“Seriously?” I ask Lorenzo. “Come on, man, don’t waste your money. I can’t even get you into the ceremony.”
“Who cares? I want to be the first to congratulate you when you walk out.”
Cash nods. “Yeah, and I want to be the first to light the match that burns that bitch to the ground if you don’t win.”
I shake my head, but I can’t help smiling. These are the best dudes in the world. I can’t believe in two days we’ll walk onto Shafer Field together for the last time. We’ve been through the grind together, through the minutes where we felt like kings of the fucking world and days where we questioned whether the game was really worth the thousands of sacrifices, big and small. To think I’d consider it a success to step out onto a football field next year without them at my side.
At dinner,my friends have me laughing like I haven’t laughed in weeks. Maybe we get a little emo a couple times when we all realize that we can come back to Viaggio’s for dinner whenever we want, but this night is the last of its kind. Afterward, they head out to meet some other guys at a bar, but I need some alone time, so I walk home. The good feelings from dinner are long gone by the time I get back to campus. I’m thinking about her again.
I can’t live with this feeling I’ve been dragging around sinceJade walked away from me. It’s not just heartbreak, it’s unfinished business, things I need to tell her, questions I need to ask. It’s my brain’s refusal to accept that that scene on the sidewalk outside the bar was really the end of us. It doesn’t feel right. It’s losing everything Jade meant to me even before I fell in love with her. She was my supporter, the one I didn’t have to put on a happy face for. She was the one who could make me feel like I brought home the win of the year when I didn’t do a thing that day except make her smile.
I know I have to move on, stop fighting with myself by asking whether it could have turned out any different, stop wondering if she might change her mind if I beg hard enough. Reality, not hypotheticals, is where I want to live.
What we had was perfection, and now it’s over. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe if I say it enough times, I’ll stop wishing she’d show up at my door and tell me she needs me like I need her. But at home I take her red earring from my desk drawer and leave it on my bedside table. Saturday I’ll pin it somewhere safe and hidden under my jersey, the one piece of her I won’t let go.
FORTY-FIVE
reeve
When I steponto the field on Saturday, I’m ready. I know I’m going to crush this. I have to. My future depends on it, and I’ve never failed to do what I had to do. The sky is bright blue and cloudless, but the air is bitter cold, a stark reminder of our season winding down and what lies ahead.
From now until the Heisman ceremony in two weeks, every move I’ve made on the field this season will be judged within the context of whether it brings me closer to or further from having my name go down in history. What’s done is done, but I have one last shot to prove to the world who I am and what I deserve.
I’ve been pumped all morning, burning for the chance to forget those couple of weeks when I was barely showing up, to put my embarrassingly shitty game in the rearview mirror and let everyone know it was a fluke, just like Coach said. I want to be the player I always thought I was. But a funny thing happens when I take the field. All that fire in my veins cools. Being out there ready to work my ass off so my life still has direction just reminds me how alone I am, how meaningless my life will be if I don’t make this happen. I’m nothing if I’m not a winner.
It’s not too hard to grab the lead in the first few minutes. By the end of the first quarter, we’re executing our game plan and maintaining a two-score lead. It’s a relief my throws are on time and on target, but nothing more. I’m not blowing minds here, just living up to expectations. Fuck, how I miss the high I got from winning.
Near the end of the second quarter, we’re taking the field and I glance up at the library rooftop; it’s a reflex at this point. But she’s there. I have to do a double take, but it’s true.
Jade is watching me from the roof. She’s bundled up in her black puffy coat and her hair is a bright candy pink, the same color it was the first time I laid eyes on her, the hair I always picture when I think of Jade.
For a second it feels like everything inside me comes to a grinding halt, and all I can do is stare up at her, feeling and thinking nothing. But then she moves closer to the edge of the roof—can she tell I’m looking at her?—and she raises her arm to show me the red-and-white Shafer flag in her hand, whipping in the breeze. Then she kisses her fingertips and points a single finger at me.
And then I’m alive.
My heart is pounding and I’m breathing hard and I hear the crowd around me and feel the cold November air on my skin, and everything that was asleep inside me since the breakup is alive and kicking. It’s like waking up from the dead.
I jog into position as we line up in shotgun formation. “Easy there, happy face,” Lorenzo says, and I realize I’m smiling. “We haven’t won yet.”
No, but we will, and when I can’t wipe this smile off my face, at least I’ll have a good excuse.
I breathe in the cold fall air. Jade’s here. She’s not here to see me deliver the best game of my life or throw the pass thatclinches the Heisman. She’s not here for the game at all. She’s here for me.
After our win,Coach delivers a short, lively speech in the locker room before releasing us to relive the highlights of the game among ourselves as we shower and get dressed. I threw two touchdowns and no interceptions, and I was wrong: I do still care about the compliments and the slaps on the back from my teammates and coaches. It still feels amazing, but I keep checking the time, counting down the minutes until I’m free and I can go find Jade in the breezeway where we always met after home games. She showed up for me, and that means more than I could ever put into words. Hell, I still don’t know what to call the feeling that ran through me when I saw her up there. But what does it mean for us? Is she ready to tell me what she’s been too scared to say until now?
My stomach is a knot of excitement and fear when I finally walk out of the football facility. I’m vibrating. I can’t wait to put my arms around her, feel her soft skin, and breathe in the scent that’s been haunting my dreams. We’ll have to talk in her car or find somewhere else private to go, because there are students and fans swarming around, and I don’t want any interruptions. I don’t know what I’m going to say to her—shit, what am I going to say to her?—but I need to hear every word that comes out of her mouth uninterrupted.
Jade’s not there yet when I walk out to our spot. I look around, but I don’t see her. A few groups of drunk students in red Shafer hoodies and hats walk by and congratulate me. I smile big for a selfie with a dude whose girlfriend takes the picture, then turns to wink at me as they’re walking away.
I wait thirty minutes. The stadium and breezeway aretotally empty. It’s not until I check my phone and find nothing from her that I realize something’s wrong. Jade’s not coming. She never was.
I keep my gaze on the ground as I walk home, my hat pulled low over my eyes. I feel numb. Why would she show up like that if she didn’t want to talk to me? It’s not like I need her support to win a game. I looked pretty fucking great without her in the stands last week, and she’d know that.
But she showed up in the place where it all started, the one place only she knows I look to. That’s when I understand how simple it is. She wasn’t there for our relationship and she wasn’t there for my career. I was right: She was just there for me.
I don’t know what to make of it. I want her to want me back. I want her to be here right now, holding on to me and never letting me go. I wanted that moment I spotted her on the roof to be the beginning of the second half of our story, the one where we stop fumbling and holding back, where we never make the same mistakes that caused so much hurt.
But even without all that, I picture her there on the roof, looking down at me, and a small part of the hollowness that’s been consuming me slowly fills back up, alive and solid again.
