I come back to calm slowly, grounding myself with the sound of Jess’s breathing and the feel of her skin against my hands. I knead her thigh muscles and she sighs in pleasure, flexing her fingers along my back. I don’t know how long we’ve been this way, but it’s long enough that when Jess lowers her legs from around my waist, she laughs softly at the stiffness that makes her wobble on her feet.
I coax her to take the first stop in the bathroom, awkwardly handling the condom while I wait my turn. When she comes out, I press a kiss to her mouth and ask her to stay for a while.
She blushes—or maybe she’s still flushed—and nods.
When I come out again, though, I’m reminded of the fact that my room—the part that’s past the hallway I just fucked her in—is a pretty solid indicator of my headspace for the few hours before she showed up, and I can sense when I come to stand next to her that she’s taking it all in with a degree of concern. One bed is covered with my partially unpacked bag, my closed laptop, a half-empty bag of popcorn I bought from the vending machine in the lobby a little while ago. Next to it, the nightstand is cluttered: two bottles of water, one empty, one mostly full, my phone, my earbuds out of their case, my watch. The other bed looks as if I’ve been tossing and turning in it, which is a little misleading: After my shower, I shoved all the covers to the foot of the bed and didn’t try sleeping at all. Mostly, I’ve been staring blankly at . . .
Shit.
Jess’s eyes linger on the muted television.
“You’re watching football.” There’s an entirely justified note of surprise in her voice.
“Yeah,” I admit, my ears suddenly hot.
It shouldn’t feel—based on what we just did, based on what we’ve been doing for the last couple of days, getting to know each other in this new way—that Jess standing here staring at my shitty hotel-room television is intimate.
But it does.
“You’ve discovered my secret,” I add, trying to keep my voice casual.
“Why’s it a secret?”
I shrug. “I’ve made it pretty clear to the world that I don’t really approve of the game anymore. At least not how it’s played now.”
I look away from her and to the TV, where an old game, probably from a couple of years ago, plays onscreen. Every color bright, every move fast. I can hear the crowd, the play-calling, the announcers’ commentary, even though I haven’t turned that volume up even once. The sound of a game like this lives inside me, an echo of another life.
“You still enjoy watching it, though?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
She doesn’t say anything in response. But she does move toward the unmade bed, sitting down on it and slipping off her socks before tucking her legs, crisscross style, beneath her. When she looks up at me, she’s asking me a question with her eyes.
I know instinctively that this moment is important for her. Jess is about as cautious about asking for information as she is about offering it. Even her curiosity is a secret she keeps from the world.
But not from me.
Not anymore.
“Cope really loved football,” I say. “Playing it, watching it, talking about it. He loved the game.”
“More than you.” She makes it a statement, not a question, but it’s inviting all the same.
“Football wasn’t—it wasn’t his entire personality. I don’t want you to think that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
I nod tightly, strangely unsure of myself. It isn’t as though I’ve kept quiet about Cope in the years since he died, and I don’t intend to keep quiet about him now or in the future. But I can tell already that talking to Jess about him won’t be the same as talking to anyone else. In here, I’m not the guy who wants to tell the world about what football did to Copeland Frederick.
I’m just the guy who lost his best friend.
I let my eyes drift back to the television.
“The way he felt about the game,” I tell her, as I track a pass sailing in a spiral down the field, “it was pure. You couldn’t really tell him anything bad about it. He couldn’t hear if you tried.”
A heavy, familiar feeling presses against me.
“Adam.”
