I wince with an involuntary twinge of sympathy. The understanding that only another lacrosse player can have about how much injurysucks.
‘But since then, at least physically, he’s turned over back to ninety per cent. Well on the way to a hundred. He really should be out there playing next season, captaining the Chucks to our title. Didn’t get it last year, unfortunately. Losing sucked, but we were hopeful we’d get it next time, Colt at the helm, except now …’ Rod shakes his head. ‘I can still hear the way the guy was screaming on the ground, calling for his mom. May … when he gets so much as near the stick, it’s so weird. It’s like he doesn’t know how to play any more. Something snapped when he got hurt back in October, and no one knows how to fix it. Not even team-mandated therapy. So when he realized it wasreallybad, he decided he was going back to Oklahoma. Not for clout, not to keep his reputation up. He came back here to hide.’
I’ve never known Colt to be a hider. I know I’m one. I tuck myself away in a corner of campus – i.e. the Meteorology building study pods – after a terrible exam and sob. Colt took every hit when we were kids, and he took them standing. I never saw him falter. But this Colt is, at least according to Rod, scared. That revelation dumps rocks into the pit of my stomach by the wheelbarrow. The guilt is so heavy, I don’t know what to say.
‘Right now, this is between me, Colt, and the PT and therapy teams. And now you. He doesn’t know if he’s gonna come back for the next season. Hell, he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do ifthe team finds out he’s completely recovered. Especially the bosses. I mean, he doesn’t know if he’s going to play ever again.’ Rod lets out a nervous laugh, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. ‘It has me scared as shit. We’re all pretty young. To have your career end like that is one thing, but to have your mental health – your state of mind – so fucked up that you don’t know how to play a sport you’ve been training in since you could walk …’
God.
That was part of why I fell so hard for Colt. He was indefatigable. He was a wall that ploughed through whoever he needed to knock down to make goals. And yet, he always had so much heart. The dumbass had jokes and shit-eating grins alongside the kinds of plays that made college scouts dizzy. He made for a fantastic rival. He made for a fantastic friend.
‘Thanks.’ My voice shakes when I try to force a grateful smile with Rod. ‘For telling me. I … I had no idea that’s why he was here.’
Rod snorts. ‘He’s good at hiding things. He gives you the infuriating cowboy pearly-whites—’
‘Oh, hedoes,’ I agree with a chuckle. ‘Like he’s trying to flush all the doubt out of your mind, right?’
‘It’s like being brainwashed!’
Rod and I share a moment of laughter. Colt. What a sweet, clueless, ignorant idiot.
‘Guess I have to make amends,’ I say once the laughter has subsided.
‘Don’t let yourself think that.’ Rod stops me. ‘He did you dirty, May. No one deserves to be left alone with their feelings like that. He’s the one who up and left, at the end of the day. I may not know exactly what upset you, but I’ll tell you that youhave every right to be. People who leave …’ There’s a glassiness in his eyes that tells me he knows a little too well what it’s like. ‘They shape the rest of our lives, whether we like it or not, and weabsolutelyhave the right to put that on them. But we can lessen that impact by looking at what we have now. And what you have now might just be a second chance.’
‘After …’
After everything he did to me?I’m about to say. But it doesn’t have the same punch now that I realize he’s paying in a different way. His homecoming isn’t one of celebration. It’s a self-imposed exile. He’s helpless here. Powerless.
‘Is there anything else I don’t know?’ I ask instead.
Rod looks up in thought. ‘Well – hetotallydoesn’t want you to know this, but there’s one thing.’ He pulls his phone from his jeans pocket and does a little bit of frantic tapping, scrolling, some zooming, as he talks. ‘I guess he’s dated a few women up in New England, that I know of, but nothing really seemed to last. I’d ask him how it went, and honestly, it wasn’t even like he was being a dick, or anything. He just sounded pretty guilty. Ashamed. And I think …’ He turns the phone my way. ‘This might have something to do with it.’
Oh. My.
It’s a photo of Colt by his Woodchucks locker, painted this ridiculous blue and full of what’s no doubt smelly lacrosse gear. Beside him and his cowboy pearly-whites, though, is a picture taped to the inside of the open door.
My University of Oklahoma City media day photo from freshman year, complete with my name in neon cursive, in case anyone was in doubt of who the woman in his locker was.
MAY VELASCO. #13.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In for a Penny
Colt
Ihaven’t left Prosperity since getting into town, a fact I realize as we drive past the endless fields and farmland that blanket the outskirts of the city. It’s a nice break from the chaos of last weekend, an away game in Atlanta. The silence is exactly what I’ve needed. Okie students always joke that they’re the outermost layer of Oklahoma City, but they’re wrong –thisis the outermost layer. Maybe a farmhouse every half mile or so, if you’re lucky; the rest of it is for grazing or crop.
We whip past the sign: EAGLE ROCK, POP. 562. With the sun beginning to go down post-Monday practice, the sky is lit up in dusky oranges and pinks in the background. It’s fucking unreal. I remember coming down here to play pickup, guys versus girls. A couple of them had grown up with traditionalChoctaw stickball and then moved into lacrosse, and they were lethal. Loss was imminent.
‘Wow.’
May turns into the little intersection that takes you towards Main Street. When we hit the tiny strip, it’s just as I remember. The church is on one side, the bakery and grocer on the other, and away in the distance are the feed and tractor supply stores, all bracketed by endless clear skies, burning with sunset. God. I’d forgotten what these parts of Oklahoma looked like after years in Boston, and I hate myself for it right away.
May rolls a window down and extends her hand out into the open space, wiggling her fingers against the wind. Her curls dance about in total and utter freedom. Her face, for the first time since I’ve seen her again after all these years, is truly at peace, her eyes fluttering blissfully. Disturbing her feels like a sin.
We pass the corner café and bar – a true hole-in-the-wall spot – before driving another three or so minutes out to the red-awninged feed shop. A left takes us down a rocky dirt road that rattles the truck, smoothing out when we hit the hand-painted sign that tells us we’ve reached the Veracruz Ranch.
