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“Easton?” Someone else calls my name.
Fuck…I turn around and spot the offensive coordinator. “Yes, Mr. Hinson?”
“I wanted to make sure I caught you before I looked at some film.” He hands me a small gift bag. “Happy birthday.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He pats my shoulder. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you’re not the next best All-American quarterback. You have an incredible game, a beautiful supportive family, and good looks and shit, too.”
I nod. “Will do, sir.”
Turning away before I can be distracted again, I walk down the hall and into the team’s state-of-the-art locker room.
I check all the rows to ensure I’m the only person here. Then I open my bag and take out a framed picture that I can only face once a year.
My mother used to come here with me during this ungodly hour, armed with cupcakes and candles like I was still in kindergarten. She’d also bring a portable piano keyboard and request that I play a Chopin piece from memory.
Even though I’d long given up my old dreams of being a musician, she was proud of me for choosing “a sport that might actually pay your bills someday.”
I run my finger along the edge of her face.
The sudden sound of heavy footsteps makes me put away the frame. Before I can ask who else is interrupting my morning, my father rounds the corner, holding up a brown bag.
“I hope you won’t mind that I came here,” he says. “I brought you breakfast.”
“Thanks.” I motion for him to sit next to me.
I don’t mention that he reeks of alcohol.
“Your mother was a really great woman.” He hands me a box of waffles. “Loyal to a fault.”
“She never lied to me.” His voice cracks. “Not one time.”
“She didn’t lie to me either.”
“Very loyal.”
“Yes,” I say. “Very loyal.”
We eat our food in silence, swallowing it down with our forced lies.
We’ve never discussed the truth.
It hurts too damn much…
My mother died on her way to our family vacation last year.
She was in the passenger seat of a red Corvette that didn’t belong to my father.
It was our church pastor’s.
The accident report revealed that they were half-naked, that the backseat floor was littered with condoms.
At the hospital, the doctors gave me a plastic bag of her things, and while I was texting her friends and families the news, I realized that most of the names in her phone belonged to other men with nicer cars than Corvettes.
My life had already been hanging by a thread, but that was the week it finally snapped.
The same week I met Scarlett…
