His daughter fell in love with one of the railroad workers.”

“Travis, if this ends with one or both of them dying tragically …”

“Just hear me out.” Travis sat her down on the edge of the well. “As you already guessed, her father was not happy with the pairing, so he transferred the worker to a whole other part of the country to keep him away from his daughter. And before you say anything,
no
, he didn't refuse to go. This was a different time. He couldn't afford to find other work. He had to do what his boss told him.”

“That part, I get,” she said.

“Before he left, the workman built this well and the
archway for the girl, as a symbol of his love. He told her to come here to think of him and it would be like they were together.

“At first, the girl couldn't bring herself to visit the well. It hurt too much. But after some time the pain of missing him was worse than the sadness of this reminder. So, she came out here. She sat where you are and sighed his name. A moment later, she was shocked to hear his voice saying hers back.

“The girl looked around, expecting her love to come out from the trees. But he wasn't there. She called out to him, telling him to show himself. This time when he answered, she realized his voice was coming from down in the well. He told her that he'd built an exact replica of the well and the archway where he lived and tied the two together through magic. That way, they could always be together even though they were hundreds of miles apart.”

Maya looked down into the well. “You're making that up.”

Travis smiled. “I can't take credit for the story. Part of the deal when Dad bought this place was that the well could never be demolished. No one knew why, so people have made up stories over the years to explain it. That one's my favorite.”

“So you brought me here to lie to me.”

Travis laughed. “No. I brought you here to show you this.”

He took her by the hand and moved her over to the archway. The stone arch was concave in the middle. Travis placed a hand gently on her cheek, turning her head so it rested beside the concave part in the center of the stone.

“Stay like that,” he said before jogging over to the other side of the well where the arch came down.

“What are you—?”

Travis put a finger up to his lips, shushing her. Then he pointed to the arch, signaling that she should get back into the position he'd left her in. She did as she was told, leaning her ear toward the cold concrete.

“Maya?” Travis's voice whispered from the stone. It sounded like he was leaning right up to her ear.

“Travis!” She looked back. He was all the way on the other side of the arch, a good twenty-five feet away.

“Shhh,” his voice whispered. “I can hear you.”

“That's incredible,” she whispered into the stone. “How did you find this place?”

“My mom showed it to us when we were kids,” he said. “Jake and I used to come here to tell each other our secrets. Back before …”

He didn't have to finish the sentence. She knew the rest of it:
back before they stopped being close
. Travis and Jake were still friendly, but they weren't close. And that had nothing to do with Maya.

“So, what secret did you bring me here to tell me?” she whispered.

“That I want to be more than friends.”

“Come to the football field.” Maya read the text aloud again. “Important.”

“It's so vague, yet exciting,” Cleo said as they walked down the palm tree–lined pathway.

“You're making fun of me, aren't you?” Maya asked.

“I'm making fun of teenage intrigue,” Cleo clarified. “I can't help it if you're the star of that intrigue.”

Maya had to laugh. Cleo was right. Things had been pretty intriguing lately.

Days had passed since Travis declared that he wanted more than friendship with Maya. Standing in that archway, she'd wanted to say yes right away, but she told him she wasn't ready to make that commitment. She needed time to think about it. Thankfully both their busy schedules soon got in the way of a follow-up conversation.

Maya's postponed schoolwork started to catch up with
her and practices pulled them away from each other. They spent time at the Academy Exposition meetings together, but coaches, teachers, and the school's publicity team surrounded them from the moment they walked in the door to the time they left. It wasn't the best setting for a private conversation.

Maya still didn't know if she wanted more than friendship with Travis. Part of her did, but not when she thought of Jake. She couldn't imagine telling him she was dating Travis less than a week after she told him that nothing was going on. Then again, considering how indifferent Jake had been about it, that conversation might be a lot easier than she imagined. That bothered her, too. She didn't want Jake to be jealous, but a small part of her wouldn't mind if he was.

“I am a horrible, horrible person.”

“Yes. That you are.”

“Cleo!”

“Maya, you haven't done anything wrong. You're twisting your emotions in knots to make sure you don't do anything wrong. And for what? One guy who may or may not have schemed against you with your archenemy and another guy who fell into bed with that same enemy point-five seconds after he had the slightest reason to doubt you. If anything, you are a nicer person than either of these guys deserves.”

Cleo's point didn't stop Maya from worrying. It did stop her from complaining about her problems, though. Cleo had her own issues. Grant Adams had stepped up his attacks on her and, more importantly, that girl Cleo had met at 360 never even called her back.

Cleo's arm shot out, grabbing Maya and pulling her to the ground. “Duck!”

The girls dropped behind a shrub. Living on a campus full of athletes, the average student was accustomed to swerving out of the way of balls, pucks, javelins, and rogue Frisbees. The past few days had added one more thing for the girls to avoid: cell phone cameras.

“Amateur paparazzo at three o'clock,” Cleo explained.

Maya peeked over the shrub in time to see the frustrated girl put away her phone and stomp off in the opposite direction. “I don't get it. We weren't even doing anything.”

“Maya, you're about to walk onto the football field, where the two guys you've been linked to on the Wall are practicing. And I'm … well, I'm me!”

Cleo was looking particularly Cleo that afternoon in an oversized vintage Debbie Harry T-shirt that revealed half her sports bra, jeans with skulls painted on the back pockets, and a pair of kick-ass boots. A shot of her in that outfit would give Grant Adams plenty to write about in his next blog post.