CHAPTER 27 BEN
“Sorry, man,” Jack says as he slides into the empty seat beside me on the bus carting us back toward the airport.
The California leg of camp is over, which means we head home to start practicing for the first of four exhibition games.
The starting line-up usually only plays a quarter or less in these pre-season games to keep us safe from injury.
The absolute worst thing would be for one of us to face a season-ending injury before the season even officially begins, but it’s the risk we take in this profession.
I glance over at him as my brows dip. “For what?” I ask.
His brows both raise. “You haven’t seen it?”
“Haven’t seen what?”
He pulls out his phone and opens Instagram, and then he turns the screen toward me.
I wish he hadn’t.
It’s Kaylee with that assclown Cooper Noah. I squint at the caption. “New town. New job. New roommate. New BF,” I read aloud. My heart cracks and my chest aches as the words register. “New BF? Just like that? She moved on already?”
Jack shrugs. “It certainly looks like it, but nobody’s heard from her since she moved.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. I punch the seat in front of me, and my knuckles scream. I punch it again. The pain is a calming relief from the storm raging inside. “Fuck!” I yell a little louder.
“You want me to try to talk to her?” he asks quietly.
I shake my head. “I want her to be happy. I just didn’t think she’d move on so fast.”
“Maybe it’s what you need to do, too,” he suggests.
I shrug. “Yeah,” I mutter. “Maybe.” It just doesn’t feel like that’s the right answer. I think about hitting the bars and clubs with the guys like I did before camp started, and all I could think about was Kaylee.
I’m not in the place to just move on, to just find someone new.
But she is.
Maybe I didn’t mean as much to her as she meant to me. I wasted my chance and now it’s too late.
I stare out the window at the California landscape.
She’s here now, too, so close yet so goddamn far.
We board the plane, and I go through the motions.
It feels like an out of body experience.
I’m here, but I’m not. Everyone around me is quiet, too.
Subdued as we rest up on our “day off” to travel back home.
I’m not subdued.
I’m raging.
I’m spiraling.
I don’t know how to get back to myself again, how to make myself be present in this moment when all I can think about is the fact that some other guy is fucking my girl now.
It’s not okay.
I ran out on her. This is my fault.
I want to fix it, to run to her and confess everything, to be honest and to give her the future she deserves.
I’ve even admitted to myself over the last few days that I do want kids in my life.
I want to be a father. I want to extend the Olson line.
I want grandkids someday that I can take fishing and horseback riding in Montana.
I want it all, and I want it with her.
Nobody else will do.
But I’m too late.
Our first pre-season game is Sunday, and we’re back into two-a-day practices, this time in front of Calvin, who never bothers making the trip out to California. He watches us carefully, shrewdly, and doesn’t say a word as he returns to his office.
You’d think the ache I feel over losing Kaylee would push me to play better, to turn my focus to football and really step up my game.
That is not the case.
Instead, I continue to miss catches that hit me right in the fucking hands. I miss key blocks when I’m supposed to be protecting Jack, and he scrambles to get rid of the ball.
We win the first pre-season game—a rematch of the Super Bowl we won just a few months ago against the Seahawks—but no thanks to my fuck-ups in the first quarter.
Jack gives me hell for it on the sidelines before the game is even over.
We get rid of our pads at the half, and we stand and observe the back-ups play.
It’s always weird to watch a game in an Aces t-shirt instead of a jersey, an Aces ballcap on my head instead of a helmet, but I like watching the second and third string step up.
In some ways, it’s like watching the future of the team.
I can’t help but go a little introspective as I stand there.
How much longer will I be playing? How many years do I have left?
Tight ends peak at twenty-five, at least according to league studies.
I’m seven years past that—almost eight. My shoulder gets stiff in cold weather ever since an off-season surgery I had a few years ago.
My body is in decent shape physically, but getting tackled to the ground when a two hundred fifty pound linebacker hurls his entire body weight into me week after week isn’t exactly healthy.
I’m getting older, and I’m at the point of my life where I need to acknowledge that.
And as I look toward the future, it all just feels so empty without her in that picture.
I never really had a complete picture of what the future would look like until her. It always seemed like nightclubs and titty bars and beer and parties were what the future held, but once I had a taste of the good life with Kaylee, I didn’t want any of that shit anymore.
It’s for immature boys who have no direction. I’ve grown up a lot in the last few months, I guess.
And it’s as I stand here on the sidelines that I realize I don’t even know if I want to play anymore. I don’t know anything anymore without her.
“You gonna figure out how to catch a ball again or am I going to have to lean on Graham more this season?” Jack asks me.
“Fuck off,” I mutter.
“We’ve known each other a long time, man,” he says, arms folded across his chest. “You’ve never been the guy who just gives up, but you’re doing that in the game.
You miss one block and then you can’t get yourself back in the right headspace to make the next one.
It isn’t you—this guy who just rolls over to die.
I’m here if you want to talk about it, but if you want to continue fighting yourself silently, just wanted to give you some food for thought.
I don’t know if you’re fighting yourself about the game, about Kaylee, or about something else.
But whatever it is, just fucking make a decision and stick to it.
Get your head out of your ass and fucking play like you did last season.
” He shakes his head with a bit of disgust as he walks away from me.
“It’s her,” I murmur. He’s still within hearing distance, and he turns back toward me at my words. “It’s your sister. She’s moved on, and somehow…I can’t.”
“You’re the one who fucked that one up. You need to be the one to fix it.”
“How?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You’ll figure it out.”
I know I have to be the one to do that.
But now I’m in season, and the pressure during the next two weeks of camp is intense. I can’t just leave, but every day I don’t hear from her only widens the divide between us.
While I’m pining away for something that seems like it was never meant to be, she’s clearly not. At the same time I texted my apology, she was posting a photo with her new BF. That was a week ago already, and the fresh slice of hurt hasn’t lessened in that time.
She never texted me back. Instead, she made her statement clear.
And maybe Jack was right when he told me it’s time for me to move on. The day that was supposed to be our wedding day was six weeks ago now. That means we’ve been apart six weeks. We were really only together from the end of April through the beginning of July. Should it still hurt this much?
Only if it was right, I guess.
It’s as I stand there on the sidelines I realize I can’t keep sulking like this.
I’ve let it go on for far too long. To be fair, camp did start and I was gone for two weeks, and before that I had to sort out Tatum’s shit, and then I went through that whole issue of just letting her move on to live her life.
But all that shit stops now.
It’s time to fight for what’s mine.