“I need to go to work,” I said.
“I didn’t think you had a shift today,” she answered. “What’s wrong? Do you have a headache?”
I did, in fact. “Nothing. They just texted and asked me to come in.”
“You don’t have to do it! You shouldn’t be at their beck and call.”
That was easy for someone to say when she didn’t have a job herself.
“Stay and have fun,” she cajoled.
“I’ll get overtime pay.” I looked at Boyd. “Can you take her home?” I was really asking if I could trust him with my sister, and he seemed to understand that because he stared at the sand at his feet.
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered.
“I’m want to get my license,” she said, smiling at him, and he grinned back and said he would teach her how to drive. Neither of them probably gave a thought to the fees involved with that, whose car she would use, and the cost of a new driver on someone’s insurance. I just nodded and said great, and then I went out to the car that I had paid for myself. Would a pathetic, sad person have been able to do that on her own? It didn’t matter what those women said about me, since I knew it was crap. I held the wheel with one hand and pressed my other thumb into my browbone to stop the ache. It wasn’t true at all. It was crap!
Everett texted when I was about halfway home. “Thanks,” he said, since my last message to him had been congratulations. “Want to come over?”
The thought of returning to my apartment and sitting on the chair wasn’t something I’d been looking forward to, and obviously, I didn’t actually have an emergency shift at either of my jobs. On the other hand, the thought of seeing him was very appealing—he wanted me to come and didn’t think that I was pathetic. I wasn’t battening myself on him against his will: he was inviting me.
“Yes. I’ll be there soon,” I wrote back, and I followed the route I now knew well. I’d driven past his house more than a few times when he’d been in Arizona, looking at the dark windows and at the dead leaves that had piled up in the driveway in his absence. Now the place looked great, the grass green and mowed and lots of flowers blooming. The lake beyond it sparkled in the summer sun and I wished that I had gone swimming today, rather than sitting in the chair and refusing so that my sister wouldn’t have wanted to join me.
He opened the front door as I stepped into a driveway which was now completely clear. “Congratulations again,” I said, and he nodded. He didn’t look as excited as I’d imagined he’d be, now that he’d gone ahead and fulfilled his dream.
But he explained that when he spoke. “I’m not the starter.”
“Oh.” I walked toward him and brushed some sand off my legs and feet. “Why not?”
He waved me in and I followed. “I talked to Rami Nour, the offensive coordinator,” he explained over his shoulder. “He said that he has concerns.”
“Did you tell him that you quit drinking?”
“That really wasn’t a problem for me,” he stated. He took a big drink from a glass now, but it looked like only water. “He’s concerned about my work ethic and leadership abilities.”
Geez. “So it’s a character issue,” I summarized, and Everett glared at me.
“There’s nothing wrong with my character.”
“I didn’t say that,” I explained. “I only meant that your coach thinks that there is.”
He sighed and sat down on his nice couch, the one where he’d slept after his concussion. That was something I’d asked him about over the summer when we’d been texting. He’d assured me that it was fine, but now he was rubbing his forehead like I did. “They want to see how I perform in the preseason games. Laforet will get the start in the first half and I’ll go in for the second.”
“That’s great!” I said, very relieved. Maybe they thought that he was deficient, but they were giving him a chance.
“I’m better than him,” he stated. “I’m better in every metric.”
“Except, Dallas Laforet was the backup last year and you said that he got some playing time, so they already have a basis for trust in him. It makes sense that they’d want to try you both out, especially since they think that you’re lazy and a poor leader.”
“Zoey! Damn,” he said angrily.
“I didn’t say it myself. I don’t believe those things about you. I saw you lead the Junior Woodsmen to victory a bunch of timesand I know that you’re not lazy. You worked really hard in the offseason to prepare.”
“That’s what I told Rami. He said, ‘During training camp, I noticed some improvement. Now you’ll have to show us on the field.”
“Good.”I nodded.“That’s perfect.”
He stared at me. “Is it?”
