2. Everett
EVERETT
There’s a sound a guy makes when he’s hit just right. It’s not a yell, exactly. It’s lower than that. Something that comes out of his chest before his brain even figures out what happened.
I’ve heard it nine times tonight. Every single time, something in me settled. Just a little. Just enough that I noticed it.
It’s been a hell of a long two weeks, let’s just put it that way. I’ve needed this.
Number 14 made that sound in the third quarter when I put him on his back so hard his helmet bounced.
The ref threw a flag and pretty much lost his mind, but I gave zero shits.
I wasn’t even sure what the flag was for.
Unnecessary roughness, probably, except I hit him exactly where I meant to, square in the chest. Totally legal.
It’s not my fault he crumbled like a house of cards.
The flag didn’t matter, anyway. What mattered was that for one entire second, my head was completely empty.
That’s the only time it’s ever quiet in there. When I’m hitting somebody.
The suspension taught me that the hard way.
Two games I spent sitting in the stands in street clothes, watching guys who weren’t half as good as me jog onto a field I should’ve been standing on, all because I broke Jake Maxwell’s jaw after he made a smartass comment in the parking lot post-game.
I’m not going to pretend I feel bad about it.
He’s an asshole who got what was coming to him.
That doesn’t mean I liked missing two weeks of the only thing that keeps me from caving in on myself.
People like to ask me why I hit so hard.
Coaches, mostly, in that tone they use when they’re trying to sound concerned instead of annoyed.
Like there’s some simple answer they can write down on a clipboard.
There isn’t. I grew up in a house where the only thing predictable was how fast things could go bad.
Somewhere along the way, I figured out that hitting something—a heavy bag, a guy across the line of scrimmage, a guy in a parking lot who thinks he can talk to me however he wants—is the only thing that ever actually makes the noise in my head go quiet.
Football gives me a legal version of that.
Then there are the less-than-legal ways I deal with my anger issues.
Tonight has made up for those two missed games.
Four sacks, two forced fumbles. One hit so clean the whole student section actually went quiet for a second before they lost their minds.
We’re winning 31 to 10, and I’ve spent the whole fourth quarter low-key disappointed there isn’t more time on the clock. More guys to hit.
The final whistle blows. Just like that, it’s over, and my head starts filling back up with all the shit it usually carries around.
Coach’s voice in my ear about cleaning up my temper.
My dad’s voice, the one I haven’t actually heard in three years but somehow still rents space in my skull, telling me I’m going to end up exactly like him if I don’t watch it.
The reminder that one more suspension and my scholarship, aka the only thing standing between me and a future of absolutely nothing, goes away for good.
It’s all back, fighting for attention, but I don’t get to think about any of it for long. Not once the field floods.
They always do this after a blowout win.
Fans pour out of the stands the second the clock hits zero and the whistle blows.
They swarm us, slapping backs, screaming my number like it means something.
A guy I don’t know throws both arms around my neck and yells something about how I’m a legend.
I unwind his arms and give him a much gentler shove than instinct tells me to.
My body’s still running hot, my blood’s still up, and there’s nowhere left to put any of it.
That’s when I see her.
She’s small. Way too small to be out here getting shoved around by three hundred sweaty strangers, all elbows and shoulder pads.
She’s wearing a hoodie that’s way too big, and she’s got her hands cupped around her mouth, calling something I can’t hear over the noise, looking dead at me from behind a pair of thick glasses like she knows me.
I don’t know her. I would remember her. Frizzy brown hair that won’t stay slicked into a ponytail. Those glasses that take up half her face and make her eyes look huge.
She lifts a hand and does this awkward little wave.
Half confident, half like she regrets it the second she does it.
She ducks sideways through the crowd, coming toward me, and I’m about to ask what the hell she wants when a guy in a jersey slams into her from behind.
He wasn’t even looking. He was just caught up in the chaos of celebrating a win he watched from the stands.
That’s what people do. They celebrate as if they had something to do with it.
