Anyway, due to his love of tennis we’d become close pretty fast. He was always asking me things about the tournaments I’d played in and the other tennis stars I’d met. He was actually really respectful of me from the get go since his mother used to watch me play before she got sick enough to have to put him into the system. I always suspected that maybe our closeness was due to that, but I never voiced that suspicion to him. I sort of assumed he knew. He was always perceptive and smart.

I had missed talking with him, especially since we’d been having phone chats about tennis every couple weeks since he’d moved out of state. We hadn’t spoken since Alice’s stroke, of course, since both Al and I had been out of the country beforehand and he’d been busy himself. I was looking forward to catching up with him, but for the moment I was much too preoccupied and figured a night at home by myself would do me a lot of good.

Shane said she’d call me later on, and I nodded because there was really no way to get her off my back. She was like a paranoid babysitter sometimes with the way she called to check up on me. I knew it was unfair for me to get annoyed at it since she was jus being a good friend, and the whole cancer thing years ago had really scared her, so she’d taken to checking up on me fairly often. It was something I appreciated, but it could really grate on my nerves sometimes nonetheless. I think she knew that, but it didn’t make her stop checking on me. I knew Alice would be happy about it, though, so I just smiled when she said she’d call later on.

As soon as Shane had pulled out of the driveway I made my way into the kitchen and rummaged around in the fridge. It looked like Jenny had basically raided the produce section; there were fruits and veggies in there that I didn’t think I’d even seen before. I managed to find things familiar enough to make a stir-fry with and took those and several chicken breasts out of the fridge, then I dug around in one of the cabinets until I found the wok.