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Although I do say, “You’re the most amazing guy I’ve ever met.”
“What?”
I lean closer to him. “The most amazing and wonderful and strong guy I’ve ever met, Reign Marcus Davidson.”
He studies me for a few moments before saying, “And you’re the most dramatic, girly and fucking emo girl I’ve ever met, Echo Ann Adler.”
I shake my head and insist, “I know you don’t like to hear that but you are. You’re so strong, Reign. You persevered. Also known as you persisted; you carried on; you hung in there; you hammered away; you were tenacious and look at you now.”
“Look at me what?”
“You live in New York,” I say in a duh tone. “You’re in college. You have a soccer scholarship. You’re going to be drafted next year. You’re going to be such an amazing player. Youaresuch an amazing player, Reign. So amazing that one day you’ll go to the European league. You —”
“I’m not.”
“You are. I have all the faith in you. You’re going to be —”
“I’m not entering the draft.”
I wait for him to say something more, add to what he just so casually threw out there.
But when he doesn’t, I go, “What?”
While I’m freaking out over here, he again very casually shrugs. “I’m not interested in getting picked.”
“How can you not be interested in getting picked?”
“Because I’m not,” he says, still all relaxed. “Because I don’t wanna play soccer.”
“Are you insane?” I fist his hair. “What are you talking about? You want to play soccer. You’re so good at soccer.”
I think by the time I finish my voice is so loud that it’s echoing all through the woods. And the sigh he makes in response is just as loud.
And impatient.
“No, I don’t.”
“But —”
“I knew,” he begins with a voice that’s tight now, hard, “my dad wouldn’t have paid for my education, not that I cared about one, but still. He would’ve made up some excuse, put it on me to save face so I knew that it was the only way I could’ve gotten out of town. The only way to go to the same college as my best friend. I never had any plans of playing soccer.”
“But you…” my own voice small and unsure, “you love soccer.”
Scoffing, he continues, “No, I fucking don’t. I hate soccer. Always have, always will. It’s yet another thing that my father forced me to do because my brother was so good at it. Yet another way to control me, mold me into something that I’m not.”
My tears threaten to fall again.
And this time it’s harder to make them stop because a lump grows in my throat as well. Making me ache and ache for him.
Ache for this broken boy.
This broken rebellious bad boy.
I wish I could say something to him. I wish I could somehow make whatever he went through go away. Go back in time and erase all the hurt, all the damage done to him by his father. By all the people who misunderstood him.
By me.
What was I thinking? Why didn’t I see it before?
