I clicked the button to join, Holden’s face popping up first before the rest started filing in one by one.
It was a tradition we’d started when Holden went pro the year before the rest of us did. He’d graduated a year ahead of us and went off to North Carolina while the rest of us played our final year at NBU. Before every game, we got him on a video chat to check in and see how he was feeling — and more than anything, to razz him and make him laugh a little bit.
Nothing helped you play better than loosening up, and a video chat with your best friends was the perfect way to achieve it.
The screen was full within a minute. Holden was suited up for the preseason game he was about to play across the country. Clay and Leo were both in casual clothes, each at their respective houses since their preseason games were the following day. Zeke and Riley were cozied up on their couch together, a bowl of popcorn in Riley’s lap. And Kyle was on the table with a member of our training staff in a nearby room getting soft tissue work on his hamstring, his goofy grin filling the frame with the fluorescent light bright above his head.
I smiled, staring at my friends, my teammates, my family.
Life had taken us in so many different directions, but we somehow always made time for each other.
“Last week of preseason!” Clay whisper-yelled. He wore a sleeping Atlas on his chest and headphones covering his ears. Giana walked through the camera frame behind him with a wave before she disappeared again. “How we feeling, boys?”
“Ready for this shit to be over,” Leo grumbled immediately. “Preseason games are fucking boring. I hate riding the bench.”
“Speak for yourself,” Holden said, adjusting the strap beneath his chin. “Some of us quarterbacks are still out here trying not to die behind second-string offensive lines.”
Kyle snorted. “You’re dramatic.” On cue, he winced as the athletic trainer dug into his hamstring.
“Baby,” I teased.
He flicked the camera off.
“None of you have ever had a three-hundred-pound man launch himself at your ribs,” Holden shot back.
“That might be the one plus side of not being in the NFL,” Riley cut in from the couch beside Zeke. “Not sure I’d love to witness that up close.”
“No, we get to witness the wrath of teenage girls, instead.” Zeke shivered. “Might be worse, honestly.”
Riley smirked and tossed a piece of popcorn at his head.
“Where’s Daddy? Er — I mean, Mary?” Kyle asked with a grin.
Leo rotated the camera, showing a sleepy-looking Mary with her hair piled on top of her head sketching something on his leg.
“Please tell me you’re not getting a fucking tattoo right now,” Clay said. “You have agametomorrow.”
“Preseason game,” Leo reminded us. “Not like I’ll be playing much.”
Out of frame, Mary chimed in. “Like I’d let him ruin one of my masterpieces by not following proper aftercare instructions.” She scoffed. “I’m just bored.”
“So you’re drawing on him?” Clay asked?
“Yup!”
We all shared looks before Zeke shook his head. “That woman keeps you alive.”
Palico — Mary’s cat that she adopted when out with Leo one day in Boston — jumped into his lap and flicked her tail in his face.
Leo’s face flattened. “Yeah. And this cat makes it hard for me to do the same for her.”
“Speaking of keeping people alive,” Holden said, pointing at the screen. “Kyle, you injured already, bud? Not used to seeing you on the table so early in the season.”
Kyle tilted his phone just enough that the trainer behind him flipped us all off without looking up.
“Soft tissue work,” Kyle said proudly. “It’s injury prevention. Because unlike some of you clowns, I take care of my body.”
“Your body is a war zone,” Leo said.
