Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Asher
I know I’m alone in bed before I even open my eyes. After weeks of waking up wrapped around a soft body, it’s Julie’s absence that rouses me. I roll over and peer at the bathroom, but it’s empty and dark. Then I hear it. Her murmured voice, the clanging of a pan, the refrigerator door opening and closing. I smile into the dim morning light, enjoying the sounds of her moving around my house. It sounds like home.
Pushing myself out of bed, I stretch and wince at the ache in my shoulder. The stab of pain is a cattle prod to my brain, and I immediately remember what today is. My appointment with the team doctor. Almost certainly an MRI of my shoulder. The day all the unknowns become known. Or at least less unknown. The day that will, almost certainly, determine the future of my career. Or possibly the end of it. After last night, I thought I was prepared, but the anxiety churning in my gut tells me that I was wrong.
Needing to not be alone with my thoughts, I use the bathroom and brush my teeth before pulling on a pair of joggers and heading downstairs to see what my girl is up to. When I get to the kitchen, she’s standing at the stove with her back to me, a spatula in one hand and a dish towel in the other, a pan full of vegetables sitting on the unlit stove. Her phone is pressed between her ear and her shoulder, and one of my t-shirts skims her thighs. The sight of her in my kitchen, wearing my clothes and doing…whatever it is she’s doing with the vegetables that look like someone took a hatchet to them chases away my morning angst and has warmth spreading right through me.
“Wait, how long do these vegetables need to cook before I pour in the eggs?” She pauses, listening to whoever is on the other end of the phone.
“Fuck off, Ben. Until they’re done isn’t helpful. Give it to me in minutes. You know I don’t work well in abstractions.” I snicker and walk to her, wrapping my arms around her waist from behind and bending to kiss her neck. She relaxes back into me at the same time she lets out an exasperated sigh.
“Well, I would like to thank you for being absolutely no help at all. Don’t come to me the next time you need help figuring out a contract for the bar. Your days of free legal advice are over.” She hits the screen to end the call and tosses the phone onto the counter before turning around in my arms. With her hair piled up on her head and her face scrubbed clean, she looks so damn cute that I lean in and kiss her nose.
“Whatcha doing, Juliette?”
She looks a little embarrassed. “Trying to make breakfast.”
“But you hate cooking.”
“I know, but I remember you telling me about your lucky game day breakfast your mom used to make for you when you were in high school and how you make it for yourself now. I know it’s not a game day, but it is a pretty important day where you could use a little luck, so I thought I would try and make it for you. Except when I got down here, I remembered I hate cooking because I suck at it. And I hate sucking at things. So, I called Ben who is, like, the breakfast king, and he was no help even though he makes omelets for Hallie every damn morning. Why is it so hard to tell me how long to cook a pepper for?”
I chuckle, then cup her neck with one hand and tip her head up, bringing my mouth to hers in a long, slow, dizzying kiss. When we break apart, Julie looks marginally less disgruntled.
“Okay, I mean, I don’t think I deserve a reward when I can’t even make breakfast like a regular human, but there are worse ways than that to start a morning.”
I wink at her, taking the spatula from her hand, setting it on the counter, and slinging the dish towel over my bare shoulder.
“So damn hot,” Julie mumbles.
Grinning, I guide her to one of the barstools that line the kitchen island, sit her down on it, and rest my hands on the island on either side of her, caging her in. “I can think of about ten better ways to start a morning than that, but they all involve you being naked in my bed and, sadly, we don’t have time for that just now. But we do have time for breakfast, which I’ll make. Ben isn’t the only breakfast king.”
Julie’s face brightens. “Does that mean you’ll make me breakfast every morning like Ben does for Hallie? That smug queen comes waltzing into the office every morning, caffeinated and well fed and totally sexed up and it’s beneath me to be jealous of that, but you know what?”
I grin at her, loving morning, playful Julie. “You’re jealous of that?”
She points a finger right at my chest. “Bet your ass I am.”
“Juliette, I will keep you so caffeinated, well fed, and sexed up that even Hallie herself will be green with envy. ”
“If this is what having a boyfriend is like, I should have gotten one forever ago.”
“Fuck no you shouldn’t have. No boyfriends unless they’re me.”
She gives me a sly smile. “I love it when you talk jealous to me.”
“I’ll give you jealous.” I lean in and kiss her neck, before latching on with my teeth, biting gently and growling into her skin, relishing the warmth and smell of her.
“Okay!” she laughs. “I think I was promised breakfast.”
“At your service,” I say, “but I’ll caffeinate you first.”
“Oh, I figured that out myself.” She points to a half full coffee mug I missed. “Googled the instructions to the espresso machine when I woke up.”
“You figured out that monstrosity but had to call Ben to ask how to cook a pepper?”
She shrugs. “Yeah, so?”
I just look at her, awed by all of her complexities and contradictions, hoping that I get to learn something new about her every day. “I adore you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I adore you too, but you need your lucky breakfast, and I’m starving too.”
“I’m a slave for you, Juliette.”
I pull back and give her one last kiss on the forehead before I circle the island. I flick on the burner under the pan then open a cabinet, grabbing a glass and filling it with ice before pressing it against the Dr. Pepper dispenser. Then I open the drawer with her peppermint Hershey Kisses in them and toss her a couple, which she catches handily and with a smile. I grab a handful of gummy worms from the drawer below for myself.
She studies me as she unwraps the candy. “Are you nervous about today? That’s probably a stupid question—of course you’re nervous about today. But I want to give you the space to talk about it if you want to.”
I lean against the island opposite her and absently trace circles around her wrist while I consider what she said and decide to give her the full truth of it. “I’m not nervous. I’m fucking terrified.” She nods, like she expected this answer, but doesn’t say anything, giving me the time to collect my thoughts.
