Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Asher
I ’m out of eggs. I consider this irritating fact while staring into my refrigerator as if a dozen eggs will somehow magically appear from its depths. I don’t know how this happened. But, like, in the metaphorical sense. I definitely know realistically how it happened, and I blame my sister Kyla. She lives across the street from our parents and sent me a picture yesterday morning of the cookies my mom made and brought over to Kyla’s house.
It was a real younger sister move. An if you lived in Boulder like the rest of us mom would drop cookies off at your house too taunt. So, then I had to bake cookies and send her back an actually I’m just fine in Pittsburgh when the rest of my family is thirteen hundred miles away and I can make my own cookies thank you very much picture.
Except I added too much flour to the first batch, so I had to start again, and now I have three dozen cookies I didn’t want but no eggs in my fridge for my game day breakfast. When I cracked my last egg yesterday, I made a mental note to run out to the store before bed. But then Goodfellas was on TV last night, and I am one hundred percent that guy who needs to watch Goodfellas when it’s on TV. So of course, I forgot to go to the store. Like I said, I blame Kyla. It’s a big family thing. And with two younger sisters and two older ones, all married and half with kids, my family is borderline ridiculous levels of big.
I sigh and shut the fridge door, grabbing my phone to order an omelet from the diner down the street because my game day breakfast is sacrosanct. The day I’m playing in the divisional round of the playoffs is not a good day to tempt the football gods. Ordering in isn’t as good as making it myself, but it’ll do in an emergency, and waking up to an eggless refrigerator on the morning of a playoff game is an emergency.
It’s not that I’m superstitious. It’s just that I like to do things a certain way on game days. Like wake up at the same time. And eat the same breakfast that my mom used to make for me before game days when I was in high school. And put my pads and uniform on in the same order. Okay fine, I’m superstitious as fuck, but show me a professional athlete who isn’t.
After I eat breakfast, I head upstairs to my room to pack my game day bag. My house is probably too big for just me, but when I was drafted to Pittsburgh after playing four years of college football ten minutes from my parent’s house, the idea of living permanently in the soulless downtown condo I stayed in for a few months before training camp didn’t appeal to me.
With my signing bonus, I bought a big old house on one of the tree-lined Squirrel Hill streets that reminds me of my neighborhood in Boulder. It has plenty of bedrooms for my family to come visit, and I love every inch of it. The only thing that would make it better is if my family actually lived close by. My sisters make me crazy half the time, but I miss the shit out of all of them during the season. I’m just reaching the top of the staircase when my phone pings.
Mom
Kyla showed me the picture you sent her yesterday. I can’t believe you made cookies just to spite her, you little shit.
Snorting out a laugh I walk the rest of the way to my room before dropping down on my bed to have this conversation.
Me
If it makes you feel better, I used up all my eggs in the cookies and forgot to get more so I had to order my game day breakfast.
Mom
You deserve a subpar breakfast for antagonizing your sister.
Miss you. I hate that we can’t be there for you today.
I miss you too. But you need to be there for the girls.
My family would usually make the trip for a playoff game, but my older sisters Charlie and Annie are pregnant, and both are due in the next two weeks. They both have other kids so it’s a logistical nightmare, and I insisted that everyone stay put. Kyla is pregnant, too, and due a little later this winter. It’s about to be baby o’clock in the Hansley family.
Mom
I know, but I hate that you won’t have family at the game—win or lose.
I hate it too, especially as I sit in my silent house. With four sisters, my life has never been silent. Even after living here alone for almost nine years, I’ve never been able to get used to it. But I would also hate if one of my sisters had a baby this weekend and my parents weren’t there for it.
Me
Don’t worry about it. And one way or another, I’ll see you all soon.
At the Super Bowl, hopefully. It’s not superstitious to be confident, right? But if not, I take a road trip back to Boulder at the end of every season and spend most of my off-season with my family.
Mom
Okay, we’ll be watching. Call us after. Love you, hon.
Me
Love you too. Kiss the girls for me.
I toss the phone on my bed and pack my bag before going to the bathroom for my least favorite part of my game-day ritual. Opening the bottom drawer of the bathroom vanity, I grab the black zipper pouch. I unzip it and take out the syringe and the vial of liquid. Prepping the syringe, I pull down the waistband of my joggers, swipe an alcohol wipe over my hip, and administer the painkiller injection. It should take effect just in time for warm-ups and last the whole game, leaving me with a pain free throwing shoulder. I hate this, but it’s a necessary evil if I want to play.
It started during the first game of my fourth NFL season, when I took a bad sack and dislocated my shoulder. I rehabbed it, but the pain lagged longer than any of the trainers expected. With physical therapy and cortisone shots, I managed to play the second half of the season and stopped mentioning the pain to anyone associated with the team. As far as anyone knows, I rehabbed more over that offseason and came back stronger than ever. They don’t know that a very quiet evaluation from a family friend who practices sports medicine led to a diagnosis of post-traumatic arthritis. And they don’t know that, before every game, I inject myself with anti-inflammatory painkillers I buy from a guy I know from my offseason gym. And during this season, sometimes when there isn’t a game.
I stare at myself in the mirror, rolling my shoulder and feeling the familiar dull ache that is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes. I’m not an idiot. I know medicating myself isn’t great, even if the painkiller is the same one the trainers use in the locker room before, during, and after every game. I know my shoulder is getting worse. And I know that throwing a football with an arthritic shoulder that I keep a secret, masking pain with injections no one knows about, could cause long-term, permanent damage. I know all this, and yet I do it because if I didn’t play football, I don’t have any idea what I would do. Or who I would be.
I’m Asher Hansley, NFL quarterback. I’ve always been a quarterback. I’m not the biggest or the most innately talented, but I am the hardest worker on the football field. And since I was eight years old, that field has been my home. Even thinking about hanging up my helmet has dread pooling in my stomach. I’m not ready, and this isn’t the season.
My phone pings again, breaking me out of my reverie.
Lucy
[pic attached] Good luck today, Ash! We miss you!
I grin at the text from my youngest sister, even as my heart gives a tug of longing. In the picture, my entire family is piled in my parents’ living room. All fifteen of them are wearing my jersey. I love those idiots. Every last one of them. For a split second I have the crazy thought that if this is my final season, I could move back to Boulder and never have to miss another family gathering. But as quickly as the thought comes, I shake it away because I’m a quarterback and it’s the playoffs. I live for this shit.
And I have a game to win.