16. Beckett
Beckett
The kicking net in the spare bedroom of my apartment takes up most of the back wall.
It was the one requirement I had of my real estate agent—find me a place with a spare room big enough for the net.
It would have been more practical if I’d bought a place with a yard or moved into a suburb like my parents.
But I wanted to be in the city. I had the money, and my real estate agent had the time.
He came through in the end, with a converted two-story loft in the west end with insanely high vaulted ceilings.
It’s stupid—but I’ve always felt like I can breathe easier in here. No expectations, no burdens to bear. Just me.
My family always joke that it’s harder to get a hold of me when I’m home, like it’s some funny thing, the exact opposite of what it should be. I grin when they say it, offering them a shrug—like it’s just me, Beckett Davis, who, despite being reliable and dependable, doesn’t take things too seriously.
But it’s on purpose. I keep my phone on do not disturb, and to the chagrin of my agent, I go hours without checking it.
Today, though, two things are taunting me, warring for my attention. The kicking net, probably going to fray or wear through soon if I keep sending footballs into the top corners and the middle.
And my phone, set to vibrate, sitting on an end table against the opposite wall, in between an empty protein shake and exercise bands I threw there after my workout.
It was a bit aspirational to turn on my notifications—the only person I want to disturb me probably won’t.
Even if she’s thinking about me the way I’m thinking about her—on a constant fucking loop—she’s not that kind of girl.
I glance away from the phone, swinging my arm up in line with the middle of the net before hinging my leg a few times.
It’s a visualization thing most kickers do. When I emerged as an accidental phenomenon with the stupidest skill set ever, my college coach sent me straight to a kicking camp and hired a kicking coordinator, which is something you rarely even see at the professional level.
But he believed in me, and I’m not sure anyone ever had before, so I bought into the whole thing. Visualization, mindfulness, stillness, yoga. You name it, I did it all.
It worked until it didn’t.
It’s not working today—every time I line up a kick, my knee comes into my periphery and all I think about is what the concrete floor of that closet felt like underneath it.
What it felt like to be on my knees for her. The point of her heel digging into my back. The sounds she made. How she tasted. How she felt around my fingers and how she might feel around something else.
What it was like for someone to trust me. The real me.
I swing my leg, my foot makes contact with the football, propped up on a stand instead of held in front of me by a punter, and it goes careening into the top left-hand corner.
If this were a game, it would probably be fair, but it might hit the uprights.
My quad twinges uncomfortably, and I pound a fist into it before palming my jaw. “This is fucking pointless.”
“What’s pointless?”
My brother leans against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, looking at me expectantly.
I shake my head, not bothering to retrieve the football from where it sits in the corner of the net, then cross the room and check my phone again before conceding defeat for another ten minutes. “What are you doing here? You didn’t call or text.”
Nathaniel gives a shake of his head, nostrils flaring with an exhale. “Beck, you don’t answer. It’s always easier just to show up.”
“Oh.” I don’t tell him that I would have answered today, probably sprinted across the room to grab my phone in time in case it was someone else on the other end. “Sorry, I guess I didn’t hear you come in. I’ve been up here for a while.”
“Practicing?” Nathaniel asks, eyes sweeping over me and pausing on the exposed muscle of my thigh. I can feel it jumping—a sign it’s too tired. “You ready for the season to start?”
No.
But I grin, grabbing my water and taking a swig before shrugging. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Historically, my family haven’t been good at telling the difference between a fake smile and a real one—they went almost two decades without noticing.
Something flashes behind my brother’s eyes, and he might notice today.
All it took was my public decimation before any of them started to realize that I was a real person.
Nathaniel nods. His jaw tenses, and he looks like he might say more, but his eyes go to my thigh right as the muscle gives another twitch. “Make sure you—”
I raise my eyebrows at him, pointing with my water bottle to the hallway behind him. “I know what to eat for muscle recovery, Nathaniel. I’m good.”
He holds his hands up before pushing off the doorframe and disappearing down the hallway.
I pocket my phone, even though I know it’s not going to go off, take one last look at the football nestled into the corner of the net, and follow my brother.
He’s halfway down the wrought-iron spiral staircase, but he calls back, “I saw you guys traded for Pat Perez. Didn’t you play together in college?”
“Yeah, for a bit. He came up last week. Should be good.” I wince on the first step, a cramp starting in my right leg. I consider hobbling down the stairs after my brother, but I don’t want to prove his point.
Fortunately, he’s looking away when I step off the final stair, and a lazy grin slides into place just as he glances back at me.
Nathaniel stops at the kitchen island, drumming his fingers on the granite. “I saw your photos online, the spread Yara did about you volunteering at the hospital. Nice article about all the inner work you’ve been doing in the offseason. Visualization. Yoga. Time on the lake. Connecting to important causes.”
