Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
reeve
“Shoulder’s feeling good, right?” Coach Haskins greets me unceremoniously as he walks into his office, where I’ve been waiting for him the last fifteen minutes.
I sit up, the ancient leather chair beneath me creaking painfully. “One hundred percent.”
“Good.” He puts his fingers on the scratched wooden surface of his desk but doesn’t sit. “And it looks like you’ve pulled your head out of your ass, so we’ll just consider that abomination of a performance two weeks ago a fluke, huh?”
I swallow hard. “That’s right. Never going to happen again.”
He nods. “Anything less than what I saw from you last weekend isn’t acceptable, Dalton. I consider that not even showing up.”
“Yes, sir.” My friends’ words outside the strip club were a wake-up call.
If I’d had any space left for pain, they might have hurt me so bad I’d have knocked Cash’s fucking teeth out, because the last thing I want to be—the last thing I ever thought I could be—is a player whose entire team has lost faith in him. But he was right.
To the outside world, I was working as hard as any athlete, but I wasn’t working as hard as I could have.
I let myself believe it should come easy, like it always has for me.
Rough patch? Doesn’t happen to Reeve Dalton.
Until it did. Since then, my life has been nothing but football and sleep.
I’ve had to accept I’m not invincible. Even I have to work for what I want.
Last weekend, at our game in Indiana, I put on the kind of performance that’s always been expected of me, and it felt phenomenal. But it couldn’t erase my appalling play from the week before.
Coach turns and looks at the pictures on his walls, framed photos of Shafer teams and legendary players, and shakes his head like he’s having a silent conversation with them and they’re all saying the same thing: Can you believe this fucking kid?
His office could pass for an unkempt museum of Shafer football history: dark wood shelves crammed with signed footballs, vintage helmets, yellowed game tickets and programs, all positioned haphazardly and coated with a layer of dust I can see from here.
The photos on the wall, though, are spotless.
“So.” Coach turns back to me and gives me a long look. “How you feeling about the Heisman?”
My chest feels heavy and my stomach churns. “Not as good as I felt back in summer.”
“Yeah. This wasn’t the season we expected from you.” He looks down at his desk, probably lost in thought over what might have been if I hadn’t fucked up this year. “Lucky for you, you’re not the only candidate who lost a little of his shine on the field.”
I nod, but I can’t look him in the eye.
He leans forward. “But you’re still one of the best quarterbacks in the country and the best this university has ever seen.” I must look really pathetic, because Coach Haskins usually shows zero regrets about making his players feel like shit.
“Thanks, Coach.”
“And your season isn’t over yet, so make something of it. Don’t leave until you’ve gotten what you came for. That power is yours, son.” He clears his throat and angles his head toward the wall of photos again. Is he getting emotional? “I don’t want you leaving here with regrets.”
I swallow down the shame that’s become a too-familiar feeling and let Coach’s words take its place. Nothing’s over yet. I can end this season—this college career—the way I always dreamed I would. I have one more chance, and that’s enough.
After I leave Coach’s office, I join the other guys in the weight room.
I get a late start and I move slowly, focusing on the work and trying not to get caught up in the usual chitchat, so I’m one of the last guys to leave.
But Cam, Lorenzo, and Cash are waiting for me in the parking lot when I walk out.
“There’s the man,” Lorenzo says when he sees me. “Boy, I think you got your swagger back.”
“Shit, I better. I won’t live to see Sunday if I disappoint Coach again.”
Cam claps me on the back when I reach the group. “Nah, you’re solid. You’re offensive player of the week and besides, final home game of the season is always when number twenty-seven shows the world he’s got the biggest arm in the country.”
We head for Cam’s truck. Like every Thursday, we’re doing dinner at Viaggio’s. Cash and I jostle for shotgun like always.
“Ha ha, you bitch!” Cash crows as he vaults himself into the front seat.
“That’s what? Twenty to fourteen in my favor, right?
” Cash and I have been keeping track of this since sophomore year, when our dinner tradition started.
Lorenzo doesn’t even bother trying to pull shotgun in Cam’s ride until the season ends.
“Yeah, you get your wins where you can,” I tell him.
“Damn straight. Not all of us pull the kind of numbers that can earn you the biggest prize in college sports.” Heisman talk again; and right on cue, there’s that sick feeling in my stomach.
“Reminds me,” Lorenzo says with a grin as he gets into the back seat with me. “I got a hotel room in NYC for the big weekend. Me and Cash are gonna be roommates just like old times.”
“Fucking gross. I can still smell your sophomore dorm room,” Cam says.
“Seriously?” I ask Lorenzo. “Come on, man, don’t waste your money. I can’t even get you into the ceremony.”
“Who cares? I want to be the first to congratulate you when you walk out.”
Cash nods. “Yeah, and I want to be the first to light the match that burns that bitch to the ground if you don’t win.”
I shake my head, but I can’t help smiling.
These are the best dudes in the world. I can’t believe in two days we’ll walk onto Shafer Field together for the last time.
We’ve been through the grind together, through the minutes where we felt like kings of the fucking world and days where we questioned whether the game was really worth the thousands of sacrifices, big and small.
To think I’d consider it a success to step out onto a football field next year without them at my side.
At dinner, my friends have me laughing like I haven’t laughed in weeks.
Maybe we get a little emo a couple times when we all realize that we can come back to Viaggio’s for dinner whenever we want, but this night is the last of its kind.
Afterward, they head out to meet some other guys at a bar, but I need some alone time, so I walk home.
The good feelings from dinner are long gone by the time I get back to campus. I’m thinking about her again.
I can’t live with this feeling I’ve been dragging around since Jade walked away from me.
It’s not just heartbreak, it’s unfinished business, things I need to tell her, questions I need to ask.
It’s my brain’s refusal to accept that that scene on the sidewalk outside the bar was really the end of us.
It doesn’t feel right. It’s losing everything Jade meant to me even before I fell in love with her.
She was my supporter, the one I didn’t have to put on a happy face for.
She was the one who could make me feel like I brought home the win of the year when I didn’t do a thing that day except make her smile.
I know I have to move on, stop fighting with myself by asking whether it could have turned out any different, stop wondering if she might change her mind if I beg hard enough. Reality, not hypotheticals, is where I want to live.
What we had was perfection, and now it’s over.
Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe if I say it enough times, I’ll stop wishing she’d show up at my door and tell me she needs me like I need her.
But at home I take her red earring from my desk drawer and leave it on my bedside table.
Saturday I’ll pin it somewhere safe and hidden under my jersey, the one piece of her I won’t let go.