45. Beckett
Beckett
I’m almost late for a game for the first time in my professional career.
It’s not like the movies where I make it just in time to lace up my cleats and sprint onto the field after my teammates.
I show up right as the morning meeting starts, fortunately bypassing the social media parade where everyone takes videos of game-day walk-ins, and Coach Taylor pauses when I lope down the stairs, the picture of Beckett Davis casual irreverence.
“Davis.” His eyes sharpen, a muscle twitches in his cheek, and I think for the first time, he might actually be feeling a bit sorry for me. “How’s your head?”
“Clear and screwed on right.” I bring two fingers up in a salute before dropping in my chair beside Nowak.
Not clear, and certainly not screwed on right.
Impossibly blurry, actually, seeing as I didn’t sleep at all. I had lain there, switching back and forth between staring at my ceiling and staring at my phone, waiting for a text that wasn’t going to come.
Good luck tomorrow.
Not I’ll see you tomorrow . I don’t know that she will, and I wouldn’t blame her.
Eventually I got up and kicked balls into the practice net until the side of my foot started to ache, my hamstring felt like it was seconds from snapping, and my quad cramped so bad I had trouble walking down the stairs.
My whole leg aches this morning, but I can’t really feel much of anything.
Nowak shifts in his seat, tapping a pen against a legal pad, half-covered illegible drawings that look like they’re supposed to be a kickoff formation. “She okay?”
“What do you think?” I mutter, taking my hat off and running a hand through my hair.
“You got this?” He knocks a fist against my shoulder in what’s supposed to be a comforting gesture.
“Always.” I nod.
I don’t know if I do.
I don’t know if I have anything.
I don’t check to see if those seats I got her are occupied when I run out onto the field.
I make the equipment manager set up the practice net facing the opposite way during warmups.
I don’t look up before kickoff.
I revert back to the Beckett Davis who couldn’t have her. He plays well through the first half—two field goals, and every extra point he’s asked for.
He delivers. He’s reliable. Likeable, if the screaming of the crowd is to be believed.
All the old Beckett Davis ever wanted to be.
But as it would turn out, none of it fucking matters without her.
“We’re going to win.” Coach Taylor drops beside me on the bench, pointing first to the score and then to the play clock: 28–13 with just over twenty seconds left. “Big win for us after last season. And at home, too.”
I try to grin, but it catches on something. Could be anything really—pieces of old me, pieces of new me, the cracks left behind when Greer asked me to leave. Whatever hangs in shreds in my chest.
He taps his clipboard. “There’s a few things we could do here. But we’re in range.” He points to the field. “Beckett Davis field-goal range.”
“Are we?” I bounce my knee up and down, shrugging, like we’re talking about something benign. The weather, maybe.
Not the thing I built my entire life and career around.
“Record-breaking range.”
I nod thoughtfully, like I haven’t been watching the offense inch forward, yard by yard.
Sixty-seven yards.
“What do you want, Davis?”
I glance at him, a crooked grin on my face this time. “Believe it or not, the only thing I want is a girl.”
“Well, I can’t help you with that. But I can help you with this.” He points back to the field and claps me on the shoulder before standing. “Start warming up.”
I scrub my face before grabbing my helmet off the bench beside me and pushing to stand. My leg’s fucking killing me.
Coach Taylor watches me, one eyebrow lifting as I pound my fist into my quad. He shakes his head, like he was standing there beside me last night, watching as I put ball after ball through the kicking net and pushed my muscles way beyond their limit. “If you’d pull your head out of your ass, you’d realize you still have fans. That you’re an important part of this team. There’s been some idiot waving a sign around about that fucking Gatorade commercial all game. They’ve had her on the screen more than they’ve had the game on, for Christ’s sake.”
My fist stills against my leg, and my eyes finally snap to the crowd.
The sign definitely wasn’t her idea.
She’s not even holding it, actually. I can see her swatting it away each time her sister gets too close with it.
It’s covered in rhinestones, elaborate swirls in different colours, with poorly drawn arrows pointing towards Greer, and it says something pretty stupid.
Beckett—she loves your Gatorade commercial.
But I’m grinning the entire time I walk out onto the field, eyes only on her.
I haven’t put on my helmet yet, and there’s probably a fine for that, too, but I want her to know I see her—all of her—those parts she thinks are empty, the parts that made it hard to get here today.
And I want her to know she’s the most important person in this entire stadium.
The most beautiful one, certainly. Standing there with her earmuffs on, wisps of dark hair fluttering around her face, and eyes that saw right through me from day one.
She raises one of those perfect, live-saving, real-person-sculpting hands and offers me a tiny wave.
I rub my chest before bringing a closed fist to my mouth, and I point at her before I put my helmet back on.
I don’t really want to turn away—looking at anything other than her seems like a colossal waste of time right now—but I know she’s going to be there afterwards. No matter what.
I think people are shouting again, but I can’t really hear anything else.
Just her.
You’re real.
You’re worthy.
I love you.
The ball snaps, and I kick.