Page 23 of These Secret Years

“I know what freshman year can be like,” he says when we take our talk to the back porch. He’s cooking steaks tonight, so he walks to the grill, lifts the lid, and proceeds to scrub it with a wire brush. “Good for you for staying out of trouble. I saw your grades, too. Strong work. You’re still thinking marketing?”

“Thanks. Yeah. It gives me the time to⁠—”

“Because it’s not too late to do something more serious,” he cuts in. “Pre med. Law. You could work with athletes in either of those fields.”

I fight the urge to crack my neck because I know he hates the sound of it. “If I want to go to law school later a marketing degree is good enough.”

He sighs. “You’re so fucking smart, though, Knight.”

“Dad…”

He changes the subject. “You’re having some fun, though, right?”

“I’ve made good friends. Yeah.” I’m getting defensive but I can’t help it. Whenever he brings up my intelligence, it makes me wonder whether he can see something in me I can’t—like I might not have what it takes to be the kind of player he and his brothers were.

“Parties?” he asks.

“A few.”

“Girls?”

I force a grin since he’s turned my way. “Yeah, sure. They’re everywhere.”

“I met your mother my freshman year of college.”

“There’s no one special,” I say, but in my head I get several flashes of Sullivan Scott like a rapidly moving slide show through my brain. He and I haven’t said a word to each other since that night before the first semester started. I might have. I would have said something to him, but he either forgot that night happened, or he decided to pretend it didn’t. Best I can say is we made eye contact a few times in passing. We didn’t have any classes together, and I never did see him much at the dorm.

I kept my distance because it felt like he wanted me to, and because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t. I was worried he’d say something that would fuck me up—hurt me in some unpredictable way that I wasn’t ready for. The other thing that scared me was this idea that if I let myself be closer to him, and he allowed it, that I would get too lost. My football career and everything that’s supposed to go along with it would swirl down the drain, and I wouldn’t care anymore.

Football won’t always be my priority. The sport doesn’t work like that. But for now, it has to be.

One of the great ironies of my life is that I have a family who would totally accept me no matter what, but I fell head over heels in love with the idea of a future that won’t.

“It’s weird,” I say to my dad to draw him slightly off the topic of my love life. “Half the guys I play with have a high school girlfriend they’re managing to keep things going with. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Is that a generational thing? Used to be you broke up before you went to college.”

“A lot of them came to the same college. They act like they’re already married. The parties I’ve been to aren’t as wild as you’d think. There’s a lot of playing video games and girls walking around making sure we’ve got enough snacks.”

My dad looks at me like I’m not going to the right parties.

I shrug.

“That’s weird,” he says.

“I mean, it’s been good bonding with the team.”

“I suppose.”

My mom walks onto the patio. My sister Kat is with her. Kat’s only home for a week, and she and my mom are like best friends. They look a lot alike, too. Both tall and willowy with dark hair and oval faces. My mom doesn’t age much thanks to hair dye, Botox, and Pilates, but she looks great. Not plastic or anything. My sister Kat is a ballerina who’s four years older than me. She dances for a company in New York—at the top of her game. I come from a family of people who dream big and get exactly what they work for.

My mom was a successful, working model when she met my dad. Like he mentioned, they met when he was a freshman. He was at a bar he probably shouldn’t have been at, and she was in town visiting friends at the same college. They dated long distance off and on until my dad entered the draft early and went to play for Green Bay. She followed him, became a football wife for a while, and then got bored and decided to get her real estate license. I think she makes almost as much money as he does now.

Kat grins at me, takes me by the arm and pulls me onto one of the outdoor sofas to sit. “You look huge.”

I pat my flat belly. “I have a ways to go before I catch up with the twins.”

“Oh my god, they’re so cute. Those identical baby faces. Where’d they go?”