13. The Loss
THIRTEEN
Sunday morning hithim like a car wreck.
From his neck to his knees, everything hurt. A weekend without a serious knock to the head was always a win, but other than that, the game was a painful loss, and his first as a starter.
The team. God, how he let them all down. Not one, but two interceptions, one of them entirely his fault. Checkdowns for no gain when he read the defense wrong and was pressured out of the gate. Three and out, three and out. He managed a few good balls and found Will Bennett in the end zone with a minute left to play—not enough to win it, but it made the score palatable instead of pathetic.
Groaning, he buried his face in his pillow. He wished he could blame Avery for sidetracking him, so he could tell himself she wasn’t worth it. But just like in the weeks before, she was nowhere in his mind on the field. He didn’t even remember to check the size of Zack Tucker’s helmet for his drawing until the bus ride home.
Cam flipped the switch like he did for years before he met her, and nothing outside the game mattered. He was heads-down with either the quarterbacks’ coach or the head coach every time the defense took the field, and didn’t even think to watch Isaac Fields or Justin Whitman. For every read and every progression, he was as tuned in as he could be, and he just got it wrong.
Every replay stung like a bee on his throwing arm and tightened his throat.
It wasn’t her. He tried with everything he had and failed his team. The coaches, the alumni, and the entire university saw the headline only minutes after the whistle blasted: Iowa Picks off Porter, UND Falls to 2-1. The first interception was a bobbled catch and not entirely his fault, but that second one was his to own, and the opponent scored on it. Pick-six. He laid that ball in their cornerback’s hands like it was a baby. No one could say it wasn’t his fault.
He answered a few questions for the media on his way into the tunnel. Shelby would have his ass for rambling about growing as a team from the experience, instead of saying something about “battling adversity.” He did his best with the guys in the locker room when it was over, and that wasn’t good enough either.
The bus ride home helped numb him with the vibrations from the highway, and Cam distracted himself from his mental replays by watching the chat blow up with messages from less-frequent visitors—guys from Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida. During the week, they were a smaller crew of regulars, but the active members converged in a virtual huddle on game days. The usual cyclone of Saturday trash talk was a little boost on a bus full of grumbling, exhausted teammates.
That boost gave him the horrible idea to swing by The Farm for the party when they got home.
Avery was there with Isaac, who looked as fresh and bright-eyed as he did every morning at the gym—not like a guy who spent forty minutes on the field smashing into the brick wall of Iowa’s offensive line, or sprinting like a madman after their receivers. He never left her side.
She smiled and waved when she saw Cam enter, but didn’t approach to talk. He couldn’t tell in the low light of the living room, but he suspected that her blue-and-white dress made her blue eyes glow, and if he saw her someplace with better lighting—if they both ended up in the kitchen again—he might forget how to form sentences.
He ached to touch her, even something innocent—a hug hello, a hand grazing her back, a brush of his fingers over her bare arm—and when he saw Isaac poke her ribs to make her laugh, his throat clenched like it had the week before. He fought it, mingling like a normal person as long as he could before he started gasping for breath and moved outside where he could blame the bonfire smoke for his hoarse cough.
Only days before, he claimed an opportunity to redeem himself with her. She wasn’t the only one whose forgiveness he needed now. He smiled for everyone trying to lift his spirits. Then he slammed two shots of whisky, chugged a bottle of water, and made it home before the liquor hit.
Hayden
Paging @CoryThatcher, where are you? It’s Sunday morning, and I’d like my victory song.
Marshall
Paging @CoryThatcher @EthanEngel
We need photo share turned back on.
Ethan
I got you.
Ethan Engel has enabled photo sharing.
Marshall
photo>
Ethan
LOOK AT YOU TWO!!!
Goddammit, paging @CoryThatcher, he loves the meetups. He gets all teary.
Hayden
That game was a dogfight. Marsh’s secondary torched us in the first half. I only logged about a hundred yards total on six completions, and my hips are fucking broken.
