I blink. She doesn’t budge. Her face is so close to mine that I can feel her breath caress my cheeks when she exhales shakily. ‘I just … I just want to play a round with you again. Just once. Semi-properly. I fucking missed you, idiot.’
I swallow hard. The air between us is electric, silent but for the sound of the cows and her last sentence hanging in the air. I would find the mooing comedic in any situation but this one.
‘Missed you, too,’ I manage.
She nods, and the moment is over, just like that. She turns away, re-arming herself with her stick. ‘Go for it. Let’s do a face-off. You know that better than the draw.’
May readies herself close to the ground, bottom of thehead of her stick touching the grass, right by the ball. With unsteady arms, I do the same on my side. ‘How … how did you—’
‘Rod told me.’ She smiles apologetically. ‘He didn’t need a second glance to figure out we were lying about the fake dating crap, apparently. But that’s not your biggest problem.’ Her smile falls right off, giving way to a new emotion – a very new emotion, one I’ve never seen in May, at least: sadness. ‘Is it?’
I cleverly duck her question, and instead try my best not to focus on all the things Rod could have told her about me, pressing my stick’s head closer to the ball. ‘In for a penny, I guess.’
‘Alright.’ May clears her throat. ‘On three. One, two, three!’
On three, we push our sticks against one another’s, battling it out for possession, but even with May’s sobering moment of emotion, it doesn’t help what Dr Mendoza called my ‘yips’. I keep pushing, but I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing. My arms go numb, and suddenly, I’m not pushing any more. I pull my stick back, and May immediately takes the opening. She snatches the ball up easily, starting a play for the goal, but her beeline slows right away as she looks over her shoulder.
I’ve come to hate the look. The pity, the moment when people figure out that a guy who could have been an MLL champion can’t even push his stick in the right direction now. It’s easy to blame it on an injury. They get that. When something physically hurts you, it gives them something to look at. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to call it what it is. Because when they don’t have something to look at, it becomes an excuse.
‘Oh,’ May finally says, but it’s not pity on her face. It’s a certain type of pain.
The kind someone only reveals to you when they’ve been exactly where you were before.
May’s junior season. Lifeless games. Dead passes. Goals that most youth players could have made.
‘This isn’t new to you,’ I exhale, letting my stick hang carelessly in my hands. ‘Your junior year.’
She purses her lips. ‘Guess not. Wasn’t just my junior year. My life crept into my game plenty of times. When you left. And then when …’ With a twirl of her stick, May gazes up at the clouds, and then back at me. ‘Anyway. To answer your question, no. This isn’t new to me.’
‘How thehelldid you come back from it?’
‘I don’t know exactly how.’ She shrugs, and she does that little combination of things again, the purse of her lips, the look up, a blink or two. Holding back her emotions. ‘I found the right reasons to move on, I think.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Personable Guy
May
It was the June after my junior year at Prosperity High. Hot, dry, and heavy with nerves. First game of summer league. I picked up my stick just like I did before any match, but this time, something was glaringly different.
I couldn’t stop seeing him across from me, him with his crosse, me with mine, opposite sides of the field, just like it had always been. Opposite sides of the country.
Emotions were supposed to be easy for me. I got my dad’s stoic nature, rather than my mom’s out-loud empathy. I had never struggled this way before.
‘MAY!’ I heard Jordan’s voice yell, and suddenly, the ball was coming my way. A crucial pass – and I flinched, my stick flailing instead of preparing for the shot. The ball whipped right pastme. I watched the entire thing go down in slow motion, down to the moment that ball landed square in the net of an opponent’s crosse, and that was that.
That match was the first time I’d ever had to be benched. Understandably, after a few of these incidents in the fourth quarter, the coach had had it up to here. ‘I think you ought to take a break,’ she said with a sigh, subbing me out for Teresa Ingold.
The silence in the locker room afterwards was deafening. I felt so deeply ashamed of myself. How could I let a man come between me and my game? He had allowed me to let my team down.
My hatred for him doubled in size and, as for my heart, it shrivelled up. I had no room left to cosy up with my sympathy for CJ Bradley.
I don’t think I ever truly came back from it. The way you feel when you realize your entire team is watching you, witnesses the very moment when you send all their work to shit because your personal life gets into your head. It really, really sucks. Which, maybe, is why I can’t bring myself to feel like Colt deserves any of what’s been coming his way. I guess I know just how horrible it is to stand there and forget everything you thought you knew so well.
The most I can ever do about it is to practise. To make sure, like Papa says, that your house is stronger the next time the storm comes. Which is why showing up to practise Thursday, with a home game coming up Saturday, only to hit brutal traffic, puts me in an awful mood.
‘What the hell?’ I groan as my truck inches forward in thelane. The traffic light for the field is literallyrightup ahead. Almost there. Please stay green.
