Because what I had with Lina? That wasn’t love. It was infatuation.
And I hate that it took losing Nell to see just how different things are with her. I know I still need to talk to her. It isn’t fair the way I left things. I don’t want her to think that Lina was the only reason I was with her, that she was only a replacement. Because she fucking wasn’t. She was something new. Something better. I’d known that from the night she’d given me her virginity. I spent years trying to forget what it was like to be with Lina, and no other girl had ever been able to do anything but blur the memories.
Nell obliterated them.
But not because of any similarity to my ex, just because there isn’t room enough in my head and my heart for old hurts and new hopes, and I’m so fucking gone for Nell that she takes up every damn inch.
She’s on constant repeat in my head, cycling through every single second of our time together. I can close my eyes and recall just how fast my heart was beating the first time we kissed, the sounds she made that night in my truck, the way her sheets smelled waking up the morning after she gave herself to me.
No, Nell didn’t leave me with scars.
She left me empty.
She took with her my ability to laugh, the ease with which I can make a joke, the joy that comes from making that perfect catch. She took my ability to pretend that I’m okay, that I’ve got it all together. She took it all.
And there’s no fixing that kind of thing. I can’t blot over it with distractions or remake it with someone else. I’ve got to get it back. Pure and simple.
I’ve got to get her back.
As soon as the game is over tonight, I’ll find her. I don’t know yet what I’ll say. We both said things in that fight that we probably shouldn’t have. But I know that what we have is worth salvaging. I don’t know how I’ll get her to give me a second chance, because God knows, she’s smart enough to say no.
But I’ll do it. I have to.
THE NORMAL RUSH of adrenaline and anxiety I feel before a game is gone. I reach for it, but I can’t get it back. Not even when the team starts yelling and psyching one another up in the locker room. Not even when I don my pads and uniform. Not even when Coach gives a particularly good speech about rising above our underdog status. Win this game and we’re 9–2. We’d almost be guaranteed a bowl game. Win another, and we could even get picked for one of the big ones.
But I can’t quite see the future stretching out in front of me like I could a few weeks ago. There’s a wall, and I know I won’t get past it until things are right with Nell.
She’s part of my future.
That’s why I can’t picture it.
Coach Cole stops me before I head out onto the field and asks, “You ready?”
I nod as much as my helmet and pads will let me. “Yes, sir.”
“Listen, if we get the coin flip and receive first, I’m putting you out to receive.”
“Sir?” I ask, confused.
“Gregory has some kind of stomach bug. He’s out. So I need someone fast who can replace him on the kickoff. I need a playmaker. Think you can handle that?”
“Yes, sir,” I answer immediately, but inside I’m saying no.
Well, not me precisely, but it’s Nell’s voice in my head.
Coach heads for the tunnel that leads out onto the field, and I follow him, but the dark corridor is too much like the one where I’d lost everything earlier this week, and I find myself gasping for breath.
Returning a kickoff is one of the most dangerous plays in football, so much so that there’s been talk of removing it from the game altogether. When the kick returner catches the ball, they’re usually in the end zone. The defense is coming full speed from the other side of the field. The returner can take a knee, and his team will automatically start at the twenty-five-yard line. But the good returners can gain more than twenty-five if they’re quick, can find the holes, and break through tackles. But with players coming at full speed, and all that extra field to gather momentum, kick returners take some of the hardest hits in football.
I tell myself that maybe we won’t win the coin flip, maybe I won’t have to worry about it. Yet.
But we do. The setting sun glints off the flipping coin, and McClain says, “We’ll receive.”
Then I tell myself maybe it won’t come to my side of the field. Maybe the kick will end up outside my territory, and someone else will return the ball.
And then I’m taking the field. My cleats sink into the grass, and the thud of my heart echoes all the way up into my head and fills my helmet until I can’t hear the crowd, can’t hear anything.
I see the opposing team begin to move, watch the kick of the ball, track the high arc of it with my eyes. It’s coming right for me. And I watch the ball spin end over end, and as it begins its descent toward me, I hear my fight with Nell on fast-forward.
And somehow it’s there on the field with that ball speeding toward me and all the fears crammed into my skull that I realize . . . Nell wanted me to be realistic about the concussion. I’m such an idiot. I wasn’t fighting with Lina; this wasn’t about me giving up football completely for something she deemed smarter or more worthy. Nell’s last words before I cut her off and started to yell were “You have to take care of yourself, if you want to—”
What would she have said if I hadn’t cut her off? If you want to keep playing? If you want to stay healthy?
The whole fight had started because she thought this game wasn’t worth the risk, not because me and my dreams weren’t worth the risk to her.