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I step into the house, set the container of to-go soup on the counter, catch one look at the whiteboard in the corner of the room, and turn right back around.
“Nope,” I say, heading for the door.
Sick my ass.My friend and teammate, Nathan, sent me a text this morning saying he and his wife, Bree, were really sick and wondered if I could drop off some soup—knowing I’m hardwired to show up when someone needs me. But he looks healthy as a clam standing by the whiteboard with my three other friends wearing a shit-eating grin on his face.
Lawrence steps in my path as I try to retreat, giving me a taste of what it’s like to face him—our left tackle—on the field. “Hear us out, Derek.”
“Like hell. I’m here under false pretenses—not for whatever that intervention is,” I say, pointing to the whiteboard behindme.
“Dude, come on. It’s time.” Jamal loves the sound of his own voice. “Besides, after what we found in your bedside table, you can’t deny you want this.”
“It is not time, and I don’t want it.” I stalk over to rip the dry-erase marker from Jamal’s hand. Next, I aggressively wipe away the wordsFind Derek A Wifefrom the top of the whiteboard. The whiteboard that has become a staple for every important life planning session in our friend group over the last two years ever since we used it to help Nathan get out of the friend zone with his best friend (now wife), Bree. And listen, I’m happy to sit around with these guys and meticulously plot out each of their sappy love-life plans all day, but try to use it on me, and I’ll burn it to the ground.
“I don’t want a wife. And this is the last time I’ll warn you not to bring up my bedside table before there’s real consequences in the form of your face looking a little less pretty at the start of the season.”
I should have never given these guys a key to my place while I was out of town, even if my plants needed watering. Of course they would snoop. It’s in their DNA to overstep.
But this shit with the whiteboard is too much. I know why they’re doing it—can see right through their nervous pity-smiles. I’ve been hermitting myself away too much, declining more and more dinners, never going out to clubs with them, and definitely not dating. I’m basically a one-eighty of who I used to be, and they think a relationship is going to pull me back out. And maybe their fears are valid. They don’t know who I am anymore or how to handle me. I don’t know who I am either.
I haven’t felt this uncertain of myself since I was an awkward, gangly, eighth-grader who was once again sucking at school, struggling to make friends who didn’t tease me mercilessly after they heard me read aloud, and only lived in the shadow of my older sister. Ginny who was everyone’s favorite. Achieving straight A’s was effortless for her, and probably why she’s now a practicing doctor. Where she thrived, I struggled twice as hard. I foughtrelentlessly with my parents over grades and heardWhy can’t you just apply yourself, Derek, and stop goofing offmore times than I could count.
It wasn’t until a few months ago that I was finally diagnosed with what my supposedgoofing offwas…dyslexia. One night while lying in bed and scrolling through social media, I came across a video where a guy was describing what living with dyslexia was like for him. I was shocked—because everything he described, those were my experiences too. I got in with a learning specialist quickly, and after testing, it was confirmed.
I’m dyslexic.
It’s why reading and writing were so damn hard for me and took me twice as long as other students. Why I struggled to process certain words. Why I fell behind. I wasn’t tested in my adolescence because I come from a very firm “he just needs to try harder” family. But in reality, I was working the hardest. I could never understand why it wasn’t enough. Why I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading in my textbooks like everyone else. And that wedge just grew between me and my parents until I hated learning altogether.
But then…I found football my ninth-grade year. I stepped onto the field and it was like every puzzle piece fell into place for me. I wasgood.A natural. And I only got better and better as the years went on and I grew into my six-four body and filled out in a way the other guys around me did not. Girls suddenly really liked me. Teachers gave me more slack. My parents were proud, because like Ginny, I was making a name for myself. A new reason they could brag to their friends. No one really cared too much that my grades sucked or that I was struggling with academics—because I was clearly going to play college football and then go on to the NFL, so what did it matter anyway?
And that’s what happened.
I just barely graduated high school but shattered varsity records as a tight end. I got more handouts in college courses from my professors than I’d care to admit, but I graduated, and then went first round in the draft. I’ve played in two Super Bowls and have been named MVP. I’ve dated movie stars, bought my parents their new house, and paid off my sister’s med school loans as her graduation present.
It wasn’t until I snapped my ankle on the field at the end of last season and needed surgery that my identity altered. I’ve leaned on this career for security and acceptance for so long that I don’t know who the hell I’d be without it. What will all these people think of me when I can no longer do theonething I was good at.Worthless.
It would be the worst time to try to find a relationship. Especially when Collin Abbot—the rookie backup who stepped in for me while I was out during the last two games of the season—blew everyone away. The rumors circle me like piranhas now.He’s going to take my place this season.I have everything to lose—and nothing permanent to offer.
“Derek, quit being a dipshit and let us help you find love and happiness,” says Nathan.
“It’s not the right time,” I tell him instead of snapping at him that love and happiness are not synonymous in my head and that he can shove his opinions up his ass. I’ve only contemplated the idea of marriage with one woman. The only woman that I’ve ever felt really loved me for who I was outside of football. It was before I ever met these four buffoons that I call teammates—less affectionately known as friends—and let’s just say I got enough of a taste of being loved and left to never want seconds. They don’t know about her. They don’t know she’s the reason I chafe at the idea of a long-term relationship now.
“Why not?” Nathan Donelson is the quarterback of our team, the Los Angeles Sharks, and we’ve affectionately nicknamed himDadbecause of his leadership and wisdom. Which is why after he married his best friend, Bree, two years ago, the rest of the guys followed suit shortly after. Jamal married Tamara and Lawrence married Cora—both couples even going so far as to elope in Vegas just like Nathan and Bree because they made it look like a damn fairy tale. But marriage is where the sheeplike following ends for me.
I’m the last of our five-man crew without a wedding ring, and I’m going to keep it that way.
“Pender’s just scared,” says Jamal Mericks, our team’s running back and self-designated pain-in-my-ass, taking the dry-erase marker from my hand again and using it to draw a big baby with a pacifier on the board. In case there was any question as to who the baby was supposed to represent, he writes my name with a big arrow pointing down to it.
I give him the bird.
“Real mature. You’re only proving my point.” He taps the marker against the cartoon baby.
“That’s enough bickering for the day,” says Lawrence, who is undoubtedly the biggest softie of the group but also the most aggressive on the field—you’d never guess it by the way he bristles when we fight. He’s also the only one in here who makes me look short. I’m six-four and Lawrence towers over me.
He pushes past me and Jamal to erase the board again. “Jamal, it’s a miracle you managed to land a wife with your big ego. And Derek, I’m starting to doubt that you could get one even if you tried.”
“Rude,” Jamal and I say in unison, and then turn mirroring glares at each other. We’re a love-hate situation. As in, I mostly love to hate him.
“How about you guys do something constructive and come helpme instead of trying to force romance down Derek’s throat?” Price shouts from the living room, where he’s sprawled out with a million tiny little plastic rainbow-colored parts on the floor. I think they are eventually supposed to resemble some sort of baby-jumping-play-saucer-thing.
