I rubbed my face with both hands, buying time. “It’s nothing. Really. I just got flustered by a question.”
“The ‘what’s got you fired up’ question? You’vehandled way worse.”
“I know. I . . . I don’t know why I choked.”
Tyler was quiet for a moment, studying me with the kind of attention he reserved for reading opposing defenses.
“Is this about Brooke?”
“What? Brooke? No.”
“Because I heard you guys ended things. Which, for the record, you didn’t tell me about. I had to hear it from Murph, who heard it from someone’s girlfriend, who knows Brooke’s roommate.”
“Tampa’s too small.”
“Way too small.” Tyler leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “So talk to me. She seemed cool. I thought things were going okay.”
“They were okay. That was the problem.” I sighed. “She said I wasn’t present, that I was always somewhere else.”
Tyler waited.
“She was right.” The admission was harder than I expected, much harder than it had been when I’d told Jacks about the breakup. I made a mental note to add that to the growing list of things that confused me.
“Somewhere else? Like where?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
Or rather, I had an answer, but it was one Icouldn’t articulate. Shit, I hadn’t even formed the words to speak in my own mind, much less aloud to another human being.
“I don’t know, Ty,” I said. “That’s the problem; I don’t know what’s going on with me.”
Tyler nodded. “You rebounding already? Is that what this is? Got your eye on someone new and that’s why you’re all fired up?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe?” I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’m not . . . I’m not looking for anything.”
“Sometimes you find things when you’re not looking.”
“Thanks, fortune cookie.”
Tyler grinned, but it faded into something more serious. He glanced around the empty locker room, then back at me.
“Look, man. I’m going to say something, and I want you to hear me out. Okay?”
“Okay . . .”
“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?” He held my gaze, steady and unwavering. “I mean it. Fucking anything. You’re my brother, always will be. Whatever’s going on in your head, whatever you’re working through, I’m here. I’ll always have your back . . . even if it’s something you . . . don’t think anyone else will get.”
The words hung in the air between us, dripping with meaning I couldn’t quite decipher. Tyler’s expression was open and patient, like he was leaving a door ajar and waiting to see if I’d walk through it.
Did he know something? Or suspect something?
Was he being a good friend, offering support without knowing what he was offering it for?
“Thanks, Ty,” I managed.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
