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I grit my teeth. There is a reason I’ve never liked this guy, but knowing the truth now, I can’t really blame him.
“I’m serious. Just a second. I need to talk to you about something.”
With a huff, he turns and walks a few steps away from his group so we can talk in private. I’ve practicedthis speech over and over again in my head, so here goes nothing.
“I know you’ve never liked me, but I want to make it clear that whatever horrible things my dad has done genuinely had nothing to do with me.”
He squints his eyes and wrinkles his forehead, obviously wondering why I’m telling him this now.
I continue, “I need you to know that. I’m not my dad. And take away all those things and think about it. You don’t even know me.”
“Why do I care?” he asks bluntly.
“I want to squash everything between us. I don’t know you just as much as you don’t know me. We were raised to hate each other for no good reason.”
He glares at me. “Oh, I can give you a good reason.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “And I fully agree you could. I just found out everything, which is why I’m standing here. I didn’t understand things the way I do now, so I’m coming to you, so you know that’s not me. I don’t want to be lumped into that entire situation anymore.”
“But you are. And honestly, I don’t give a fuck about you either way. You’ve been dead to me for years, so, no, this changes nothing.”
He walks away and joins his group of friends. I know it might seem like that didn’t go well, but it went down exactly as I’d expected. Gaining his trust won’t happen overnight. But I know if I can get in with him, it will put me one step closer to being able to date Natalie freely.
The next day at practice, I keep my eye on Thomas. On the field is where I can gain his trust the most.
I see him sitting on the bench, catching his breath after some drills, so I go sit a few feet away from him, where no one is in between us. I don’t say a word, so he seemingly doesn’t even know I’m there as he wipes away the sweat dripping off his brow.
I grab a bottle of water, squirt it in my mouth, and set it down, taking another deep breath to calm my heart from racing after those drills. Before I get up, I grab a towel from the container next to me and toss it his way before leaving without saying a word.
As I get back to my position, I see him wiping his face off with it. Him not throwing it on the ground just because I gave it to him is a win in my book.
When game time rolls around on Friday, I do the same thing. All week, I’ve tried not to make my intentions obvious by doing things I do for my other teammates all the time. Before, I just purposely never helped him that way.
Eli calls off the play, and we both go running. I turn right and catch the ball just before going out of bounds. I look back and see Thomas untangling himself from the guy he tackled to the ground so I could make that catch.
I jog over and offer my hand to him to help him up. To my surprise, he grabs it, and I lift him back to his feet, slap his back, and say, “Great block.” Then, I jog back to the line to get ready for the next play.
I stay after practice on Tuesday to get some extra reps in the gym and really stretch before I head home. Natalie can’t meet me tonight, so I plan on just skipping my run and getting some homework done.
I’m driving out of the mostly empty parking lot when I see Thomas with his truck hood up, so I head his way.
Putting my truck in park, I hop out, leaving it running. “Need a jump?”
He stares at me, and to my surprise, I don’t get the normalfuck youglare I’ve gotten for so many years. Now, don’t get me wrong; he’s not happy I’m here to help him, but he doesn’t look like he wants to kill me either. Progress.
“Yeah, I can’t tell if it’s the battery or if the alternator is going dead. I just called my dad to come help me. People with fancy, new cars don’t know shit, and most of them can’t even jump this old beast.”
“It’s all good. I have jumper cables and an old beast, just like you. We’ll see if we can get it going.”
I jog back to my truck and reposition it so the cables will run between both trucks.
I toss him the cables to hook them up to his truck as I pop the hood of mine. He hands me back the other side of the cables, and I connect them to my battery, then walk back to my truck and crank the engine. My truck roars to life in a sound I’ve come to love more than any of my favorite songs.
Thomas hops in his truck and cranks the engine. It takes a few tries, but it eventually turns over, so I unhook the cables and put them back in my truck. When I shut the passenger door, I see his dad pullingup next to us, his expression not hiding his disdain that I’m standing here.
“Everything okay? Looks like you got it started,” Randy says.
I walk up to him, man to man, and offer my hand to him, just as my grandpa taught me.
