Chapter 4 Reeve
FOUR
reeve
It’s a perfect early-September morning, and my Bronco, fresh off a repair, starts up smooth like she knows it’s going to be a good day.
There’s a hint of fall in the air, the mornings just cool enough for a jacket and the first leaves transitioning from green to gold.
I hit the weight room before my first class, then crush my Spanish quiz.
Too bad Spanish doesn’t do a damn thing for my football career; it’s always been my best subject.
After my business communication class, I have a long break before my afternoon class. I’m at the busy student union waiting for my buddy Cash when I catch sight of Maisy over by the sushi bar counter, staring me down, hands on her hips. Just when I thought I was having a great day.
Maisy Hartnell is Cash’s twin sister. She’s petite, whip-smart, and a nice enough girl who also happens to be a total hard-ass if you hire her as your tutor—which, unfortunately, I did.
“Reeve Dalton,” she scolds loudly as I approach. She holds up her phone, showing the text thread between us. “What the hell is this text about?”
“What up, girl? You’re looking good. What am I seeing here, a new haircut? Fresh threads?”
“More like five solid hours of sleep,” she says humorlessly, brushing a lock of curly hair off her neck. “Now stop bullshitting.” She thrusts her phone toward me like I forgot what I wrote to her last night. “Why would you want to put tutoring on hold? We’re finally starting to make progress.”
“Progress? Like a C instead of a C minus? Sorry, Mais, but I can’t find the extra time. I have too much to do right now.”
“I don’t need to hear about your sex life.”
I laugh. “Forgot how well you knew me. But I’m serious. I’ve got school, football, and now this job. I have no time for tutoring.”
“At least stick with one session a week,” she pleads.
I shake my head. “Any extra time I have goes to training. Period. That’s my priority.”
“You don’t have to tell me football is important. My brother’s on your team, so I get it. But come on, you owe it to yourself to work a little harder in school. So what if it takes you extra time to read or for material to sink in? Reeve, you’re really smart.”
“Uh-huh.” My gaze flicks around the room.
“I mean it. I started this as a favor to Cash, but I didn’t expect tutoring you would actually be satisfying.
” Maisy’s getting loud, animated. A few students look over to see what has her so heated.
“Once you catch on to things, you really get them and you think deeply. You don’t even need me to teach you much beyond some study habits that work with your brain instead of against it. ”
I’ve been hearing this since middle school: You’re smart, but .
. . I still can’t figure out how anyone can think that’s encouraging.
Millions of people are “smart but,” and millions more are just plain smart, no “but” needed.
I know I’m intelligent, but ADHD and dysgraphia have always made school challenging for me.
Thank god I only have a few months before I’m done with school forever.
I shake my head. “You know I appreciate you helping me, Mais, but it’s a waste of your time. Tutor someone who cares about academics. My degree is never gonna do shit for me. It’s football or nothing.”
A mess of dark, curly hair appears behind Maisy as Cash sneaks up on her. “Leave this man alone!” he bellows into her ear, making her jump.
“Fucking asshole!” she snaps, smacking her brother on the arm.
Cash chuckles. “No, but seriously. Leave this man alone. We don’t care for your books and pencils; we have a football season to win.”
“Unlike you, Reeve’s not a hopeless case.” She gives Cash an impatient look and then, narrowing her eyes, leans closer to him. “Did you get a second set of piercings?”
“Christ, it took you this long to notice? I need to buy bigger studs.”
“Please don’t. You’re already tacky as fuck,” I say.
Cash has a thing for jewelry—diamond studs in his ears, gold chain around his neck—not to mention a disdain for shirts.
I could draw his chest and back tattoos from memory, much to my annoyance.
“You ever noticed I pull in the kind of numbers you could only dream of, yet not a single karat of gold or diamonds adorns my body?”
“Okay, I think you guys are talking about pussy, so that’s my cue to leave,” Maisy says with a grimace. “But, Reeve, think about keeping up the tutoring. Please?”
