31. Trois Saisons
THIRTY-ONE
Avery staredwhile Cam counted footballs in the media room. “This is like the jar of jellybeans guessing game,” he said, twirling gold pens in his hands. “One hundred.”
“Seventy-five. Loser buys snacks tomorrow.”
He slapped her hand to make the bet. “How can we set this up? I need to sign it and then have you check it, and then you need someplace to keep the ones I’ve done so they don’t smear.”
“You need me to make sure you spelled your name right?”
“I’ve already screwed up more than one piece of gear when I sign a million things and get lost in my thoughts, and suddenly something random ends up scribbled on a T-shirt. I need you to catch the mistakes before I let them take these to whatever charity I give to now. Children’s hospital, I think.”
“You don’t even get a say in that?” Avery dragged chairs around the conference table, pushing them under so their backs touched the table’s edge and formed a wall to stop footballs from rolling away. Scooting the three boxes of footballs to the opposite end of the table, she surveyed her setup.
“I asked Shay and Pippa to figure that out for me. I like my work-life balance to include some time for my girl.”
Avery kissed his cheek. “I like being your girl. There’s nowhere I’d rather be than with you and your balls.”
He plucked one from a box and gripped it for a throw, then held it against her chest. “I like the shape of a football,” he said, rolling it slowly over her breasts and down to her stomach. She scooted her hips onto the table. Standing between her knees, he turned the ball in her lap so the end pressed into her thighs. “A prolate spheroid. It can slice through the air in a perfect spiral and bounce like a caffeinated ferret when it hits the ground. A well-thrown football goes farther than the same attempt with a baseball or tennis ball. The arc. The drop. It’s so fucking beautiful.”
“We’ll draw it for your next lesson.”
Avery’s chest heaved as he nudged the football between her legs. “Then I’ll get all dreamy and distracted,” he said.
“I like you all dreamy and distracted.”
“I’ll draw dreamy, distracted parabolas. I love letting off that long ball, because for a second, time freezes, and anything could happen. There are guys in the league who throw sidearm spirals. I’ll never be that good.”
“Come on.”
“If I wanted to play professionally, I’d be working on that already.”
“You don’t want to? Even for a little while?”
“Not for a minute.” He leaned forward and kissed her. “It’s part of what makes all this media shit torture. I don’t mind signing footballs for little kids. But some guy out there is hungry for all this. He wants his name simmering in scouts’ ears for the next three draft cycles, not mine. And I’m doing this for the scholarship and the payday so I can be a starving artist when I grow up.”
She twisted a lock of his hair in her fingers. “The scholarship’s no joke, Cam. I wouldn’t be here without mine. The amount of loans I’d need for an art degree here is just not workable when you consider the career path.”
“Exactly.” He pressed the ball harder between her legs, uncapped a gold pen, and drew a heart on it. “I think this one’s yours.”
They fell into an easy assembly line, with Avery catching the footballs where he forgot to write “#13” or where the “P” in his last name looked like a “D.” She lined up the signed balls to let the ink dry before rolling them to the end of the table and the fence of conference room chairs.
“What do you want to do after college then, since it’s not football?” she asked. “We know all this backstory stuff about each other. What’s next?”
“I plan on fleeing the country as soon as possible. Just like Jordan did. I heard he’s the new rock-paper-scissors king of the Easter Islands.”
“I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you make a Jordan joke.”
“How did I do?”
“Nailed it. Very appropriate for a man who loves sculpting rocks. Where will you go?”
He didn’t look up from the footballs. “Everywhere, maybe. Europe, mostly. I want to go to France and sit in front of ‘The Thinker’ and think. I want to see the caves as Lascaux and Chauvet. I want to go to Italy and soak in some greatness in Florence and Rome. Then I want to chisel pretty things out of rocks and sell them for a euro on a Mediterranean beach while I work on my tan.”
“And how will you feed yourself? You can’t even sign your own name correctly, Dorter.” She tapped an oddly shaped “P,” and handed a ball back.
“That’s the nice thing about France,” he said, slowing his words so he could follow her reactions. “Ask anyone who lives there and they’ll tell you man can live by bread and wine alone. And with a little NIL money cushioning me, I can live cheap without worrying about income for a little while. I wouldn’t mind being a lifelong student. I’ll teach American football in Germany for money and study art for my health.”
“You’ve got it all planned out.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve had so many wonderful teachers, so I really want to teach. The path to that isn’t entirely clear. Now that I’ve dropped the music minor, I should have time to get in some low-level education and pedagogy classes as electives. I would love to get an M.F.A. if I can manage it financially,” Avery said. “I want to visit Europe and Russia and see everything I’ve drawn and painted from other people’s work. You might be surprised to learn I have a little NIL cushion of my own.”
