Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) by Judith Arnold Read Free Book Online Page B

he'd gotten good. It no longer mattered that he
was small and skinny. By the time he was eight, he could take
down pretty much anyone. Well, not his brother George, but
anyone who challenged him, the bullies and turds whose sole
reason for existence was to make life hard for everyone in Ted's
primary school.
    When he was out on the mat, the universe was reduced to just
the space within the circle. Him, his opponent, and the referee.
There was something pure about it, something both profoundly
physical and surprisingly intellectual. Wrestling was like playing
chess, except your body was all the pieces rolled into one. You had
to see three moves into the future, you had to know what your
opponent was going to try before he tried it-and sometimes you
had to resort to unadulterated force. Wrestling demanded unwavering concentration. Nothing distracted Ted when he was on the
mat. Nothing existed but the moment.
    If he'd known Erika was in the stands, would that have
changed? Hell, he knew Kate was there. She was his girlfriend, and
yet he hadn't given her a thought. If she'd been cheering for him,
if she'd been fluffing her hair and smiling beguilingly at him, he
hadn't known and he hadn't cared.
    Now ... now he was aware of Erika a good ten rows behind and
above him. She was undoubtedly watching the one-hundredsixty-seven-pound guys tussling. Ted's match was done and she'd
probably deleted it from her memory bank. There were more
interesting things for her to focus on.
    But he could hardly focus on his own teammates. He drank
some more water and told himself the heat in his body was a residue from his match, not a reaction to her. It couldn't be a reaction to her. She was just a girl, a classmate.

    Forget about her, Skala. She is so out of your league.
    He did his best to tune into the rest of the meet, slapping each
teammate's hand as he came off the mat, regardless of whether
he'd won or lost. Wrestling was individual combat, but it was also
a team sport. Every member of the team had to be there for his
teammates. And despite his knowledge that Erika was in the gym,
an awareness that hummed inside his brain like white noise, Ted
was a team guy. He was there for his wrestling brothers.
    Mendham wound up winning the meet. After the battle of the
heavyweights, his team shook hands with the other team-false
courtesy, but the coaches made their wrestlers pretend that once
they left the mat, they and their rivals were all one big, happy
family-and then Ted and the rest of the Mendham team retired
to the locker room. They listened as the coach lectured them on
where they'd done well, where they'd fallen short, when their
next meet would be, and what school they'd be wrestling. Ted
took it all in as best he could, but his brain was still humming.
    Once the coach was done with his speech, Ted headed for the
shower room. As he stood beneath the shower's hot spray, he
noticed a red welt on his upper arm and recalled the way his opponent had pulled at his skin. Ted had suffered his share of broken
fingers and strained muscles from wrestling. A welt was nothing.
    Kate would be waiting for him outside the locker room, and he
tried to lock onto that thought as he dried off and got dressed.
Maybe they could drive down to Village Pizza and buy a couple
of slices. His mother would give him hell for eating pizza so close
to dinnertime, but Ted was starving. A wedge of pizza wouldn't
put a dent in his appetite. Whatever Mom placed before him at
the dinner table, he'd wolf it down. She knew the only time he didn't eat was when he was upset about something, and he wasn't
upset now. He was kind of jazzed, actually.

    Erika Fredell had watched him wrestle. Yeah, definitely jazzed.
    He rubbed a towel through his wet hair, then tossed the towel
into the hamper outside the shower room, ran a comb through
the tangled locks, grabbed his jacket and backpack and shouted a
good-bye to the teammates who were