Page 130 of Unmanageable

I’m hiding because it hurts to know that he’d spent this whole time carrying that kind of weight by himself while I was busy worrying about his short-side recovery depth and his brand identity.

“I’m not mad about the paperwork,” I say quietly. “I just… I would have helped you, Finny. With the facility. With the legal stuff. That’s what I do.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you,” he says. “You’re an agent. You fix things. You find the clause in the contract that makes the problem go away. There isn’t a clause for this, Scottie. He doesn’t know my name half the time. I didn’t want you… I didn’t want you managing him.”

I don’t say anything to that.

The logic is too real, too human, and too much like him.

I reach across the space between the seats, my hand sliding over the rough wool of his sleeve until my fingers find his. He doesn’t let go of the wheel, but his fingers open up, wrapping around mine with a tight, desperate squeeze that tells me everything he’s too afraid to say out loud.

***

Cash pulls the van into a space near the fence at the long-term parking lot at DIA. He turns the key.

The engine doesn’t want to die. It gives one long cough before the rear-mounted engine finally goes still.

We step out, pull our bags from the back, and stand out on the gravel, the bags dropped near our sneakers, looking at the van.

It looks terrible.

The front air intakes are covered in a thick, yellow crust of grasshoppers from Nebraska; the sliding side door has a long, white streak from a low branch in the Idaho panhandle; and the rear window still has the faint, greasy outline of the GOALIE-MOBILE letters Cash had scraped off with a razor blade in Nashville.

It’s an ugly, iconic, utilitarian piece of history.

But as Cash reaches out to lock the hatch, his hand stays flat against the white-and-orange paint for five long seconds. His head is down, his shoulders slouched under his jacket, his thumb tracing the edge of a rust spot near the wheel well.

“We should have washed it,” he says, his voice thick.

“The salt keeps the character on,” I say, my throat tightening.

Leaving the van here, it somehow feels like losing a person.

“Come on,” I say. “The shuttle is coming.”

Cash doesn’t look back at the van when we climb into the airport bus. He sits with his forehead pressed against the scratched plexiglass window, his large hands flat on his knees, his eyes fixed on the terminal buildings rising up out of the asphalt ahead.

We move through the security line like ghosts, our sneakers clattering into the gray plastic bins, our identities verified by machines that don’t care that our lives were entirely different six hours ago.

Cash hasn’t touched his coffee. The paper cup is sitting between his feet, the plastic lid gathering a thin ring of brown scum as the steam dies out.

“I’ll call the Denver coach,” I say. “I’ll explain what happened. I’ll tell him you won’t be at practice, that we’re canceling it.”

“Don’t worry about it, Scottie,” he says. “If he’s pissed, he’s pissed.”

“He’s not going to be pissed, Finn.” I exhale. “I’ll call him myself. I’ll make sure he understands. I’m your agent. This is my job.”

He turns his head to look at me then.

His eyes are bloodshot, the dark circles under them looking like bruises in the harsh, sterile light of the terminal. He looks at me for a long, quiet second, his mouth opening just a fraction, as if the words are trying to force their way out through the grief.

But he doesn’t say anything.

The ticket agent clicks the microphone at the desk, the static burst making the passengers around us stand up and grab their coats.

Cash stands up, his massive frame instantly drawing the eyes of two teenagers near the water fountain.

Maybe the most heartbreaking thing is that he doesn’t even look like himself anymore.