Cam lifted the marker just in time to stop it from skidding across the laces. “How?”
“My brother. His school did this thing with the players to get everybody on the right foot with all this money they suddenly had, and one thing was about estate planning, and how it had the potential to be a mess with guys getting money when they’re minors or still in some way not legally independent of their parents. Isaac banked pretty much everything besides what he paid for the boat, and I found out later that he had my name on the account for transfer if he died.”
She took the football from his outstretched hands and blew on the gold ink to dry it. “He told Justin before he did it, because he knew he would have his own payday for college ball, and I could earn scholarships but not cold, hard cash like they did. Our parents do fine, but we’re not rich, and my brothers both had football to pay the bills in college. Isaac wanted me to follow my dreams and have the same advantages, and he saved that for me whether he lived or died.”
“He sounds like an amazing brother.”
“He was. It’s not hard to see why Justin feels like he’s got some massive shoes to fill, but I know it’s also a lot easier to idolize someone when they’re gone.” She twirled the ball. “Do you ever feel like you’ve got to be two people to your parents?”
Cameron sat back in his chair. The memory was so old and unused it had dust on it. He was ten years old when his parents told him he had a twin, and the first thought in his head was how mad he was that he was supposed to have a brother to catch the balls he threw, and that brother vanished. The loss and betrayal and confusion hit him later and led to countless late-night ruminations, but his first thought was indignant, petty, and self-serving.
His brother would tell him when he made a good throw, and would help him up when he got knocked down. His brother would calm his parents’ endless worries about bees and injuries. He and his brother would be the greatest quarterback and receiver combination the league had ever seen. They’d set records and win rings together, and their busts would sit side-by-side in the hall of fame. And every time a real, live receiver dropped one of his passes, a piece of Cameron’s soul still cursed Jordan Porter, the brother he never knew, for not showing up to the game.
“I was a spoiled and over-protected only child.” He handed her another ball. “I pushed a lot for my freedom, but my folks always said they were basically smothering me because they loved me so much. And then when I found out, I didn’t think about their pain or what it did to shape their parenting. That stuff is lost on a kid, and I was only ten. I never thought I had to be both of us to make them happy, but I went through a lot of phases where I was almost like Justin. I was mad at Jordan for leaving us and turning us into the family we became.”
He heard Avery’s sharp intake of breath and continued.
“My life was harder because he wasn’t there. I should have had a brother who was my best friend, and I didn’t. I should have had parents who supported me playing ball, and I didn’t. Give me something that went wrong in my teen years, and I found a way to blame an infant.”
“Does he ever make it into your art?” Avery checked for dry ink and nudged a row of footballs back on the table. “My brother doesn’t. I’ve tried to make something in his memory, but nothing works. And any time I try to capture the feelings about him, whatever comes out feels stiff and pre-meditated.”
Cameron scrawled his name on a ball and inspected it before passing it on. “Nothing directly. Honestly, I don’t know. I’ll wrap everything in flowers and bees, but if anything I make has anything to do with him, it’s deep in the subtext, because I don’t intend it.”
He paused, marker poised over another football. “I wonder if you’d reconsider doing the Jordan panels you talked about a while ago. It’s an interesting motif for a loss. And if you worry something might be inappropriate, I’ll snap some pics and send him more texts he can ignore, and we’ll say we tried.”
She giggled. “Bubblegum pop art comics. Now you’ve got me dreaming again.”
“Never stop. I love that look in your eyes.” He kissed her hand. “Run with it. I can’t wait to see what you do.”
“First things first. Your tattoo will be full of flowers,” she said. “And now maybe I’ll have to sketch in some French lavender for you. You need to get moving on your French if you think you’re going to live there in a few years.”
“Je parle couramment.” I’m fluent.
She sat straighter. “You are not.”
“I’ve been in French classes since fourth grade. Both of my parents are part French. I knew every word when you read Sense and Sensibility to me in the lounge.” He sat back and relished her shocked smile. “Edward declaring his love for Elinor. I could tell you thought you were annoying me, but I loved every minute.”
“Cameron Porter, you little sneak. I want to hear French with that Southern accent.”
“Then come with me.”
“Come where?”
“Come with me to Knoxville next weekend for the game. Coach okayed me skipping the bus. I’ll drive down Saturday morning and back on Sunday evening so I can see my mom and dad for a little bit. Come with me.”
“Meet the parents?”
He grabbed the football with the heart he’d drawn earlier and wrote on it.
Encore trois saisons, ma chère.
“Viens avec moi,” he said, placing it in her hands. “After three more seasons, come with me. Everywhere.”