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"Yo, is that your mom?"
I frown, looking around, but he holds up my phone. "Dude I think your mom is calling."
I ignore it.
Mom and Carl are here, even though I found out recently that Ezra still hasn't spoken with them since a few weeks after leaving the house. Wonder if they'll try to track him down after the game.
Maybe I should answer. But I'm too drunk. Mom will notice.
Thinking of my mom brings up a deep groundswell of guilt and regret. I push it back down and finish the third bottle. Good and shit-faced. It's like armor.
I need armor as the game wraps. It’s over. Ezra wins. All the Bama guys lift him up on their backs, carrying him along the sidelines like a sultan. I watch how his body moves. He seems loose and relaxed. Probably tired.
TV interviewers swarm him. And Daniel's elbowing me.
"Hey daydream believer. We gotta go, see?" Everyone is up and moving. Filing out of the student section. I swallow as we shuffle single-file off of our row, realizing only as we reach the cement stars that I forgot my Icee.
It's okay. Seems fitting.
Daniel's kind of shallow in some ways, but the guy's perceptive. He knows something's off with me. Somehow he ends up behind me on the cement stairs, his hand at my back like he knows I'm so wasted I can barely get my shoe soles to hit flat on the stairs.
When we're down, he says bye to his friends who were sitting on the other side of him and says, "Where to, Millsy?"
"Don't call me that. Please."
"Sorry." He looks sorry. "Josh. Where you wanna walk to this fine evening?"
People are everywhere. The stadium holds something like 80,000 people, and it seemed like every seat was taken tonight.
"I don't know," I tell him.
"Frat house it is, then. You need to stop at your place?"
"No," I manage. I look around—the cement walls, the cement floors, the fucking masses. Ezra's here. He's here tonight!
Ezra won a game for Bama tonight.
I tell myself I'm happy for him. I am kind of happy. I want him to do well.
"Josh?" Daniel is squeezing my shoulder. "You with me, man?"
"Too many people," I say.
"Fuck yeah, there are. Let's get going."
Three
Ezra
I look at the passenger's seat in my Jeep—checking. There's no reason to check, though. I can still see him. Feel him. Feel how I feel with Miller right beside me. Like I swallowed sunlight and it's leaking into every single cell, turning them all soft and bright. It's like...exuberance. A bigger version of the way I feel—felt—when I would watch him on Snapchat or Insta. I close my eyes and let the feeling have me for a second.
When I open them, I look at the passenger seat again. Empty and dark. Cold in here.
We won the game, yet I can’t make that feel as real as my obsession with Josh Miller.
After the game, I took an ice bath to chill my muscles, speed recovery along. I stuck around the locker room to talk to everybody, check on the few guys who got hurt or messed up big plays. Then when everybody else got back on the bus, I went to my Jeep. I brought it down here last week, peeked in on Josh as he left the math building, and took the bus back up to T-town. Cleared it with the coaches, and I'm staying here tonight.
This is the night. I got my phone restored by AT&T. Been carrying it around like a bomb in my pocket for a week now. I got the letters that I found in my room when I went to get my Jeep. Just two. I’ve been afraid to read them. Worried it would throw my play off.
But now the game has been won. I did interviews for half an hour after. Un-fucking-defeated, baby.
There's a break in play now—time off before the championships. I feel like I'm ready. Even my new therapist, Greeley, knows I'm gonna try to find Josh tonight. Or tomorrow. But...I'm doing it tonight. With all my obligations fulfilled, it's okay to fuck my head up. It's okay to fuck my world up. That's what's gonna happen if there's nothing from him in my phone. Or in these folded papers from my bedroom at Mom’s.
If how I feel about this guy is all made up...
Don't think about it. Not yet.
Greeley said that I could call them. Any time this weekend. Pastor Luke hooked me up with a good one.
I look around the Auburn student parking lot. Cars coming and going. I hear car horns through my rolled-up windows. Hoards of cars leaving the campus area. Tailgaters. Drunk Auburn fans. They're pissed off that we won. Bama fans are gloating. Two walk through the lot a little ways ahead of me, jumping like those little barky dogs that can go airborne.
