Page 102 of Cherry Picking

“I got your text in July.” It comes out fast, ahead of me. “One word. Hey. That’s all it was, and I looked at it for four days, and then I deleted the thread. I told myself it was nothing. That you should’ve called me if you wanted to talk.”

My throat closes. “I wish I would’ve answered.”

My hands have gone cold and tingling in my pockets. I can’t find the switch to shut it off. It’s the airport episode all over again, that same vise on my chest pressing my breathing down to a thin, jagged straw.

I stand there on the concrete border and count the breaths until the world stops spinning.

“I love you, Zig. Always have. Always will.”

I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. “Be at peace, little brother.” I swipe a palm across my cheek, looking up at the shimmering desert sky. “I hope you found Mom and told her I said hi.”

Ted’s name flashes on the console twice before I’ve even cleared the cemetery gate. I let the first one ring out, but I finally decide to answer the second at the light on Eastern.

“Maxwell,” he says, his voice grating on my ears. “Talk to me.”

“About the suspension or about the picture?”

“Look, the picture is survivable.” Keys clicking. “It’s not the worst thing that could have happened this week.”

I scoff. “A photographer got a picture of my ex-fiancée’s front door.”

“A neighbor with an iPhone snapped a little picture. Nobody’s chasing you.” Ice rattles in a glass. “What it did is put you in Las Vegas. In February. Of your contract year.”

The light goes green. I don’t move until the guy behind me leans on his horn.

“I grew up here.”

“Yeah, the hometown story is a good one. It’s a great one. Kid from Vegas, family’s there, brother’s buried there—”

“Don’t.”

“—and there’s a club in this city that’s been sniffing around every winger on the market since the deadline talk started.” He’s warming up now. “I’ve had a conversation. Nothing on paper, nothing you’d have to know about. But the noise in that article didn’t come out of thin air, and it isn’t hurting us.”

I pull into a Del Taco parking lot because I’ve stopped being able to drive.

“You put it there.”

“I put out a feeler. That’s the job. That’s the thing you pay me eleven percent to do.”

“In November, you said Chicago and Colorado.”

“In November, it was, but things develop.”

I watch a kid in a visor push a mop bucket across the lot. “Are you serious?”

Ted exhales through his nose, and when he starts again, he’s using his reasonable voice, the one I’ve heard him use on the higher-ups.

“The story broke Saturday, and my phone did not stop.” He’s picking up speed. “You know what the clubs hear? They hear a guy who went through a tragedy and played eighty percent of a season anyway. That’s character. That’s an asset. I’ve had two people this week use the word resilience about you unprompted, and I did not put that word in their mouths.”

My jaw unhinges. “You’re selling my brother.”

“I’m selling you.”

“He’s been dead all of sixteen weeks.”

“And you’re a nearly thirty-year-old winger with a suspension on your sheet, so you tell me what else I’m supposed to be doing with the phone.” He stops in his tracks. “Briggs. That came out—”

“No, it came out fine.” My hands have gone very tight on the wheel. “We’re done.”