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“Yeah. There was one just like that we used to drive by a lot.”
“What kind of house did you live in?”
“The back of an old Chevy.” I let out a self-deprecating laugh. I have no idea why I’m telling her something I’ve barely told anyone. I’d rather they all believe I led the same kind of life they did.
“What?” Her brows knit together in confusion.
“My mom was kind of a wandering soul. We never stayed anywhere long when I was younger.”
“Oh. You had a single mom?”
“Yeah. She and my dad split up when I was really young, and she never quite recovered from it, I guess.”
“Oh. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. Probably would have been worse with them together, honestly. The few times they were in the same room together, they argued like hell.”
“So did you stay with your grandparents or I mean, if she was wandering, how did you go to school?”
“Stayed with my grandparents some. Then with whoever her boyfriend was. I switched schools a lot until high school.”
“Did she finally get remarried?”
“Not exactly. But yes, eventually.”
“I’m sorry. I feel like I accidentally strayed into something you don’t want to talk about. I didn’t mean to.”
“Nah. It’s fine. It was a long time ago. She just dropped me off with my grandparents one day and didn’t come back.”
“Didn’t come back?”
“Yep. She met a new guy. She liked him a lot, but he didn’t want a kid around. He wanted the two of them to have kids together, and he thought I was an asshole. I guess I was a little bit.”
“You were a kid. All kids are kind of assholes sometimes. They’re figuring things out. Life is hard when you’re little and can’t make your own decisions.”
“Well anyway… It was too much for my grandparents too. That’s when my uncle took me in.”
“Coach Undergrove?”
“The very one.”
“My father hates him.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“He was furious when he found out you were going to be Tobias’s quarterback. ‘All that work. All those camps. And he’s gonna have a fucking Undergrove kid tossing him fucking duds all over the field.’” She mocks her father’s infamous voice. “I think he hated it more when he realized you were actually really good. Then when he found out you two were friends… I think he might have disowned Tobias if he hadn’t been his only hope at the time. East was always a little more rebellious, and I think he wasn’t sure if he’d play football or not.”
“Yeah. Trust me. I heard about it from my uncle too. He thought I made the wrong decision in schools for a while.”
“Well. I’m glad you didn’t transfer. Are you going back this year?”
Another landmine question.
“I don’t know. Hard to say.”
“Don’t you need to decide pretty quickly? I assume you need to be back on campus if you’re going to get off the bench and play this year.”
I cringe a little that she knows I’ve had so much trouble this year. I guess it probably would come up in conversation in their household. Probably another complaint from her father, this time about how we didn’t make the playoffs because I fucked up and our backup was subpar. Hard to impress a girl who knows as much about football as she does when she knows you’re warming a bench, and her father thinks your whole family is scum from an age-old grudge match. That’s before we even get to the part where her crush, who’s walking ahead of us a good stretch at this point, already has a starting pro contract. Might as well just squash any chance I have left while we’re at it by telling her the soul-crushing truth.