Cameron
Mine too, from sliding. Half of my passing plays ended in scrambles. Iowa’s no joke this year. That loss hurt.
Marshall
Your run game carried you, Hammy.
Cam, at least you got a few yards. You know they didn’t see it coming.
Cameron
Looking a little sturdy, yet agile in that pic, Marsh. Can I interest you in some soup?
Marshall
Man, I say we call them and make a deal.
Hammy here is a little too scrawny for Chunky Quarterback Soup, but the boy’s still got a little Boston accent, so he can do the chowder.
Dale
I love that you guys are buddies now. For today, anyway.
Cameron
Chipper, how’d the finger hold up?
Dale
It’s still attached. I keep hearing it’s an okay excuse for the loss, but I could have done better than I did.
Cameron
Right there with you, brother. Pain this morning, but nothing like that locker room speech. I can’t even call it a speech.
Go team. Yay. We’ll get ‘em next week, boys.
Dale
What the hell happened to your ankle in the fourth? Your limp made the highlights.
Hayden
Uh-oh. You’d better be full speed when I meet you, or I’ll feel bad kicking your ass.
JK you know I won’t.
Cameron
Highlights. Awesome.
I just rolled it a little. I could blame it for that ugly interception, but I won’t. Mama would say it ain’t nothing a little spit ’n’ baling wire won’t fix.
Marshall
Where are you from?
Cameron
Just over yonder.
West of Knoxville.
Ethan
Your mom and dad coming to our game in November?
Cameron
That’s the plan. You and I can get our own fifty-yard line selfie. Hammy, we’ll get ours in a few weeks.
Marshall
WE’LL MAKE AN ALBUM!
Dale
For real, though, where’s Thatch? He put up great numbers and looked hyped in the postgame clips.
Ethan
People probably blew up his phone after that game he had. The guy is looking elite, sore ribs or not. I’ll give him a call.
Cameron Porter has created a private chat.
Cameron
Paging @JordanAckerman
He didn’t have much longer. September twenty-ninth, wreathed in grim, black ink, was only days away. Cam had a note in his phone with lines upon lines of what to say if his friend responded in the chat, and knew he’d abandon it and just spill his angry guts if Jordan actually replied.
If his timeline added up, he had little right to be angry—not with Jordan, anyway. With so many conversations left unfinished, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure where to direct his selfish rage.
Look what you left for me.
A starting gig, a stacked team to win with, and opportunities for lucrative endorsements. What benchwarmer didn’t want that? Three games into the season, the rumors in the locker room either disappeared or turned to jokes. Jordan’s in witness protection in Central Europe. Jordan’s playing in the Canadian Football League under an assumed name. Jordan’s living it up with a billionaire’s widow on a yacht. Cam had listened to his friend ramble about his various love interests, and shoved away the idea that one might have been Shelby from P.R.
After all this, you’re the one who quits? After all your preaching at me, you’re the one who doesn’t show up to camp?
The words on the screen screamed Jordan’s treason. Cam should be worried for his friend, not pissed about the massive payout he was getting for his extra time and stress. If it was what he suspected, the thoughts that boiled his blood were unfair.
Why did there have to be any “if” about it? Jordan had no reason to keep him in the dark. The coaches and the media and even the rest of the team, sure. But if his suspicions were correct, Cam was the one person he should have felt most comfortable telling.
You asked me to have your back. You asked me not to transfer for a starting gig somewhere else, and look what you left for me.
Lots of starters skipped bowl games to let backups play, or to avoid injury before the draft. Jordan did just that in their bowl game the previous December. As a red-shirt freshman, Cam led the team to victory and threw for two hundred and sixty yards and two touchdowns. In the days that followed, he received under-the-table messages from other schools encouraging him to enter the transfer portal, with dollar signs to show they would make his move worth the trouble.
“The team needs you to come back next year,” Jordan said the day the transfer window closed. He whacked the brim of Cam’s hat, then flipped it sideways. “There’s unfinished business.”