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“Is that really true? Cahill really didn’t want Ryan off the team?”
“Yeah. He never did. He just wanted to make sure Ryan wasn’t top dog. But fuck, that article has people looking at him so sideways.”
“I do wonder why she did it for him, though. If she wanted him? Or if there was another reason?”
“She didn’t say?”
I shook my head. “It seems the interview he did to clear up his side was pointless.”
“Goes to show you how damning words can be, because no one believes that Cahill was another victim in all of this too.”
“The lawsuit might help.”
He grunted. “No one’s going to care. People have made up their minds, and not only does everyone love Ryan, everyone loves his girlfriend.”
I smiled, snuggling even closer to him, one of my legs tangling with his. “That’s the best part.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “That is.”
Everyone rallied around Mackenzie. Almost literally.
She broke everyone’s hearts, anyone who read the article, then clicked to learn about her sister’s story. The university reached out to her because they wanted to discuss if she’d be interested in becoming the face of their advocacy and student hotline program.
Local and national news asked to do interviews with her. Major outlets, like Good Morning America. Ryan Jensen drew everyone in, and then they looked next to him to where Mackenzie stood, and they fell in love.
“I don’t understand that feeling. I don’t know why. I just can’t, but I’d have to imagine that it’s one of the worst feelings to experience, of not wanting to be here anymore.”
We had our talk. Mac and me. I asked her questions, and she answered them. I worried if I would trigger her again. If I’d be too much with all my questions, but she shook her head and said, “No. We’re told to talk about our issues, if we’re struggling with something except about this. It means the world that you’re asking because you want to learn. I will sit here for days answering your questions because that’s how grateful I am.”
I didn’t understand why she was saying that, but I thought about it a lot.
I said to Cris now, “Everyone wants to be understood. Right?”
I felt him start to frown, but he didn’t comment. He knew this was something where I wasn’t really talking to him. I was more talking to figure something out.
“I kinda wonder if it’s like a train where it’s only going off of a cliff. She’s on it, but she can’t get off on any of the stops. If she does, either people have their backs to her or she’s going to be met by other scary people. So because of that, she can’t get off on any of the stops until it’s the end where she knows it’s going off a cliff so she has to jump at the end—”
“Okay.” Cris rolled over on top of me. “Enough with the train analogy.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
He propped himself up, his eyes gentling. “I know, and that makes you a good friend to her.”
“It’s because she’s a good friend to me.”
“I know that too, but I think another way you can think of it is that if she’s struggling, the pressure will build and build and it would help if she had someone to talk to, because when she does that, some of the pressure releases. Maybe that’s a better way of thinking of it?”
That made so much sense. “Like she’s a balloon and she keeps getting air pumped inside of her, and the balloon keeps stretching and stretching until it’s going to po—”
“Stop.” His eyes flashed, but the corner of his mouth tugged up in a grin. “No matter what, being able to talk about whatever is going on with you is always good.”
I rolled my head back on the pillow. “How’d you get so wise about topics like this?” A horrible thought came to me, and horror began filling me up. “You’re not—”
“No.”
The horror stopped, and it deflated. Like a balloon.
“But,” he said quietly. “I’m a guy and I’m lucky to have a good family, good brothers, and a great best friend. I can talk to them about shit, about how I feel. A lot of guys don’t and it’s not because they choose not to, because it’s not manly or something. Though, that way of thinking doesn’t help either. It’s because men don’t know how to talk about their feelings. They don’t know what they’re feeling. Growing up, we’re taught we can feel three things: lust, anger, and hunger. That’s it. There’s a lot of lonely guys out there.”