The hit makes her stumble forward hard enough that her glasses go flying off her face. They hit the turf somewhere near my left foot.
Nobody stops. That’s the part that gets me.
Nobody looks down. The crowd keeps surging forward like a tide that doesn’t know there’s a person drowning in it.
She’s on her hands and knees now, patting blindly at the ground in front of her, squinting hard enough that I can see the strain of it from six feet away.
Some idiot in a backwards ball cap steps right on glasses.
I hear the crunch even over all the noise.
Then somebody’s boot clips her shoulder, and she goes down the rest of the way, face-first onto the grass while dozens of people keep moving toward her.
That’s what gets me moving. I don’t think about it. I just go.
It takes two steps and one arm to get between her and the next idiot about to plow straight over her without noticing she exists.
It’s easy to haul her tiny body up by the back of her hoodie because she basically weighs nothing.
I plant her against my side, where nobody’s getting near her unless they want to find out what happens to people who hit me wrong.
“You good?” I ask. It comes out rougher than I meant it to, because my voice doesn’t really do soft.
She blinks up at me, squinting hard. It’s obvious she can barely see.
She’s got this round, freckled face. Her hair is wilder than it already was.
There are two deep dimples carved into her cheeks, even though she’s not smiling.
More like she’s bracing for impact. But she’s cute, even if she’s totally the opposite of what I usually go for.
“My glasses,” she says. Her voice cracks a little. “Somebody crushed my glasses.”
I look down. What’s left of them is in two pieces. One lens is cracked clean through, mangled into the grass. “Yeah. They did.”
“Oh, no.” She says it quietly, more to herself than to me. Like this is the worst possible outcome of an already bad night.
“Did you drive here?” I ask, ignoring everybody around us, focusing only on her. She looks so lost. Totally out of place and alone, no friends with her.
Her head bobs and her cheeks go red, and I’m pretty sure her eyes are filling with tears now.
“I did. Obviously, I can’t drive home like this.
” She squints harder, like that’s going to fix anything, then gives up and stares at the general blur of my chest. “I can’t see past about a foot in front of my face without them. ”
Which means somebody needs to get her home before she walks straight into traffic. I don’t volunteer for things. Ever. It’s not really what I do—playing the hero—mostly because nobody’s ever once played that role for me.
For some reason, my mouth is already moving before I think it through. “I’ll drive you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I didn’t say I had to.” I steer her away from the worst of the crowd with a hand at her shoulder. People part in front of me the way they always do. I’m not sure if it’s out of respect or fear. I guess it doesn’t really matter either way. “I said I would.”
And what does she do? I’m trying to be nice, which is something I never am, but she plants her feet. For somebody so small, she is tough to move. “I can’t leave yet.”
“What are you waiting for? You want to get trampled for real?”
“I’m looking for somebody.” She turns her head and scans the field like there’s any chance she’ll spot a single face. “His name is Everett Stone.”
It stops me cold.
She’s standing two feet away from him. Talking to him. About him.
And she has absolutely no idea. Without those glasses, I’m nothing but a wide, dark shape that smells like turf and sweat. In other words, the same as every other guy who played out here tonight.
I should tell her. I don’t, not yet, mostly because I want to hear what she says next without her getting weird about who’s listening. “What do you want with him?”
“I need somebody like him.” She says it fast, like she’s been rehearsing it the whole game.
“Somebody big. Intimidating. Somebody who looks like he wouldn’t think twice about breaking another guy’s jaw, because apparently, he’s already done that.
I know it sounds insane, but I need a specific set of skills here, and he seems to have them. ”
I almost laugh. I don’t, though, because she’s dead serious, standing there in a hoodie three sizes too big and squinting up at a blur that happens to be the exact guy she’s describing, telling him to his face that she needs his particular brand of violence for a job.
“Why do you need him?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’ve got time.”
She starts chewing on her lip. I can practically hear her fighting with herself. Wondering whether she should tell a complete stranger any more of her secrets. Whether this is a smart move.
Spoiler: it’s not a smart move.