His voice drips with irony when he says it. None of it was true, just a sad attempt at convincing everyone Beckett Davis won’t fuck up again. I shake my head. “I didn’t read it.”
Yara told me it went live, and she seemed happy with the media pickup and response. But I wasn’t interested. I stopped looking at the comments section of my social media when everyone started telling me how much they hated me.
Disbelief colours his face, and he folds his arms across the counter, leaning down. “You didn’t read it? That’s unlike media darling Beck Davis.”
I know he doesn’t mean for it to be rude. I know he sees all the media and press I’ve done—the endorsements and the commercials, everything the team’s publicist and Yara trotted me out to do because I happened to be more likeable and photogenic than any other kicker alive—and he thinks it means I revel in the attention.
I don’t, not really. I just did it because it was what was expected of me.
That’s the thing about my family—they don’t mean for any of it to hurt.
They love me, but they don’t love me the same as they love each other.
I lift a shoulder, offering him another lazy grin, and change the subject. “What are you doing here? It’s Sunday night. Shouldn’t you be prepping for a week of saving lives?”
His eyes flash, like he wants to press, but he doesn’t. “I was dropping off some stuff to Sarah and Lily. Lily just had another egg retrieval on Friday, and she’s feeling pretty tired.”
“Oh.” I glance at the calendar hanging beside the fridge. It’s littered with my messy penmanship, marking different workouts, daily caloric intake, and anything else I need to remember. But it’s not the type of thing I would have forgotten. “Sarah didn’t tell me. I guess I just write the cheques.”
Nathaniel cocks his head. That same muscle in his jaw jumps, but his voice is uncharacteristically soft. “I think she just didn’t want to stress you out this close to the start of the season.”
He pauses, and when I don’t say anything, he clears his throat and continues. “She worries about you, you know. We all do. I think you put an astronomical amount of pressure on yourself, Beckett.”
I open my mouth to tell him it doesn’t feel like that—that it’s never felt like that—but I blink, and I see my brother the way I used to: small shoulders curved inwards over his textbooks, scribbling away to make sure his homework was done before our parents got home from the hospital. All while I studied game tape and memorized routes in between making sure everything was clean, neat, and tidy for our parents, because their minds and their hearts certainly weren’t, and tried not to burn his dinner.
I blink again, and he’s the adult version of himself now—and logically, I know he’s fine on his own. That he’s big enough and old enough and mature enough to navigate a difficult conversation with his brother—that maybe they all are—but I think a part of me got stuck back there and the idea of adding another brick, another weight, to those small shoulders of my brother makes me want to vomit.
“Thought you were an oncologist, not a psychiatrist.” I raise my hands and start walking backwards towards the fridge.
Nathaniel narrows his eyes at me, like he isn’t going to let this go and it’s a hill he’s happy to die on today, but his gaze cuts to the middle of the island. Greer’s award’s still there, right where I left it when I got home the other night. “Why do you have this?”
He reaches across to grab the plaque; the setting sun streaming through the windows hits it just so, illuminating her name.
Bright and impossible to miss, kind of like the girl.
“Oh.” I swallow, palming my jaw, before offering him a noncommittal shrug. “She forgot it in my truck the other night after the gala.”
I don’t bother telling my brother she said I could keep it, or why.
Great legs, great tongue. Who knew?
He eyes the award before looking back up at me. “Are you with her or something?”
“No.” I turn around, pulling open the fridge and rolling my shoulders back. “She doesn’t date.”
I’m making a show of pulling open all the crispers, like I’m on the hunt for the perfect fucking bell pepper instead of thinking about my head between Greer’s legs, when my brother asks, “If she did—would you ... want to?”
“Just friends.” I grab the first thing I notice—an apple that looks like it’s seen better days. I turn back to Nathaniel, grin, and toss the apple in the air a few times. “Hardly even friends, actually. Business acquaintances is probably a better term.”
His lips pull down. Nathaniel appraises me, and I raise my eyebrows at him, tossing the apple to catch again before taking a bite.
“You know she really didn’t know who you were when you stopped by the hospital that first day, right? That must be nice for you ... someone with no preconceived notions. No expectations. No interest in your yearly salary.” He shakes his head, setting the award down. “What are you doing for the rest of the night? I know you’re probably back at the stadium for meetings and practice this week, but we could go grab some food? Catch a movie?”
I glance down at the award, the sun’s rays barely touching it now as they slowly slink back across the granite.
No expectations. No preconceived notions. Just her saying my name.
Beckett.
Real her and real me.
“You know what?” My eyes cut from the award to my brother. “I actually have something I need to do. Make yourself comfortable, stay if you want. But, uh, I have to go.”
I toss the apple into the garbage and grab my keys off the counter before I can change my mind.