“I have a little tendinitis in my shoulder. It’s from overuse, which is funny. I’ve thrown the ball more with the Junior Woodsmen over the past few weeks than I did in three seasons with the other team.”
“The real Woodsmen,” I stated.
“I hardly lifted my arm with the real Woodsmen, but with the lame and shitty Juniors, I’m getting hurt from working too hard. I would have given a lot to throw this much before.”
“Maybe you’ll get another chance with them. That’s possible,” I said, but I was trying not to sound optimistic now, so that he wouldn’t put much faith into that idea. Things were possible, but once you’d been given an opportunity and squandered it…well, chances didn’t usually come around again.
But I was being unfair. He hadn’t squandered it; he had done his best to be a success in professional football at the highest level, and it just hadn’t been enough. Right?
“You did try your hardest when you were a real Woodsmen,” I ventured, and waited.
“I guess,” Everett answered.
I assumed that meant “no.”
“I don’t mean ‘no,’” he told me. “I mean that I’m not sure anymore. I came into the league from college thinking that I was the shit. I was sorry that the Woodsmen drafted me because I knew that Kayden Matthews was the starting QB, and I figured that wouldn’t give me a chance to play much in my first season. I wanted his spot, immediately. But he’s not as young anymore and I also thought, ‘Yeah, by my second year, he’ll retire and I’ll get my shot.’ And maybe I trusted in that too much. Maybe I wasn’t trying as hard as I should have been, doing the film study and hustling in practice.”
I nodded and looked at the snowflakes flying toward his windshield. His defroster seemed to work very well and so did his wipers, but it was coming down hard.
“I thought I’d only be his backup for a season, but they traded for Laforet and I got dropped to third in the depth chart. He gotto go in a few times and I never touched the ball. I was pissed, very pissed, so I set out to change their minds last season and get myself the starting job. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything right.”
“At least now that you’re with the new team, you get to play,” I said. “I don’t really know if that’s good, though. Personally, I’d rather sit on the bench, watch, and get paid for that, rather than freezing my butt off in the snow for the Junior Woodsmen.”
“Did you ever play sports?” he asked.
“No. Not ever, and neither did my sister. I was in the marching band, though, and we were good. We competed all over the state and in other places in the Midwest, too. It was fun to travel and I liked most of the other musicians, but it was also very competitive.”
“Really,” he said, and he sounded doubtful. “I don’t know much about marching bands.”
So I told him about them. I had loved my instrument more than anything, and I’d been very upset when I graduated and it was over.
“Do you still play?” Everett asked.
“No. My mom and sister hated hearing me and I had to sell my horn for tuition money, anyway. I was sorry to do it, because my teacher had gotten it for me and I appreciated that so much. But I’m glad that I don’t have it now. It would have been hard to store it in the motel room with us. There’s not much space.”
“You guys are planning to stay there?”
“I’d like to have something more permanent, so I’m working on it,” I said. But the places I’d talked with today weren’t willing to accept my sincere promises to pay in the future, in lieu of an actual security deposit. “It’s hard, because I receive a stipend for student teaching and of course I have my jobs, but the money disappears so fast.”
“What does your sister do?”
“She gets support from the state. She’s still supposed to go to physical therapy and she does sometimes.” I sighed. Willow’s activities, or the lack of them, had always been a major issue with my mother. “Before, I didn’t want to push her to work. I didn’t want her to think that I was only interested in her getting better so that she’d be able to bring in a paycheck, because that’s not true. But now, I really do need her to contribute to the household and she’s pushing back a lot. Mostly by ignoring me.”
“Sisters are a pain in the ass.”
I had to agree that he was right about that, at least at times. Right at the moment, mine wasn’t texting constantly to ask where I was but I was sure it was only the limit of minutes on her phone that was saving me from that. It was going to take even longer than an hour to get to her, too, at the speed we were going due to the weather conditions. “Do you have sisters, so you know about them from personal experience?” I asked him.
“One,” he answered. “I have one sister and one brother. I’m the youngest and we don’t get along.”
“That’s too bad.” I would have felt terrible if Willow and I weren’t friends.
“I’ve never cared.” But then, when a car slowly passed us and its headlights flashed into the cab, I saw his face. He looked like something about it bothered him a lot.
“Willow does whatever she wants. It makes it harder on me, but she just doesn’t understand a lot of adult stuff. When you meet her…” I trailed off, thinking about that.
“When I meet her, what?”
“Nothing,” I answered. But actually, I had an idea about that. Things weren’t going to turn romantic between me and Everett, but Willow still had a chance. She’d been through so much and she deserved to be happy. And she had been acting weird, off, after seeing that stupid Boyd with his stupid new girlfriend…