“I’ll think about it,” I lie. “See you, Mais.”
Cash watches her walk away. “Like she doesn’t want to talk about pussy?”
“I think you can be a lesbian and still not want to discuss it with your brother.”
We grab a table, and Cash eases into a plastic chair with a huge sigh.
“You want food?” I ask. “I’m gonna get a sandwich.”
“Nah.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Same old shit.” Cash is usually a loudmouth who likes the spotlight almost as much as me, but he’s been mopey ever since a girl he barely knew dumped him last week.
“Are you really pouting over that girl? I didn’t know it was that serious.”
“It wasn’t. And I’m not pouting.”
“Then why aren’t you eating?”
“I’m annoyed. She said she didn’t want to hook up anymore because I flirt with other girls too much.”
“You do.”
“Okay, explain to me the difference between flirting and talking. I like to have fun. So what? It doesn’t mean anything.”
I shrug, feeling a little bad for Cash. Flirting is like breathing for him, and he’s right.
It doesn’t mean anything. But it never would have lasted with this girl anyway.
“You’re not cut out for a girlfriend, man, you know that.
And especially not now. We can’t afford to be weak if we want a winning season. ”
“Weak? You mean like Cam?” He smirks. “Yeah, that twelve hundred yards receiving he had last year was pretty weak.”
Cam is only one of my buddies who’ve gotten serious with girlfriends in the last year.
It’s wild to see my closest friends dropping like flies and talking about long-term plans with these girls when we’re not even out of college.
“Yeah, but watch our friends fucking crumble when they get dumped. I’m telling you, man, now is not the time to fall in love and start needing someone else to make you happy. We have what we need.”
Cash mumbles something noncommittal.
“Whatever, you didn’t even like her that much; you just don’t like that she dumped you.”
He smiles a little. “Maybe.”
“So now that your evenings are free, you can have some fun with me. Got plans after practice?”
His eyes light up. “What do you have in mind? Strip club?”
“Nope.”
“Happy hour?” With most of our games being on Saturdays, we don’t drink or party on Fridays. But that doesn’t mean we sit inside and read the Bible.
“No.”
“Something with girls at least?” he asks impatiently.
“Technically, but not like that. Come to the hospital with me.”
His smile disappears. “Dude, you know I’m the worst with sick kids. I don’t mean to be a dick, but I can’t do that again.”
I give him a little shove. “You don’t have to do anything but show up. It’ll get your mind off your stupid girl problems.”
“I’m so bad at this, man,” Cash says for the third time as we ride to the hospital after practice.
“Dude, you can waltz up to the hottest girls on campus and start talking about nothing, but you’re scared of cute little kids who look at you like you’re a celebrity?”
“I get awkward. I hate hospitals and I feel sad for the kids, and then I swear they can feel my pity.”
“I get it. I used to be like that, too, but who cares about your feelings? You’re there to make them smile, and all that takes is showing up.” I glance into the back seat. “That reminds me. I meant to bring a marker to sign some footballs and shirts and stuff.”
“Yeah, I see why you like doing this so much.”
I laugh. I do love signing autographs. Some of my friends, like Cam, can’t stand the attention and the celebrity treatment football players get on campus and around town, but me?
I love every minute. It’s proof I’m doing what I came here to do.
I grew up here in Shafer, and being a star in my own hometown? There’s nothing better.
But that’s not why I visit the children’s hospital.
When I was nine, I had a routine tonsillectomy that, somewhere along the way, turned out to be not so routine.
A complication landed me in the hospital for four days, one of which happened to be the day some Shafer football players were making the rounds to cheer up the kids.
Maybe it was because the few men I’d had in my life—my mom’s boyfriends and my loser uncle—were angry, scary, or just plain scumbags with no interest in me, but having these big, strong dudes be kind to me and listen to what I said and act like they wanted to get to know me was like meeting God.
