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I sipped my beer to soothe the sudden ache in my throat. “Not for long.”
“How long is not long?” Holden asked softly.
“She’s a fighter so…a few months? Maybe.”
“I’m sorry. But I’m even more glad that I brought you here. You need a timeout. Whatever you want to call it. A break.”
I started to protest but he was right. I was tired. Mentally exhausted. I took another pull from my stolen beer. The tightness coiled in my muscles loosened and I settled into being here. With him.
A few minutes of easy silence passed. The night air was warm, even this close to the ocean. I loosened my tie and shook out of my tux jacket, while Holden seemed perfectly content in his heavy clothes.
“Aren’t you hot?” I asked.
“I thought it was obvious.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. Maybe not now but what about during the day? When it’s pushing eighty.”
“No.”
“Okay, but…why?”
“Why do I dress like it’s winter? Because it always is.”
The words were dramatic but came out on a current of pain, and he drew his thick coat tighter around him.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked after a minute.
“Are you always like this?” he asked, perplexed. “This…nice? I’ve given you no reason to trust me or even like me and here you are.”
I grinned and took another sip of beer. “I’m still waiting on my apology.”
“Do you still need one?”
Or was I right?
I heard his unspoken question and sighed, toying with the label on my bottle. “I don’t know. That’s the story of my life—I Don’t Know.”
“How does it start?” Holden asked quietly.
“You really want to hear this?”
He held out his hands. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
I nodded and picked at the beer label, slowly peeling it off the glass, letting myself just talk.
“I’ve been eating, breathing, and sleeping football since I could get my hands around a ball. My dad was set to go pro, but an injury killed his career before it got started. He was devastated, so he poured all of his broken dreams into me. Pushed me to be the best. From Day One, the NFL was the only goal. Early on, I liked the game. Loved it, even. But it took over everything and I just…got lost.” I glanced up at Holden. “The question you asked me in the closet at Chance’s party?”
He nodded slowly.
“The answer is no one. Not even me.”
I peeled more label, careful not to tear any off from the whole.
“I was thirteen when Dad gave me the sex talk. Mostly warning me that if I got a girl pregnant, it would derail our plans. But he never asked me if I was interested in girls in the first place. It never occurred to him, so I didn’t know it could occur to me.” I hunched over the beer bottle, peeling. “It’s like everyone assumes we’re all built the same way—as if we have a default setting. If you’re different, you start to believe something’s wrong with you.”
Holden nodded. “I know what you mean.”
The twinge in his voice told me there was a story there too—and not a good one. But he was waiting for me to continue. Letting me talk when I’d never talked this much about anything before.
