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“I can see how happy she makes you. Everyone can.” She lifts a brow, nodding to the cut-out news clipping held beneath a Slayers fridge magnet.
It’s me and Lara after that game. Not the part where I danced her around or even when we kissed, which is what I’d expected the outlets to print. But the moment when our brows touched and we were smiling into each other’s eyes. There’s so much emotion in that look, it gets me a little choked up every time I see it.
“So what’s going on, honey?”
“I can’t pretend there isn’t more on the line than I meant to put there.”
“And you’re worried you’ve set yourself up to get hurt again if she leaves.”
“When she leaves. Not if. She’s going. She’s had her sights set on New York from before she set foot in Chicago. And normally that opportunity wouldn’t come up for two years, but she’s on track to move faster. Eighteen months, maybe as soon as a year. She’s really good at her job, Mom. She’s amazing. You should see the stuff she comes up with, the way her brain works.”
“I bet.” She smiles. “Even in high school, you were always talking about how you liked the way she thought. And I liked the way she saw so much potential in things others didn’t always recognize.”
Yeah, I see what she’s getting at there. “Thanks.” But then, that anxious pit in my gut yawns wider. “I can’t lose her again, but this job, it’s not just that she wants it. She loves it. She needs the security of a skyrocketing career more than she needs me. Which is rough, because I think I need her more than I need anything.”
“Honey, you don’t think you could offer her security? Have you seen your salary?”
I know I’m an earner. That I make more in one year than a lot of people make in a lifetime. But this thing with Lara goes deeper than that. She doesn’t want to depend on someone else for her security. She needs it to be her own.
And besides, “After last year, we both know this career can end in the blink of an eye.” I’m thinking twist of a nut, but it’s my mom so… “But even without an injury, I could get traded, I could lose my edge. I could?—”
“You could get struck by lightning or hit by a meteor or attacked by a deranged deer or, or, or.”
I’m stuck on the deranged deer. “Dark, Mom.”
“All I’m saying, honey, is that you can’t live your life waiting for the worst to happen or you’ll miss out on all the best.”
“I know.” I do. “It’s just that this suddenly feels too much like high school. It didn’t when we started out. I mean, I knew we’ve been headed in two different directions the whole time, but I was fine until this trip. Which is such a dick thing to have to admit, considering I leave nonstop during the season. But now, all I can think is that one year, eighteen months, two years… it’s not enough.”
“Ben, I know this feels all too familiar. Especially because of how guarded you are when it comes to letting people get close to you.”
She doesn’t say it, but we’re both thinking about my not-so-stellar track record with people I’ve cared about prioritizing other things over me. Jealousy, another guy, another team, my little sister, my best friend.
Whatever— it’s life, and I don’t let it get to me the way it used to.
I had a come-to-Jesus moment last year where I was forced to come to terms with the fact that not everything has to be all or nothing… unless you’re cheating on me (the ex) or you’re the asshole trying to use my little sister to get back at me for daring to be better than him at a fucking game (my childhood buddy, Charlie)… in which case, enjoy your one-way ticket to Nothingland on the oversold flight in a seat with a broken armrest next to the bathroom. You’re never coming back.
But Lara? “It’s not just familiar. It’s the exact same thing. Only this time, I know it’s coming. And I know I’ve got the choice to get off the ride before it wrecks… but I don’t want to.”
I want her too much.
My mom leans into my line of sight. “You’ve got at least a year to figure out how this works with Lara.”
“A year hardly seems like enough time to figure out how to make our relationship work when we’ve both invested our whole lives in careers that intersect but never align… but I want it.”
The not having this figured out is making me crazy.
“Ben, think about what school was like for you. Yes, certain things took more time and more work for you to get them. And it was frustrating when you couldn’t just get things the way the other kids did. But in the end that effort paid off in so many ways.
“It taught you not to give up. That there is more than one way a thing can get done. And that even though it may not be obvious from the start, if you give yourself some time and space and a little grace… you’ll figure it out.”
* * *
Lara
I’m dead on my feet as I haul my spinner bag to the apartment door and laugh at the sounds of Zamboni chuffing from the other side. “Coming, baby.”
Letting myself in, I abandon my bag and drop to the floor so little Z can dance around me, sprinting and circling and pressing his little paws to my chest so he can sneak a lick of my face.
