“What?” Marco blurts. “Tell me everything, Evil Levi, and don’t leave a single thing out.”
“Can we not do this?” I ask weakly. “I really need to get some sleep, guys.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Marco commands. “Levi? Proceed.”
Levi looks giddy. “In college, Luca met her freshman year at a random hotel during an away game. I think you were playing the Hoosiers, right, Lukie?”
“Shut the fuck up, Evil Levi.”
“Yeah, it was Indiana. Anyway, Chelsea Parker was there for a math competition, but she didn’t tell him her last name back then. To him, she was just Chelsea the Mathlete. The girl Luca wound up dry humping in his hotel room after his game—clothes on the whole time, unfortunately—and the poor boy’s never been the same since. Even fully clothed and only letting him get to second base, Chelsea the Mathlete ruined Luca forever.”
No lies detected there.
“Do you already know about this, too, Romie?” Marco asks, since my big brother’s noticeably not reacting with the same astonishment as Marco.
Roman chuckles. “Yeah, but only because Luca wouldn’t shut up about Chelsea the Mathlete for the longest time afterward.”
Levi snickers. “The poor kid tried desperately to find her when he got back to Nebraska.”
“As one does,” Roman adds.
“But no such luck. She was a phantom.”
“Yeah, because she didn’t give me her last name,” I gripe. “Also, because she gave me a fake school. I didn’t know it at the time but finding her was never going to happen.”
“But, man, did you try,” Levi says. “He became an internet sleuth of the highest order. But no dice.”
“Poor Baby Luca,” Marco says with a laugh. “How long were you hung up on her?”
I still am.“Not too long.”
“Not too long?” Levi and Roman both bellow in unison.
“Don’t lie, Luca,” Roman shouts.
“It was two years, at least!” Levi adds.
“No, it was much longer than that,” Roman insists. And he’s not wrong, unfortunately.
Levi says, “All I know is every time Luca was dating someone new and I asked him how it was going, he’d say, ‘I mean, she’s okay, but she can’t hold a candle to Chelsea the Mathlete.’”
Roman chimes in with an embarrassing impression of me. “‘Why isn’t anybody as cool, hot, and funny as Chelsea the Mathlete? Why, why, why can’t anyone be as amazing as that unicorn of a girl?’”
Everyone else on the call laughs heartily, but the memory of the way I compared everyone to Chelsea for years—and then proceeded to feel empty and unfulfilled whenever they inevitably fell painfully short—makes me grimace.
Marco asks how Chelsea became my personal coach at camp, and I tell him the whole crazy story—my brothers, too, since I haven’t yet revealed this part—and everyone laughs their asses off all over again.
“She’s a fantastic coach,” I say proudly. “You wouldn’t believe how much she’s helped me, guys. She’s a football genius.”
“Why wouldn’t we believe it?” Marco asks. “Her father is Jack Parker and her brothers are two of the best linebackers in the game today.”
“Yeah, but she’s even better than you’re thinking.” I explain further and talk in detail about her analytics background, about the bad habits she’s helped me break on the field and the new habits she’s helped me to form. And by the time I’m finished babbling, I suddenly realize all three faces on my screen are looking at each other knowingly, like they’re sharing some kind of an inside joke.
“What?” I ask. “Why are you guys looking at each other like that?”
“Because you’re in love with her,” Marco says simply.
“Of course, he is,” Levi says. “She’s Chelsea the Mathlete. Nobody has ever or will ever compare.”
