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I rubbed a hand over my eyes and sank back onto my bed. “I was just thinking… You remember our senior year?”
“Yeah,” she hedged, drawing out the word slowly. “We fought a lot.”
“We did?”
“Yeah,” she laughed. “How do you not remember? I always felt like I was fighting for your time or presence or something. If you weren’t on the football field, you and Jenson were hanging out, and I was tagging along.”
I sucked in a breath at that gutshot because I knew the feeling well. Jenson had transferred to our high school junior year, but we hadn’t really become friends until our senior year. We’d been thick as thieves, though, as Hannah’s parents had always said. He’d eaten dinner with us at her house almost as often as I had. “I’m really sorry about that.”
“Oh, I…thank you. I mean, it’s okay. We were young, you know? I figured it out later on.”
“Figured what out?”
“That there was something going on between the two of you.”
“Wait, what?” I frowned into the darkness.
“Yeah, I mean, you two were always together and…I don’t know. There was just this vibe. This way he looked at you like…” I held still, my breath trapped in my chest, remembering the warmth of his dark brown gaze. I’d not had a friend like him since. “Like he really liked you, maybe more than a friend, and then at our ten-year reunion, when he showed up with his partner, I just figured—”
“I wasn’t with him, Hannah, or cheating on you, I promise,” I said. I’d also skipped the ten-year reunion, but I’d heard before that Jenson had come out in college. At the time, I hadn’t thought anything of the fluttery feeling in my stomach, but since Tucker, it was all I could think about. “So you thought I was into him…like that?”
There was a long pause before she said, “I did, yeah. It made me feel bad at the time, but now I get it. You really never did anything with him?” She laughed. “Because that’s kind of a shame. You two would’ve been really cute together. I don’t know if that’s exactly what you’re getting at here.”
“I’m just trying to figure some things out. About myself.”
“Ah. Well, I don’t know if I’ve been any help.”
“You’ve been an enormous help. Thank you. I don’t want to take any more of your time. I hope the rest of your holidays are good, and I’m really sorry for the way I made you feel. Truly. You deserved better, and I hope you found it.”
“I did. You take care of yourself, Patrick.”
The slight sting of her parting comment was assuaged by the contentment I heard in her voice. She definitely deserved happiness after putting up with my bullshit.
We hung up, and I dropped the phone on my chest and closed my eyes, conjuring up images of Jenson, his smile. The way we’d cut up and crack ourselves up. There’d never been any kind of confession on his part. We’d parted for college with a hug and a back clap and had lost touch quickly after. NYC had seemed to swallow him up, and I’d been similarly absorbed by football at Southern U, and for a long while, I hadn’t allowed myself to think of him at all because the truth was that I’d missed him. And when I thought deeper on it, I could feel the stir of emotions in my chest, a tamped-down longing I’d never allowed any space for. It wasn’t the same thing I felt for Tucker, but a close second.
“Fuck,” I muttered, though it wasn’t accepting that I was bi that was throwing me off. It was that the person I was most attracted to on this Earth was the one person I hated being attracted to. Wasn’t that some fucked-up karma?
* * *
I wantedthis win against the Rush. I wanted it the way I wanted Tucker as he crouched down with the ball and waited for Ramsey to call the cadence. I wanted to see the defeat on his face, wanted to crush him as much as I wanted to be crushed by him in a bed or against a wall.
I’d been on fire the first two quarters of our playoff game against them, and then after halftime, something had happened. I couldn’t put my finger on it. The Rush were playing like they shared a brain, and we were starting to fall apart. We were evenly matched, but the home-turf advantage was real. We should have had this game locked. The LA fans were going crazy in the stands, and still, the Rush had pulled ahead.
I adjusted my stance, trying to anticipate what they were going to do, moving my gaze to Tucker as he gripped the ball.
It was only a fraction of a second, but it felt like hours when he canted his head in my direction. A broad, smug grin stretched over his lips, like he knew they had the game and were one step closer to the Super Bowl. I despised that grin in the moment and answered it with a sneer, and then Ramsey called the cadence, and the action exploded around me.
In the two seconds that infuriating grin was knocking around my brain, Garrett McRae managed to break free of me and get wide open for the perfect fucking pass that Ramsey sent hurtling in his direction. I could see where this was going as I automatically sped toward the end zone. Benson and Sparks did, too, because they moved like they’d been shot out of a rocket, racing for McRae and launching at him until he went down. But it was too late. McRae landed in the end zone, ball still clutched to his chest. The pass was complete. Touchdown.
The Rush had a twenty-point lead on us now.
“Fuck!” I swore, and I wasn’t the only one, but when the stands quieted, I glanced around to find medics running for the end zone. McRae wasn’t getting up, just lay sprawled on the field like a boneless scarecrow. Ramsey raced into the fray and dropped down next to him, splaying a big palm over his thigh. The fear in his eyes was evident from where I stood, and a prickling sensation spread through my chest at the way he touched the fallen receiver. I stood frozen, watching the two of them and then Tucker as he trotted up to Ramsey and gripped him by the arm, holding him back as McRae was put on a stretcher and hustled off the field.
We all knew what had happened to Houston McRae, Garrett’s brother. And as much as I didn’t like the Rush, it’d be a fucking shame to see a rookie—any rookie—go down that way.
Where I could feel a further pall cast over our team, the Rush played like they were on a vendetta once we took the field again. They made us look like a bunch of freshman JV players playing football for the first time, and when the clock ran out, sealing their win, I walked off the field with a mixture of fury and relief. Relief that it was all over. Fury that I’d let Tucker get in my head during such a big game when clearly he’d held his focus just fine.
The mood in the locker room was defeated, and I showered and got the fuck out of there as fast as I could, just wanting to be at home on my own.
