KNIGHT #2
I hear the rustle of her legs on the couch, the blanket, and then she’s beside me with one arm around my back and her other hand on my forearm.
“This is going to be hard,” she says. “But we’re all gonna be okay.
I promise, Knight. Wherever he is, I’m sure he’s screaming mad that this is how he left us. ”
I sob, and it’s a broken sounding thing. A wail with a complete collapse of my shoulders. Then I suck it up again and wipe my face, dropping my arms.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I say.
She rubs my back in long, soothing strokes. “No. It doesn’t. And it’s beyond fucking unfair. But I swear to God, if anybody had a good life, it was that man. Your dad. Well-off. Adored. Loved so, so much by so much family. He even has grandkids.”
“He and I were always fighting. The last time I saw him, I didn’t even let him give me a hug.”
She runs a hand soothingly through my hair.
“Fighting and having a disagreement aren’t the same thing.
You two had so many good years before the last couple.
You were close, and he loved you so much.
More than that, he deeply understood what was driving you.
He always understood that. How could he not? You two were always so alike.”
Talking about my father in the past tense is not something I want to get used to. I hate it.
“He loved you so much, Knight,” she says again. “And maybe sometimes that felt like too much.”
The tears, angry and bitter ones, are streaming again.
My nose is running, and I wipe that with my sleeve, but there’s no point trying to make the tears stop.
Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.
I haven’t lost a grandparent or even a coach.
Nothing I’ve ever been through in my life has prepared me for how massive and earth shattering this grief is.
“Why didn’t he want me to play?” I ask weakly.
“Oh, honey, he did.”
“Not according to him. He thought I should be studying fucking accounting or something, like playing football is a huge waste of my time. Did he think I wasn’t good enough?”
“Anyone with eyes can see you’re good enough. When you won the Rose Bowl, he even told me he thought you were better than him. Your uncles think you are, too.”
“Then what?” What were all those fights about if not that?
“He was just worried. The same way I worry.” Her eyes search mine, and I search hers back, not understanding, still—this constant pushing me in some other direction—away from the only dream I ever had.
“Why?” I finally ask.
She gulps down a swallow. “Because the NFL isn’t always the kindest place.”
I frown. “Neither is the SEC.”
“We just…we weren’t sure you could be happy there, and all a parent wants for their children is for them to be happy.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” I ask, nearing yet another breaking point.
“Knight,” she whispers, and her eyes seem to plead with me now.
But I can’t read her mind. “What?”
Her hand cups my face, and she looks directly into my eyes. “You know what.”
But I don’t. The only thing that could ever make me unhappy is losing someone I love.
Or, maybe, temporarily, not getting into the NFL.
But even I think I would get over that. It’d be humiliating for sure, but as my father always loved to say, I do have options, and before yesterday, I was a pretty optimistic person.
My frustration is back, eclipsing the sadness for a moment and giving me a reprieve from all the tears. “No. I don’t know. If I’m good enough—if I’m better even—then why wouldn’t I be happy doing what I want to do—what I’ve always wanted to do?”
She sighs, dropping her gaze and the hand on my face as she sits back on the couch.
In that same moment, my phone buzzes in my pocket, and I dig it out.
Sullivan’s picture is on the screen. In the photo, he’s sitting in the window seat, tablet balanced on his folded knees, and he’s smiling for the camera.
Not a bright smile, but a beautiful one.
My mom lets out a small whimper. “I recognize him.”
And then it clicks.
Not looking away from her, I answer the call. “Hey.”
“I’m in Iowa,” he says. “Please clap.”
“That was fast.”
“My ass is sore from sitting already. I should get one of those foam cushions for these trips.”
“Did you just call to give me that update?”
“I figured you’d want to know.”
My eyes still fixed on my mother’s, I say, “I have your location on my phone, remember?”
Her brows rise slightly.
Sullivan chuckles. “Right. Well, if you see me stopped at one place too long, tell me to get my ass back on the road.”
“Your sore ass.”
“My very, very sore ass.”
“I love you,” I say.
My mom’s lips press together, and more tears glisten in her eyes.
“I love you, too. I’ll call you from Michigan.”
“Call me whenever. Drive safe.”
“See you soon.”
“Bye.” I hang up and show her the phone and Sullivan’s picture before it blinks off the screen. “My boyfriend.”
She takes a shuddery gasp, and the tears spill again. She nods. “I know.”
Everything she’s said today falls shakily into place. “He’s from here,” I tell her. “Sunrise Point. He lives on the other side of town.”
“You go to school together?”
“We met the first week of freshman year.”
She inhales sharply. “That’s quite a coincidence.”
“He’s a music major. USM has one of the best fine arts programs. So maybe just lucky.”
She wipes at her face with the blanket even though there’s a box of tissues and multiple wads of them on the coffee table. “I shouldn’t say I knew, just that I hoped it was him. He seemed so…devoted is such an old-fashioned word…”
“He has a lot of friends on the team,” I say, but then more of her words register. “You hoped…how did you know?”
“Your father and I…we’ve known for a long time.”
That’s not what I asked. “But how?”
She throws up her hands briefly before they drop with a thud back onto the couch. “No girlfriend in high school, not a single mention of one in college either. You didn’t even take a date to prom.”
“I went with friends.”
“Who all had dates.”
“There just wasn’t anyone—”
“Knight. You’re a closed book. A bank vault. I’m willing to bet there’s mountains of things I don’t know about you. Secrets you’ve kept. This one—yeah, I guess we deduced it, but you’ve always been very, very good at hiding it.”
“Apparently not,” I mumble.
“It was more like the only thing that made sense. So, if you’re wondering what your dad and I were worried about, it was that you’d have to hide forever. Why would we want that for you?”
A sour feeling pools in the pit of my stomach. Regret so thick and heavy weighs me down until I don’t think I could move if I tried. “Please don’t say that’s why.”
“Of course that’s why.”
“He made me doubt everything.”
“That wasn’t his intention.”
“Does it matter? When he knew that’s what he was doing?”
“Baby—listen to me. Your father loved you. And he did what any good man would do for his son. He wanted to protect you.”
My inhalation is so jagged, it feels like it cuts my throat on the way down. “You know…that’s great. I’m glad you two were able to talk about this. But maybe—do you think maybe I could have used someone to talk about it with, too?”
On this, she breaks down. “We thought we had time.”
I can’t listen to this anymore. I’m too hurt. Too fucking angry. Too confused. “I need a minute,” I say before getting up and leaving the living room.
I can’t be here anymore. I leave through the front door in my flip flops and my shitty sleep clothes and start walking.
I don’t stop walking until I’m on Sullivan’s street.
When he’s still not at home—because of course he isn’t—he’s probably not even in Michigan yet, I walk further to the shitty lake house nearly overgrown by the woods.
I go inside and, using my rage and my bare hands, start ripping down every single piece of wood on the windows that’s kept the light out of this place for too long.
Amazingly, the faint evergreen scent of the Christmas tree still lingers in the air.
The sun has only just set when I get the text. Two words that change everything.
“I’m home.”