It’s one of the few purely happy memories from my childhood, as truly life-changing as the day I met Cam Forrester.
From then on, all I wanted was to be a football player.
As soon as I was released from the hospital, I spent my time learning everything I could about the sport and trying to convince my mom to get me on a team.
I didn’t get my wish until sixth grade, but once I did, nothing else mattered.
From that first practice on a hot September afternoon, I knew this was what I was meant to do.
For once in my life, something was easy.
For the first time, I understood what it felt like to be good at something.
I’ll never forget that day in the hospital when those guys walked into the room and changed my life.
Once a year, around Thanksgiving, a group of Shafer football players, mascots, and cheerleaders visit the hospital as part of the athletics department’s commitment to philanthropy.
It’s fun, it’s low stress, and the kids light up the second they see us.
For me, it was a no-brainer to turn that annual tradition into regular visits.
I keep the visit short for Cash’s sake, but I manage to see one of my favorite kids, a nine-year-old girl who’s been an oncology patient for the last two years.
We play board games in the brightly colored family lounge with the ambulatory kids, which helps Cash break out of his awkwardness pretty quickly—as do the nurses who gather around us.
Some are football fans, most are fans of dudes who care about sick kids, but all of them fuss over us in a way Cash and I are suckers for.
I see a few familiar faces among the parents who smile as they watch their kids encircle us.
There’s this one mom who can’t be more than a few years older than me, but her face looks a little older every time I see her here with her son, a long-term patient—and I see her a lot.
She’s been there every time I’ve visited the hospital in the last year.
Every single time. I can never look at her for long.
There’s something about that level of devotion to her kid that cuts through me.
When we walk out of the building, the sun is minutes from dipping below the horizon and my head feels clear for the first time all week.
Visiting the hospital isn’t entirely selfless—I need it to keep my head on straight and pull myself out of my one-track mind, to remind me how good my life really is, how lucky I am to have friends and play football every week and walk out into September sunsets like this one.
“Wasn’t so bad, was it?” I ask Cash as we cut across the half-empty parking lot.
“Not really. They’re pretty damn cute.”
“Right?”
“And so are some of those nurses. Shit, you might have told me that part earlier.”
I smile. “Get your mind right.”
“Like you wouldn’t fuck some of those nurses?”
“Would and did.”
“Knew it. Which one?”
“Did you see the one with the black hair? Hot-pink scrubs?” We hop into the Bronco, and I slide my key into the ignition, hoping like I always do she starts up on the first try. Just because she’s fresh out of the shop doesn’t mean she won’t quit on me now.
“You fucked her? What, like in the hospital?”
“God, you’re an idiot,” I say as the engine hums to life. “No, I saw her out at a bar one night and we went back to her place.”
“So how was it?”
“Great. She’s definitely got a not-so-sweet side.” Actually, it was good, not great. But I like to tell stories.
“You want to find a sports bar and grab dinner? Cubs are on at eight.”
Eight is when Maisy and I would have had tutoring if I hadn’t quit on her. “I should do homework,” I say guiltily.
“On a Friday?”
“Gotta get to sleep early anyway. A little math will get me there faster.”
Back home in my room, I settle down at my desk with my laptop and some printouts Maisy gave me, but I can’t find anything to write with, despite tearing apart my backpack and desk.
I try to read through the notes on my laptop, and when my mind drifts to tomorrow’s game, I bust out headphones and open up the binaural beats app I keep hearing helps with concentration, but it does nothing for me.
The words I read refuse to stick in my brain.
I sigh and look up at the ceiling. No wonder my grades suck.
Lucky for me, the only thing that really matters is football, and I never zone out watching film.
On my phone, I log in to my account through the Shafer Athletics site, pull up the film my coaches want me to watch, and sit back to study it.
It’s a long road between here and a winning season, a Heisman Trophy, and a top draft spot. Might as well start now.