Dana bows his head. “Thanks.” A beat passes. “What about you? I know you’re here for football, but what’s your degree program?”
I grin. “Liberal arts.”
“Ah.”
“I’m banking on football,” I admit. “Which, yeah. It’s a little stupid to do that when so few actually get drafted. Even those who get drafted aren’t guaranteed a profitable career in football. They may never even see the field.”
“I’m putting positive energy into the universe for you, but what if you don’t get drafted? What do you hope to do then?”
“There’s a really stupid frame of mind in which athletes only plan on going pro. They don’t make a backup plan because that’s telling the universe that you’re not confident in your ability to go pro. You make this your entire future. The only future. In a way, that’s what I’m doing. I have to choose a degree field in order to be enrolled at RDU. So I chose one that doesn’t apply to anything at all, therefore making my only acceptable future football.”
I can tell by the way he’s looking at me that he thinks that’s a stupid idea. I laugh.
“That’s… an interesting approach.”
“It’s not a smart one,” I agree. “I know that.”
“Then you haven’t thought about a future without football at all?”
Talking about a future without football feels treasonous to the only future I want. I’ve made it a point not to think about something I’d like to do instead of football. But… maybe there’s a loophole. What will I do after football?
“I don’t actually have anything real planned,” I tell him. “I’ve not given it a lot of thought. There’s a part of me that thinks, once I retire from football, I might take some time off and just relax. Not to spend the rest of my life in retirement, but because full-contact sports are really rough on the body. I want to rest my joints and shit. But after that?” I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Coaching?” Dana suggests.
I shake my head. “There are more than a hundred players on a football team,” I tell him, and spare him a glance. His eyes are wide. “Bet you didn’t know that.”
He shakes his head. “Wow.”
“Mhm. That’s a lot of people to manage. A lot of people to learn.” I bite the inside of my lip for a second. “One of the things I admire most about Coach Lemon is how he knows each of his 120 players individually. We’re not just bodies on his team. He knows the classes we’re enrolled in. He knows our interests. He knows our personalities. On the field, he knows our playing styles and how to work on the particular skills for our position that work best with our playing styles. That’s what makes him such a good coach. That’s why he has so many drafts into the NFL every year.”
“He sounds like a different person with your team than he is with everyone else.”
I grin. “He is. He’s great. But I’m not like that. I can barely keep up with the small handful of friends I have. As soon as I started at RDU and saw the kind of coach that Lemon is, I knew that I’d never match that level of coaching, and that’s the only kind there should be.”
It’s one of the reasons I’ve crushed on him since I enrolled. He may be frosty to the rest of the school, but to his athletes? He sees us more clearly than anyone else on campus.
That hit me hard, and I’ve been falling for him ever since.
CHAPTER 4
DANA
The sky is clear as we pull up to the lake, save for some clouds in the distance. We’re surrounded by mountains on either side. Trees have lined the road for the past twenty miles.
I step out of the truck and breathe deeply. The air tastes different up here. Zero pollution. There’s no noise. It’s absolutely stunning.
The lake stretches on forever.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Peyton asks, stepping beside me.
“I’ve never seen somewhere so beautiful,” I say. “The clouds beyond the lake look enchanting. The way they’re backlit and billowy but kind of dark. I feel like I’m looking at a painting.”
“I’ve wanted to come out here since I was accepted to RDU. Something always comes up when I think about making plans, though.”
“You’re here now,” I say.
He grins, nudging his shoulder into mine. “We’re here now. Let’s get the kayak. Grab our backpacks from the cab, will you?”
