The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden

here longer if that’s okay?”
     
    “It’s perfectly okay.” He sits down in the dirt and crosses his legs as he stretches them out in front of him. Then he pats the spot next to him.
     
    I stare at it for a long time before I drop to the ground and cross my legs too. My muscles constrict at the fact that our legs are so close, but I don’t move over.
     
    “I kind of hate football,” he reveals as he pulls one of his legs up and drapes his arm on top of his knee.
     
    “Oh, yeah,” I say, startled. “How come?”
     
    His finger trails along the scar that runs down half his cheekbone. “The violence sometimes gets to me.”
     
    I rest back on the palms of my hands. “I don’t like football either. There’s only one purpose and that’s to dominate.”
     
    He laughs, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t go that far, but I get your point. I’m the quarterback, though, so all I really do is throw the ball.”
     
    I drag my pinkie back and forth in the dirt. “I know what position you play and what a quarterback does. My father’s a coach and therefore I got to listen to a recap of every game and practice when we were eating dinner.”
     
    “Your dad’s a nice guy, though,” he states, cutting me a sideways glance. “I like him.”
     
    I know I shouldn’t ask, but I can’t help it. It’s been bothering me for months that I just left him after he’d been beaten up. I never really believed that it was the only time his dad hit him. That much rage doesn’t just come once and then dissolve.
     
    “Kayden, what happened that night? That night I was at your house… and your dad, well, when he hit you. Did that ever happen before?”
     
    “I think it’s your turn to tell me something about you,” he evades the question, his hands balling into fists, and his knuckles are so white the scars on them blend away.
     
    “I don’t have much to say about myself.” I refuse to look at him as I shrug. “Nothing particularly interesting anyway.”
     
    He raises his hand, making a pinching position with his finger and thumb. “Come on. Just one tiny detail. That’s all I’m asking for.”
     
    Frowning, I rack my brain for an intriguing detail about me that won’t be very personal. My shoulders rise up and down as I shrug. “I like to kick box down at The Tune up Gym sometimes.”
     
    “Kick box?” he questions, his forehead creasing. “Really?”
     
    I pick the dirt out of my cracked fingernails. “It’s a good way to relax.”
     
    His eyes scan my body from my toes to my face and my cheeks heat. “You look too tiny to be a kick boxer. I can’t picture those little legs of yours being able to do very much damage.”
     
    If I were braver, I would challenge him to a match right here, just to prove him wrong.
     
    I angle my chin up to the sky and place my hand in front of my eyes to block out the brightness of the sunlight. “I don’t do it for sport, just for fun. It’s a good way to… I don’t know…” I trail off because the rest is too personal.
     
    “To take your inner anger out,” he says it more to himself than me.
     
    I nod. “Yeah, kind of.”
     
    “You know what?” He looks at me with a smile expanding at his full lips. “The next time you go, you should call me. My coach, who’s kind of a dick compared to your dad, has been hounding me to get into better shape. Then you can show me how much damage that little body of yours can do. I’ll even tone it down and give you a chance to pin me down.”
     
    I bite on my lip to keep from smiling. “Alright, but I don’t go that often.”
     
    “Only when you feel like kicking some ass?” he teases with a crook of his eyebrow.
     
    My lips twitch to a tiny smile. “Yeah, something like that.”
     
    He turns sideways so he’s facing me and crisscrosses his legs. “Okay, I have another question. I actually just remembered this. I think it was back in fifth grade and your family was over at my house for one of those stupid barbeques my dad has every Super Bowl. Somehow a collector football disappeared from my dad’s display case and everyone thought it was my brother Tyler that did it, because he was acting weird, but really he was just wasted. But I swear to fucking God I saw you walking out to your car with it under your shirt.”
     
    I tuck my feet under my butt as I cover my hands over my face. “My brother told me to do that. He said if I stole it for him he wouldn’t tell my mom that I was the one