36. Beckett
Beckett
We don’t win.
I don’t break a record.
I do miss another game-winning kick and get fined by the league for unsportsmanlike conduct and impermissible use of equipment when I take my helmet off and throw it against the ground so hard the strap snaps.
And I do get dragged into Coach Taylor’s office after he spends forty-five minutes yelling at everyone for falling apart so spectacularly in the locker room post-game.
“I know it’s just pocket change to you, but do you enjoy being fined a total of”—he gives a pointed look at his phone—“fourteen thousand dollars for unsportsmanlike conduct and twenty-two thousand dollars for impermissible use of your helmet? I can think of a million things I’d rather do with that kind of money. Could put one of my kids through college.”
I open my mouth to tell him all the money goes to the league foundation anyway, but he cuts me off with a pointed gesture towards the TVs behind his desk.
“Do you enjoy looking like this? Making your team look like this? Darren, me?” He punctuates every word with another jab at the TVs, where every sports network seems to be rolling footage of me whipping off the strap off my helmet and sending it careening into the ground at a pretty shocking velocity before Nowak drags me off the field, Darren screaming in my ear the entire way to the locker room. “What happened to the Beckett Davis who said he wanted to win? Who said he wanted to break the record? I just fucking gave you a shot at a 68-yard kick because I believed in you. I could have gone for a fourth down, and I didn’t. Because I believed in you and those stupid fucking legs.”
I don’t answer. I don’t tell him that it’s the first time since that girl made me into something real that I wish she hadn’t. I wish I wasn’t anything at all.
He shakes his head, eyes sharp, disappointed and disgusted by whoever this real version of me turned out to be. “We play Baltimore next week. This is how you want to be leading into that game?”
“Everyone’s fucking looking at me all the time, and I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful. But it’s ridiculous—who puts that much faith in a fucking kicker?” I splay my arms wide.
“In a kicker? It’s not about the position and what it typically does or doesn’t do for a team.” His finger swings from the TVs to me, and if there wasn’t a desk between us, I think he’d be jabbing it into my chest. “I put my faith in you. And if this is all you’re going to give me, you take up too much cap space. I’ll drop you for a consistent college kicker faster than you can flash that fucking dimple. If this is who you are now—”
I scoff, opening my arms again. “Who am I?”
“I don’t have a fucking clue anymore, Davis. But you’re dismissed.” He tips his chin towards the door. “Come back Wednesday with your head on right or don’t come back at all.”