Panic kicks in, and I can’t get the fucking words out. My face crumples, and I whirl to face the wall, ashamed of my stutter spiral. Of my red cheeks and my splotchy neck. Tears prick my eyes, and I curse myself for believing I could do this.
I can’t fucking do this.
I fixate on a crack in the wall until it blurs, wishing I could melt into the carpet.
I. Am. Mortified.
“Ivy,” Wes says softly. I hear him stand up behind me, but I don’t turn around. “Ivy, you’re shaking.”
My throat thickens, and I swallow, trying not to cry. I don’t trust myself to speak at a normal volume, but I whisper, barely audible, “I should have dropped.”
The room starts to warp as the tears spill over. Not even my humiliation at crying in front of Wes can stop me, not when I feel so defeated. Not when I hate myself for being this way.
“Hardly anyone knows this,” Wes begins, his voice soft and gentle behind me, “but I threw up before every game. Every single one. The nerves…well, they got to me. The anxiety was overwhelming, even when I was playing in high school.” I sniffle a little, but my shoulders start to relax as I focus on what he’s telling me. “I thought that the more experience I got and the more games I played, the better I’d feel, but it never happened. I was always a mess.”
My gaze trained on the ground, I turn around to face him, wiping at my eyes. I stare first at his shoes, then his jeans, then his shirt. It takes longer than usual for me to make my way up to his eyes, but when I do, they’re studying me with compassion I don’t deserve and understanding I didn’t expect. “You were?”
He nods. “Uh huh. I was ahugemess. So, I understand being so nervous about something that your body literally turns on you. Not that I’m saying that’s what’s happening to you—I can’t know for sure what you’re feeling, obviously—but I understand being frustrated. I understand being terrified more than you can probably guess.”
Swallowing, I search his eyes for some solution I’m missing. Some end-all cure. “How did you deal with it? The nerves?”
“Well, after I threw up,” he wrinkles his nose, “I’d focus on my breathing. I’d listen to music sometimes, something comforting. Familiar. And when I went out on the field, I’d scan the crowd for my family. There was always one of them at my games, and they were usually in the same seats in the stadium. It grounded me, you know? Brought me down to earth. Once thegame started, everything clicked, but until then it was a constant struggle to keep my head right.”
“I don’t think I can do this,” I whisper.
“You can. And you will. You just need to figure out your own pre-game ritual, and once you’re out on the field, you can look at me. I’ll ground you. I promise. I won’t leave you hanging, okay?”
Worrying my lip between my teeth, I think over his words. My eyes search his, surprised at the sincerity in them. Finally, I nod. “Okay.”
“But we’re not doing anything about any of that right now,” he says abruptly.
I blink at him in confusion. “We’re not?”
“Nope. We’re getting ice cream.”
I blink again. “We are?”
“Hell yeah, we are. You need a pick-me-up.”
“But…it’s the middle of winter.”
He arches an eyebrow. “So?”
“It’s freezing out.”
“So?”
“What about the speeches?”
He waves off my question. “We’ll practice later.”
I frown down at my paper before meeting his eyes again. They’re alight with excitement at the prospect of ice cream, and I realize I can’t be the one to snuff out the joy. I’m also not about to protest taking a break, not after that train wreck. “Okay. Ice cream. Sure.”
“Trust me on this,” he implores.
I don’t know why, but I do. Trust him, I mean.
And I can’t decide if I should be worried about that.
