A horrible ringing sounds in my ears. Jan’s whole life was upended in that crash, and now someone is going to profit off it? I swallow convulsively. Several times.
“Is it Laura?” March grinds out.
“No,” Jan huffs without mirth. “Her boyfriend is singing his song for a buck.”
I jerk upright. “Boyfriend?”
He gives his beer a sour look and sets it down. “As in the asshole she was fucking while supposedly being in love with me.”
I slump back, deflated.
Jan shrugs with an unaffected air, when I know he’s anything but. “We were arguing about it. That night in the car. She’d decided to tell me then.”
“Fucking hell,” March says.
“Eh. I had it coming.” Jan surges upward and grabs the fire tongs to poke at the dwindling logs. His long body looms stiff and bunched against the night. “I was never around. Always traveling, practicing, doing something for football.”
“Bullshit,” Dad snaps.
“Dad, it’s true. She was always on me for more attention. I didn’t have it in me to give it. My head was on the game, only the game. Laura just faded. And the thing is? I didn’t much care.”
His profile is stark as he stares at the flames. “That night... she picked me up from the airport, and I realized that I didn’t want to be with her anymore. It was too hard and too much. So, like a colossal asshole, I blurted out the truth, and she shot back that she already had someone who appreciated her. We got into a huge fight. When that drunk weaved into our lane, neither of us saw him coming.”
A scathing laugh breaks free. “It’s my fault, when you think about it. If I had waited to tell her when we got home, she wouldn’t have been distracted and—”
Dad stands and pulls Jan into a hug. “No more of that.”
Jan wavers then clutches him like a lifeline. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s life.” Dad holds him close, rubbing Jan’s back as thoughwilling the pain to leave his son. He squeezes Jan hard, then cups the sides of his face. Jan is now an inch taller than him but, in that moment, he seems smaller. Dad meets his gaze with a look of resolve. “Just life, son.”
Blinking rapidly, Jan nods once, stiffly, and Dad gives him a fierce kiss on the forehead before rubbing him on the head, mussing Jan’s hair. They both step back, gathering themselves.
March rises slowly, his mouth a thin, pinched line, but he quickly puts on an expression of ease. “My ass is cold. Come and show me how to work these high-tech showerheads you got installed here, Jan-Jan, because I need a hot shower.”
Jan takes the escape route offered, and they’re soon walking back up to the house, leaving me and my dad alone by the dying fire.
Dad waits until they’re gone before turning my way. Firelight is supposed to soften hard edges, but he looks older, deep grooves winging out from the corners of his eyes and bracketing his mouth. Fatigue, worry, or both—I can’t decide. But the expression in his eyes seems almost gentle.
“I can see you thinking over there, August. Thoughts going a mile a minute.”
He’s not entirely wrong.
“Dad—”
“You’re not your bother,” he says. “Your life’s your own.”
Dully, I nod, wrung out by everything. He starts to pass me, but pauses, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“At the end of the day, football is a highly personal thing. What you feel about it will never be exactly the same as anyone else does.” He laughs wryly. “Kind of like with women. There will always be that one.
“You should know, when it’s real and true, you’re never going to go looking somewhere else for something more. Because you’ve already found it.”
With that, he gives me a squeeze and walks off, leaving me alone in the dark. And I can’t bring myself to call him back andexplain what I’ve known for most of my life. That I found the real thing years ago, and it isn’t the finding that matters; it’s the keeping. And that’s the part I have zero control over.
Pen
With a sigh, I flop back on the deep cushy sectional couch in Jan’s den. “God, I can’t take it anymore. I’m literally stuffed with meat.”
