CHAPTER 3 #2
It’s only a whisper—a desperate plea to not subject me to feeling more worthless than I already do.
Cheers rise in the room, rattling my eardrums. On the screen, I watch Kinnion getting back on his feet.
He waves as he walks off the field with a slight hobble in his step.
Risen. Saved from the humiliation of the end of a career that’s just being born.
“Hey, that’s how these things work,” Dad assures me. His urgent tone contrasts with the shouts of joy around us. “Someone puts in a good word with someone else. You know football. You could be coaching, not sitting here writing about it.”
Not crippled. Not a disappointment.
I’m full-on shaking now, my lungs burning. I lock my eyes on the door as though it’s my salvation because it is. If I stay here, I’ll fucking explode or, worse yet, maybe even deck my old man. Angling around him, I dart a glance at the floor. The last thing I need is to wipe out again.
I can hear him calling after me as I shove through the door. The stifled air in the hallway reeks of concrete dust, beer, and sweat. It’s not far enough away.
“Chris! Where are you going?”
“Home.” I can’t look back. If I do, I might say something I’ll regret.
“Hey, it’s fine. You just tripped. No one cares.”
“I care,” I grit grudgingly, and it strips a piece of me to admit it aloud.
Can’t he leave me with what’s left of my dignity?
I resent how quickly his footsteps approach to catch up with me.
He’s nearly twice my age, and I can’t even run as fast as my father.
One of his thick hands clamps down on the back of my shoulder.
My feet stop on instinct out of respect and duty, but I close my eyes, willing my breathing to go back to normal.
“Champ…come on. Look at me.”
The part of me that remembers he’s the man who helped get me up to go to the bathroom when I was laid up in bed for months wants to comply.
The other Chris…the one who lives far enough away from his parents so they don’t have to witness the fresh hell that is every waking moment of his life, doesn’t budge.
I must look like a fragile diva who’s crying over a broken nail.
It makes the sickening feeling in my gut worse. I concede, turning my head a fraction.
“I know it’s hard,” he prefaces.
The four words soften my resolve, hearing that he might understand all the sleepless nights I have, the constant pain, the numerous disrupted functions that most people take for granted.
Sitting. Walking. Standing for prolonged periods.
Sleeping. Hell, even keeping an erection sometimes.
Not that it matters. I don’t make a habit of entertaining company often enough to worry about my performance issues.
Whether he knows or cares to accept which gender I want to perform for still remains a mystery, another bullet point on the list of things we don’t talk about.
At least he and Mom have given up trying to set me up with a ‘nice woman.’
“You made it to the top and had your whole life ahead of you, only to fall all the way to the bottom of the ladder, but that doesn’t have to be it.
” The words congeal in my veins but he keeps going.
“If you just had a little bit of confidence, you wouldn’t have to hole up at home writing about junior leagues and scrimmages. ”
And there it is. The great divide between us is so expansive, we might as well be from different planets.
I swear, whenever he looks at me, he sees old Chris.
His champ. When I look in the mirror, however, I see reality.
The thing is, though, it doesn’t feel like I’ve settled by being a sports reporter.
I actually enjoy it. Aside from fiddling around my yard when I have good days, and playing fetch with Gale, it’s the only enjoyment I’ve got.
I get to give young athletes hope and a sense of pride in their accomplishments.
Words to memorialize their endeavors—ones they can hopefully look back on more fondly than my own brief success.
“I like writing.”
“Oh, come on. That was fine when you were getting back on your feet, but you’re hiding. I hate seeing you like this. You could be coaching. You could have a life again.”
It’s such a brutal accusation that a disbelieving puff of breath passes my lips.
A life? If he can’t see that’s what I’ve been trying to carve out for the last decade and a half, he’s never going to understand.
His version of a life involves trophies, accolades, and publicity.
I reached for the stars once, and I don’t know how to tell him that, broken body or not, I couldn’t give a damn about ever getting within touching distance of them again.
You shouldn't live vicariously through your kid if they smash their car into a guardrail.
