I cleared the perspiration from my face with my jersey, feeling like a loser. Feeling as though I was standing before Mr. James after a high school game or even our first game in our freshman year of college where afterward Ryker’s dad told us everything we’d done wrong. I hated disappointing Mr. James, and I had that same feeling now with Ryker. I looked up to my best friend. He’d been through a worse hell than me, and there I was allowing my father, who was alive, to live rent free in my head.
Ryker crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve been quiet. What are you thinking?”
I shrugged. “About your dad. You sound just like him.” I glanced outward and squinted at the setting sun, which was hotter than the Sahara Desert. “Remember that game in high school when I busted my shoulder catching a pass from you?”
Ryker chuckled. “You blamed your injury on Natalia.”
“That was so wrong.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I watched the team jog by. “But she broke up with me right before the game. Anyway, your dad sat me down and told me that no matter what was thrown at me, I was in charge of my actions.”
He bobbed his head. “My father didn’t accept excuses. ‘Be a man,’ he would say. ‘Own your shit.’”
We both laughed.
“Thank you for this,” I said. “I will do better. I have to do better.”
We resumed jogging.
“Not only in football, Lucas, but your studies as well. Have you found a tutor yet for the history class you’re struggling in?”
“I’m working with my professor on that.” Historiography was kicking my ass, but it was critical for my History degree.
As we rounded the track, I came to an abrupt halt.
Ryker followed my line of sight. “What’s your mom doing here?”
“She must have news about Kurtis.”
She never came to my college practices unless it was an emergency.
Ryker backtracked. “Wow! Is that your dad? He looks like he’s aged thirty years.”
I hadn’t seen my father since he’d been arrested. After what he’d done to Mom and me, I had no desire to visit him in prison. Yet Ryker had hit the nail on the head. The man with thinning brown hair, who was lean in the chest and dressed in black pants and a white button-down shirt, appeared older than his forty-something years.
“Do you need me to stay?”
“I got this.” It was time to own my shit, as Ryker’s dad had said.
I ran over to my mom, keeping my attention on the man behind the chain-link fence that wrapped around the track.
“Now, Lucas, don’t get upset. Your father showed up at the house today. He wanted to see you. But I told him interrupting your practice was not the right time.”
“Obviously, you lost that argument.” I stared at the man who was supposed to be my father, but all I saw was a stranger. “When did you get out?”
“A week and half ago. But I couldn’t get here sooner. I had to check in with my parole officer.” My father’s voice sounded as if he’d been smoking cigarettes for eons.
Silence dropped over us like a dark cloud on a stormy day.
Kurtis Allen was standing before me, hands cupped in front of him, fear in his brown eyes.
“You’re tall, Lucas,” he said. “You get your height from your mother’s side.”
For so long, I thought about this day and what I would do when it came—lash out, scream, shout, even punch him for what he’d put us through. Yet as I sized him up, I felt nothing, not even the urge to yell at him.
“Where are you staying?” I asked evenly.
“A hotel, for now,” he said.
“You have money?” My voice rose in pitch as I regarded my mom.