“They could tell me my playing days are over.”
She rests a hand over mine. “They could.”
Somehow, her frank agreement does more to calm my nerves than if she had tried to slap a happy face on this and tell me everything is going to be okay.
“I don’t know how it’s going to go or what they’ll find, and it’s the unknown that’s getting to me. I wish I could fast forward time to tonight when I’ll at least know one way or another.”
“Well, I can’t fast forward time, but I can come back here after work, if you want that.”
“I want,” I say immediately. “I don’t know what’s going to happen today, but what I do know for sure is I want you here at the end of it, no matter what it is.”
“Then I’ll be here.”
“Thank you,” I lift her hand, kissing her palm before standing to check the stove.
“Ash,” she says, before I can turn all the way around.
I lean back down against the counter, and she takes my hand in hers. “Whatever happens, I’m here, okay?”
I wonder if she can see the hearts shooting out of my eyes. “Juliette, I love you madly.”
“I love you too,” she says, reaching over and stealing one of my gummy worms.
“I love you so much I won’t even be salty that you took my last red one. ”
She smirks at me. “It was right there and it’s the best flavor; what do you expect?”
“Baby, you can eat all my red gummy worms from now until eternity.”
“You really do love me.”
I lift her hand, kissing her knuckles this time. “You honestly have no idea.”
This time I do turn back to the stove with a lightness in my chest that wasn’t there five minutes ago, and I owe every ounce of it to her.
“Sorry it took so long, Asher.”
I’m sitting in Doc’s office, my knee bouncing up and down. My palms are sweating, and my heart is beating so fast I’m legitimately afraid it might break a rib. I’m sure my blood pressure is high enough that there’s a non-zero chance I’ll stroke out right here on the floor and then it won’t matter whether my shoulder is fucked or not.
“No problem. I appreciate you coming in today,” I say, amazed at how calm my voice sounds when I am freaking the fuck out on the inside.
“It’s no problem at all,” he says, his face giving nothing away as he sits down, waking up his computer and typing in his password. He clicks around, pulling up an image and spinning the monitor around to face me. I’ve been around the league long enough to sort of know what I’m looking at. It’s an MRI of my shoulder, but that’s the extent of my understanding. I suddenly wish fervently that radiology had been a part of pre-med.
“Okay, so this is the MRI we did of your shoulder this morning.” He uses his pen to point to a spot on the image. “This is your joint. Now, in a healthy joint, we typically see what looks almost like a cushion between the bones. That’s cartilage, and it helps the parts of your bone move easily against each other. What we see on your MRI here is that the cushion is completely gone, which means your bones are essentially grinding against each other every time you move your shoulder, causing substantial inflammation and, likely, a lot of your pain.”
He points to another part of the image. “And here you have a number of bone spurs, leading to joint swelling. What we are looking at here is extremely advanced arthritis. You mentioned earlier that you have been in pain since the hit you took in the last playoff game, but what I’m seeing on this MRI, and the results of the range-of-motion tests you did earlier, leads me to believe that you have been in pain for a great deal longer than that. Am I correct?”
His eyes are kind, and I don’t have it in me to lie, so I nod. “Yes,” I say, my voice gravelly.
He nods in understanding and doesn’t ask me exactly how long I’ve been in pain. I can see he already knows, based on the MRI, and my stomach sinks.
He turns the screen back around and leans forward, resting his arms on his desk. “Asher, I have been working with professional athletes for a very long time and rarely, in all my years, have I seen a player with a greater love for the game than you. You are one of the most dedicated athletes I have ever had the privilege to know, and I wish more than anything I could tell you that you have a long career ahead of you. But based on these scan results and the results of your physical…”
“Just tell me,” I interrupt him, not able to sit still much longer without knowing the full truth of it. Then I take a deep breath, scrubbing my shaking hands over my face. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Doc. I didn’t mean to snap. I just need to know. ”
“Asher, your playing days are over.”
I feel the force of his words like a full body impact. My breath wheezes out of my lungs, and I struggle to take in oxygen. Dropping my head forward between my shoulders, I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to get my body under control, forcing myself to stay seated when my ears ring and my fight or flight instinct screams at me to get up and flee. To outrun this bombshell until it ceases to exist. I wish fervently that I was still in my kitchen laughing while Julie tries to steal my gummy worms instead of sitting in this office while the death knell of the career that has been the driving force for most of my life reverberates off the walls.
I take a jagged breath and force words up my throat. “There’s no chance I can play again?”
“Asher I’m honestly surprised you’re not in agonizing, debilitating pain all day every day. Your shoulder is a mess, and your range-of-motion is limited enough that I’m shocked you threw as well as you did in your final game.”
Final game . I have played my final football game. I can’t grasp the enormity of that fact.
“Without the repetitive motion of constantly throwing a football, and with physical therapy, you should get your range of motion back and limit your pain. But it’s likely that at some point in the future you are going to need surgery on your shoulder. Potentially a full joint replacement. I can’t clear you to play in this condition. No doctor would. And unfortunately, arthritis, while manageable, is irreversible. I’m so sorry, son. I wish I had better news.”
I sit there, harsh, ragged breaths tearing out of me, my head spinning from the news and, likely, from lack of oxygen. The ringing in my ears gets louder and louder until I have a full-blown fire alarm blaring in my head. Sweat drips down my back and my heart pounds and it suddenly feels like the walls are closing in, squeezing me on all sides. I stand quickly, wavering a bit before I get my balance.
“Thanks, Doc,” I manage. “I’ll be in touch about the PT and all that.”
Then I rush out of his office, blindly making my way out of the stadium, praying to a god I don’t even believe in to take me anywhere but here.