Shaking my head, I start down the hallway to the stairwell. My skin is as tight as armor two sizes too small. The perpetual ache in my bones echoes louder, a resounding drumbeat now that he’s ruined my distraction from it through watching the game.
“Chris! Chris,” he calls.
My eye twitches, a telltale sign of an impending tension headache. “Just go home, Dad. I’ll call you next week.”
He hollers something chipper about leaving it to him, not to worry, and that he’ll set something up with Glen. I can’t walk fast enough to get away from his delusions.
It takes a long walk of shame to my truck, a fifteen-minute drive to the club I decided on, where I can hide from him in case he goes by my house, and five shots to silence his pipedream speeches.
The music at Dooley’s thumps around me. Welcome noise that the conveniently located sports bar near my house can’t afford.
Following the handsome cowboy I just met into the men’s room, I blink through my haze as I stare at the tight fit of his jeans over his ass.
Self-medicating—the warning from my stint in rehab years ago whispers in my ear.
I can tolerate the whispers. They’re better than my screaming demons and body aches I’ve managed to silence.
Shots aren’t pain pills, I tell the whispers.
I feel too good right now, too alive to give a damn about how buzzed I am.
Hell, it’s the most human I’ve felt in a long time.
I’m not even limping as I follow the smiling brunet into the nearest open stall.
Alcohol lets me be an imposter. Too bad I’ll probably feel worse in the morning than I normally do, but that’s a tomorrow problem.
I barely get the stall door closed when he grips two handfuls of the front of my shirt and smashes his mouth against mine.
His stubble grates against mine. His insistent tongue is sloppy, and he tastes like whiskey.
It’s not a good kiss, but it’s physical contact.
A warm body against my own. I give back, feeling some of my tension escape into the kiss as I back him up against the opposite wall.
His cock, thick behind his jeans, digs into my thigh, and he moans, yanking my shirt up.
Rough, cold fingers run across the layer of pudge above my hips that I never imagined having at this age—or ever.
I’d care if I actually gave a shit about whoever he is, but I don’t have any room for vanity right now.
I haven’t been touched in forever. Anyone will do.
When his fingers slip to my back, I feel them grate over my surgery scars, half-dead to sensation, half-sensitive in other places.
Gripping me, he pulls me tighter against him and murmurs against my jaw as he bucks his hips into mine, “Fuck me.”
I remember hearing those words when I was younger and in my prime. The thrill they used to give me over the stolen moments doesn’t surface. My half-hard cock starts deflating, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think it’s from my pinched nerves cutting off circulation to where I need blood right now.
‘You could have a life again.’
Dad’s words surface, sticky, midnight oil. The scent of urinal mints lingers in the air, mixing with my companion’s whiskey breath. Did I ever even have a life back when I was playing ball?
As the years have crawled by, I’ve sat at and tuned into countless football games, a blister of jealousy and regret deep in my chest as I jotted down highlights.
For some reason, it occurs to me like a bolt of lightning that it’s not the playing that I miss.
It’s the unspoken promise of how all that playing was supposed to make me feel—like I was king of the mountain.
How all those years of work from peewee league to the NFL were supposed to leave me reeling in a glow of victory and joy.
Yet, even when I finally made it, I still felt like I had something to prove that first season after I went pro.
Like the climb had started all over. The worry was back in my gut to be better.
To always be better. How could I have forgotten about the pressure?
Winning games always gave me a high, but like the opioids that got under my skin after my surgery, the sensation would fade until my next fix. I’ve done nothing with my life since then but mourn a loss that wasn’t as fulfilling as I thought it was.
A bubble of morose laughter gets caught in my throat. Fifteen years later, and I’m still searching for the sensation of being alive. It’s just another kind of pain I’m trying to bury this time.
“Come on, stud. Come out to my car and fuck me.” He cups my fly and gives it a squeeze, then pulls away, glancing down.
I blink at him, just now noticing that he has three very distinct freckles on the right side of his nose. They’re incredibly off-putting for reasons I can’t even say. His goatee has hints of auburn mixed in with the brown hair, and there’s a dimple in his chin that does nothing for me.