Chapter 43
Hunter
Everyone has left the locker room, but I’m lingering here staring at the wall, waiting for I don’t know what. Divine intervention? Some excuse for why I can’t play today?
The rational side of me knows that neither of those things is going to happen. It’s the opening game. I’m the starting center back. It’s not an option for me to sit out unless I’ve suddenly vomited up my left kidney. And even then.
I picture Gracie’s face when she realizes I’ve cleared a team box for her to eat her favorite snacks and watch the game. I hope she likes the gesture, but the bigger part of me thinks it may be too trite and simple. She deserves more than text messages and big gestures.
But this is what I have.
I untie my left shoe and pull the laces tighter. They were tight enough before, but I’m stalling. The moment I go outside, there won’t be time for the self-loathing that still has a grip on me. Indulging it for a few more minutes might fight it out of my system before it swallows me whole.
Gracie’s face flits through my head, and I allow it to take over.
Images of her lying in my bed, her hair messy and cheeks flushed.
Memories of her laughing with me, at me…
no matter. The gentle sound of her laughter stirs me like a warm breeze.
Thoughts of the last time I saw her, disappointed in how stubborn and nearsighted I was being.
That image takes over, and I feel like I might actually puke up a kidney. There’s no one else to blame for the utter loneliness I feel, even when I have a team full of guys who have been my friends for years. Guys who have my back. I’d trade them all for one more night with her.
The emptiness in my gut feels like someone’s blown a hole straight through me. There’s a cavernous, hollow space where there once was warmth. Where there once was love.
I did this. I know I need to take responsibility for the ache in my heart. For a short while, I had everything I wanted. Gracie opened herself up to me fully and I turned her away, pretending it was for her own good.
If this is what I do when someone offers me her whole heart, maybe I deserve to be alone. I deserve the sadness I feel. I don’t deserve her. Never did.
No, that was the old narrative. I’m better than that.
There’s a tiny part of me that can’t give up. It’s what propels me on the field, and it’s maybe what Gracie’s analytics identified in me when she felt so strongly that I’m an asset to the team, despite my shortcomings.
Maybe she can still believe I’m an asset to her.
I shouldn’t be thinking any of these thoughts on game day. I’m a professional, for fuck’s sake. I’ve trained for difficult situations. On top of therapy, I started sessions with the team psychologist to help me get my head straight on the field.
It was the last thing I felt like doing, believe me. Having someone crawl inside my brain and tell me how to “manage my feelings” never ranked high on my list of fun ways to spend my time.
“You know what you need to do, but you’re letting in distractions,” Bern told me yesterday while I lay on a table in the physical therapy suite.
My eyes were closed, and my body felt limp after an easy training day designed to keep us loose while enforcing the muscle memory of every move we’ll make on the field.
Jimmy had finished stretching out my limbs and working his knuckles into the sore knots of muscle.
I should have felt restored and game ready.
Instead, I felt spent from relentless hours of fighting the thoughts that keep intruding into my game focus.
Then, Bern set me straight. I’m certainly not the first guy to get the yips or find himself in the middle of personal drama before a game.
Sports psychology is an entire industry for a reason.
“I know what I need to do. Doesn’t mean I can do it,” I told him, prepared to be aggravated if he was going to tell me what I already knew.
He made me stay still on the PT table, with my eyes closed, while he talked me through how to channel my frustrations into something useful in a game. I work to remind myself of those things now.
“If you feel a wave of sadness, outrun it, go faster,” Bern said.
I get a little revved up, all the stored glycogen in my system pushing sugar into my veins. I’m like a kid at the end of Halloween night with energy to burn.
“If you get angry with yourself, take it out on the ball.”
That won’t be a problem. I’m so angry, I’m going to need to pull myself back unless I want to split the ball in two and send it into the stands.
“If you find thoughts creeping in that don’t belong on the field, tell them to go fuck themselves and find an opponent who needs roughing up.
” My eyes popped open when Bern said that one because he never tells me to take anything out on another player.
He knows it barely takes a salty look for my temper to dial from one to a thousand. But he said what he said.
I run through the mantras and a few more in my head. Soon, I’m muttering them out loud, exhaling hard with each word until I feel ready.
Then I take the field with the rest of the team. My thoughts are only on soccer.
“Fuck!” I spit the word out under my breath and out of range of the referee.
I didn’t expect the Michigan striker to dive in when I stood in his path.
