“I have to take this,” she explains apologetically. “He gets really worried when I don’t answer the phone.”
***
Excerpt from an interview with Sports Illustrated
SI:The Cyclones locker room is known to be full of big personalities, both past and present. Of your current teammates, what information would fans be most surprised to find out?
Jameson Page:We keep it real in Miami. I wouldn’t say that we have any two-faces on the squad. Lotsa ‘what you see is what you get.’ Sandy [Covelli, QB] is the glue that holds the team together. He’s a calming presence in the locker room. Always got something wise to say. Cordy (Cordarius Wick, WR) can cook the s**t outta some ribs. All the sides, too—the potato salad, the greens, the pie. No personal chef. The cookout is always at his place. I’ve had some beef with Dettweiler (K), but he mostly keeps to himself. Likes to pray before games. That’s probably not surprising; my bad. Jayshawn (Ferris, LT) can SING. You should hear him in the showers: Adele, Celine Dion, Whitney. All the divas. Man’s got a voice like an angel.We got the rookies to sing karaoke during training camp. Nyko (Waters, WR) is better than Grier (Dontae, S), but Grier has that soulful taste in music. Marvin Gaye, you know, Barry White. When he’s on the mic, the females are swooning.
SI:Speaking of singing, how about the Train? Does he ever sing Sterling Grayson songs for you guys?
JP:The Train? Nah. Never heard him sing. He’s a beast, though. That’s the secret about the Train. He’s real calm on the surface, but I don’t know if there’s anyone scarier on the team. Bro’s intense.
SI:We’re sure that Julian Tamatoa thinks so. Actually, after that game, we’re not sure if that’s a secret, either.
JP:(laughing) No comment, man. No comment.
***
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***
Since you don’t attend Kai’s next home game, you officially have a hole in your calendar. There’s seemingly a million things that need your attention during the last ten days of November, but, instead, you spend them holed up in Newport with Apollo and Artemis. All around you, the world is getting ready for theholidays. It seems to you like people start the Christmas hype earlier and earlier every year—as soon as Halloween is over, everyone’s ready to skip straight to Advent.
A team shows up the Saturday before Thanksgiving to decorate your cottage. You remember signing the contract with them, but not telling them when to come. Had you been reminded, you would have canceled. But, when they’re at your door with boxes upon boxes of lights, garland, and baubles, and dragging multiple 12-foot Fraser firs, you just sigh, let them in, and hide in your bedroom all day. When you emerge after sunset, your house is something out of a magazine: white lights and swaths of evergreen all over the place, and the trees arranged tastefully in corners with ivory-and-glass ornaments. It looks beautiful, but soulless. Growing up, your family tree was always a jumble of beloved, mismatched ornaments, and you vastly prefer that aesthetic to the sterile, beige Pinterest nightmare that has consumed the first floor. Maeve leaves you a message telling you that it is being photographed for a spread inUS Weekly. So. That makes sense.
Newport is very quiet in November as opposed to the summer high season. The snowbirds and tourists have all flown off for warmer climes, making many of the seasonal restaurants and attractions go into hibernation. The seafood shacks are shuttered, and the gardens of the immense Gilded Age waterfront mansions lie fallow. In many ways, it’s the ideal place for you to hide out. Rhode Island is cold, barren, and moody in late November, just like you.
As requested, you don’t call Kai. Kai doesn’t call you. You two aren’t speaking, and there are times—entire hours sucked into invisible voids—where it feels like you can’t breathe due to that fact. It’s paralyzing you, making it impossible to be productive.
Where is Kai? What is Kai doing?You two have spent so much time apart in the course of your relationship due to your careers and busy lives, but you’re obsessing hard over his whereabouts. You have his location on in your phone, as he has yours, but you find yourself checking it multiple times a day, sometimes twice in 10 minutes. There’s Kai at the Cyclones’ practice facility. There’s Kai at his condo. There’s Kai at the grocery store, or getting a smoothie. He’s able to move around in public much more freely without you; this, you already knew. Part of you is jealous of every person who gets to deal with him in public. The baristas, the trainers, the teammates, the doormen. The other part of you wants to fly down to Miami and track him down to scream at him some more. You are soangry. Angry and sad, sad and angry. It’s a sick cycle that just spins ‘round and ‘round in your mind.
You tell yourself that you aren’t going to watch his next game. Whether it’s for your sanity or a self-inflicted punishment, you aren’t quite sure. Just to hold yourself accountable, you go for a long run on the Cliff Walk. The cold burns your lungs even as you sweat through your long-sleeved compression shirt and joggers, pushing your body to its absolute limit. You run like you are trying to escape something, starting at Bellevue Avenue and not letting up until you reach the endpoint at Memorial Boulevard. You race by without gazing at The Breakers or St. Mary’s Parish. Rather, you only stare at the squally Atlantic, at the rocky cliffs below. When you get to the far end, you are exhausted, and you still have to walk home. It’s past sunset when you arrive, wrung out with sweat and tired down to your bones. Your joints hurt. Your mind is heavy. You throw yourself down on the herringbone hardwood floor in the foyer and stare at the ceiling.
Kai, apparently, doesn’t play well in Week 11. You don’t watch replays or anything like that, but the critics are saying that he’s gotten soft and spoiled. That Miami wasted money on him. He’s realistically still just bouncing back, but the whispers are vicious. The Cyclones don’t win, and a bold-faced reporter asks Coach Beausoleil right out what he thinks of the Train’s poor performance. Coach gives him a withering look, and barks,onto the next question that isn’t stupid, please.GoGo has been on a short leash over in Vegas from everything you hear—the rumor is that the Rogues’ management put a good behavior clause in his contract—but he posts a very obvious meme on socials of a cartoon train colliding with a wall and folding like an accordion.
When Desiree calls you the day before Thanksgiving, you are puzzled. Usually, you can predict why she’s reaching out, but you are flummoxed.
“Did you break it off with Kai?” she asks briskly.
“Excuse me?” You are positive you didn’t hear her correctly.
“Did. You. Break. Up. With. Kaius?” she repeats pointedly.