I know how he thinks. He always chooses a side.
This time, he went hard, I miscalculated, and that’s all it took for him to have a clear shot at the net.
He took it. And now we’re down a goal.
The fans are aghast. My teammates walk with their heads hanging, heading back to the centerline for kickoff.
Our keeper is shouting at me to corral my defenders.
Someone should have been covering the middle when I went to the side.
It’s as basic as it gets. But I’m so sure of myself that the other guys had a false sense of security.
I should have read the situation instead of the player. This is on me.
Jamming a toe in the turf, I get back into position.
A bead of sweat rolls off my forehead, and I wipe it with the back of my hand.
I don’t dare look into the team boxes to see if I can spot Gracie.
Not only would that take my focus from the game, but I’m not sure what seeing her there would do to my emotional state, and I’m already tearing up grass like a feral bull.
The whistle blows, and we kick off, playing it back in a drill that always works for us to set up the offense.
It plays back to our midfield, then our defenders, then back up the field as our opponents position themselves and wait for opportunities to turn the ball over.
We can’t give them any, not if we want to even up the score.
We take a shot, but the keeper is fast and dives for the corner, saving it to the cheer of the crowd. Our fans are fired up that we got a shot off. Their fans are happy about the save.
They take the ball up next, and I track it, calling to our midfielders because they need my perspective from the back. Defend, defend. We do our jobs. Take possession. The fans go wild.
We start pressing forward, moving the ball on the ground, getting close enough to shoot. Everyone’s in sync, calling to each other, getting in position to get a rebound off a shot that hits the post.
The play gets closer to the Michigan goal. We’re pressing hard, pressuring the defense. It’s getting crowded, more of our players moving up, our keeper well out of the box behind us, all of us watching and waiting.
Dario gets the ball and charges hard, taking two steps before firing off a shot. The Michigan defender slide tackles a second too late, catching his foot instead of the ball. The shot goes wide, Dario goes down, and the ref blows the whistle.
The fans are booing and yelling at the Michigan defender.
It’s a pretty clear penalty, but they’re going to look at replay footage to be sure.
Dario stays down, waiting for the medic to come over and assess his ankle.
No reason to get up too fast and risk injury.
Better to have the medic run through the tests and clear him.
If he comes out of the game, he can’t go back in.
I pace around, feeling like a caged animal.
Watching our guys get fouled boils my blood, and I was already running hot.
I know the defender wasn’t trying to hurt Dario, just like I know my slide tackles aren’t meant that way, but we all play it close.
Too close. And in the first game of the season, maybe I want to hurt an opponent a little bit, enough to warn him not to be reckless.
Dario gets cleared and stands up. The crowd cheers, and he goes to the corner for a penalty kick.
We’ve practiced set plays like this a thousand times, but there’s always a wildcard element.
The sun at a certain angle, a defender who’s an extra inch taller, the tiniest bit of spin on the ball when it comes off Dario’s foot.
But this time, everything goes right, and we get the point. Tie game.
Maybe that’s why I lose a tiny bit of focus.
Maybe knowing Dario has made up for my mistake earlier allows me to pull my mind off the accelerator for the time it takes to look up at the team box.
I shouldn’t be able to discern one person in the crowd, but Gracie isn’t any person.
She’s the salve to my aching heart, and I’m certain it’s her standing in front of her seat looking down on the field.
It’s not like we can make eye contact at this distance, but I convince myself that we can.
“If you feel a wave of sadness…” Bern’s advice jumbles in my brain, and I can’t remember whether I’m supposed to outrun my feelings or put them into the game. All I know is that the Michigan team is playing the ball up the field on three passes, and our midfielders are chasing their dust.
I back up, moving closer to our keeper, watching how the ball is being played, looking for the first opportunity to head it off if someone takes a shot. One pass to the wing, another back to center, I move forward. The ball goes back to the winger, who takes his shot.
It’s clean, but it hits the side post and ricochets back to our defender, who tries to clear it. But a Michigan attacking mid clips it, and it heads back toward our goal. I see red. I see Gracie. I run at the ball and the player who’s getting too close to the goal.
Slide tackle.
All ball.
But the attacker loses his footing and lurches toward me, taking us both down right at the side post. I feel the harsh scream of metal against the back of my head mingled with the din of the crowd, a tangle of cleats, and the smell of close-cropped grass.
And then everything goes dark.