The First Score: A Best Friend's Brother Sports Romance

by Amie Knight

I sat up and placed my hands on either side of his chubby, wrinkly face. I loved that face so much. “You better not leave me, old man,” I cried.

  I heard Oliver tell them our address and that we needed an ambulance.

  “Is he breathing?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said, checking him to be sure he was. I shook his shoulders a little with both of my hands. “Please wake up, Pops, please.”

  I leaned against his chest to listen to his heart. I’d do whatever he wanted if he woke up. I’d let him grow a million pot farms. I’d even talk to my awful mother again if that was what he wanted.

  I felt like I was going to throw up. This couldn’t be happening. What if I lost him? Then I wouldn’t have any family left. That would be it. I’d be alone. I’d never hear any of his corny jokes. I wouldn’t have anyone to put to bed at night or to do crazy projects around the house with.

  I half expected him to pop up and tell me and Oliver he was just joking, but he didn’t. So, I wrapped my arms around him and prayed and cried and listened to every beat of his heart until the ambulance got there.

  I didn’t even realize they were there until Oliver pulled me away. “You have to let go, baby. They need to get to him.”

  Oliver tried to hold me, but I shrugged him off. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked as they loaded him on the stretcher.

  “We don’t know yet, ma’am.” They asked a ton of questions about his health, which I thankfully knew the answers to, and I collected all the meds in his bathroom and handed them over to one of the paramedics. It all seemed like a terrible dream.

  “His blood sugar is over six hundred. We gotta go,” one of the paramedics said.

  We loaded up Pops and I left Oliver standing on the side of the road and went in the ambulance to the hospital.

  When we got to the hospital, there was a flurry of activity in and out of the small curtained ER room to try and get Pops stable and his sugar down.

  One doctor told me that he was in Diabetic Ketoacidosis. He said it was a serious complication where the body produced too many excess blood acids and that it only happened in diabetics. He then informed me that my pops was comatose.

  My heart dropped at those words. I wanted to hit my knees and scream at God while simultaneously begging him to make him better. After I was angry with God for a while, I moved on to myself. I should have been with him. I’d been with Oliver too much lately. I hadn’t been making sure he was checking his sugars and not eating sweets.

  This was my fault.

  When they moved my still comatose pops to a private room in ICU, I finally thought to call Amor and let her know. She said she would come right over.

  I paced the room for an hour when there was a knock at the door and Oliver entered.

  “Oliver, you can’t be here. It’s family only.” I couldn’t deal with him right now. I had to worry about Pops.

  His face fell. “Am I not family, Hazel?”

  “You know what I mean,” I snapped. I didn’t want to see him. I needed to focus on my pops. I needed to spend more time with him. I couldn’t afford to be distracted by relationships. I had responsibilities to my family.

  “You want me to leave?” he asked, looking like he had that day in Level Up when he said it then, too.

  What if my pops didn’t make it? What if Oliver left me? I’d be so alone. So sad. I was so confused about everything. Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I broke out into a sweat. My head was spinning. My emotions and feelings and thoughts were so jumbled.

  I reached into my sleeve and ran a fingernail down the inside of my arm hard and it calmed me a little. So I did again and again, not even realizing what I was doing.

  “Stop!” Oliver said loudly, grabbing my hand. “What are you doing?” He tried to pull my arm toward him but I yanked it away, embarrassed. I hadn’t done anything like that in years. What the fuck was happening to me? It scared me how quickly my mind had gone there. I was mortified I’d done it in front of Oliver.

  “Just leave, Oliver. Go away,” I cried, fresh tears spilling over onto my face.

  He held his hands up. “Okay. I’ll leave. Just promise me you won’t do that again. Okay?”

  I nodded. Did he think I wanted to do that to myself? He must have thought I was a monster. I just needed him to go. I couldn’t even look at him, I was so ashamed.

  “Promise,” he demanded and I nodded again.

  “Say it, Hazel.”

  “I promise,” I stuttered out, my whole body feeling shaky, my breath short. I didn’t dare look at him as he left. I couldn’t stand to see the judgement in his eyes.

  I slid down the door, my heart heavy, my eyes burning with emotion. What the fuck had just happened in there? It was unbelievable. When I’d first seen her slide her hand into her sleeve, I’d been confused. But it hadn’t taken long for me to realize she was hurting herself and she’d looked so spaced out when she had done it, I didn’t even think she’d realized what she’d been doing.

  Fuck. Today was a mess. She’d been doing so well. Opening up and really letting herself fly, and today had brought her low so quickly. Who could even blame her? First her mother and then Pops. He had to pull through. Hazel still needed him so much.

  And now I’d confronted her with something I could tell she was so ashamed of. She’d thrown me out. For fuck’s sake, would this woman ever let me be there for her? I wanted to be her rock to lean on. Her person. The one she could call whenever she needed anything. I’d drop it and be at her side. I’d spent the majority of my life proving that to her. Me and Scarlett both. But she was too terrified, too stubborn to see it. I’d support her through anything, even what I’d just seen. She needed me now more than ever.

  A nurse walked by, eyeing me like I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I really wasn’t. I’d already lied to one nurse to get back here, telling them I was family. God, that had gutted me when Hazel quickly pointed out I wasn’t. And maybe I wasn’t by blood, but I was in every other sense of the word. The nurse didn’t push me to leave. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t leaving. No matter what. Just like that night long ago in my bedroom, I’d sit here and I’d wait for her. It was what you did for the people you loved and I loved Hazel more than I’d ever loved anyone in my entire life.

  An hour passed and then three and I finally took a bathroom break and grabbed me some coffee. Scarlett and Luk came up and checked in. Amor, too. Doctors came, nurses went. I grabbed dinner and before I knew it, eight hours went by. The nurses at the station watched me critically at first, but by the end of their shifts and middle of the night they had nothing but sympathy on their faces.

  I had my head leaned against the wall next to Pops’s door almost asleep when a nurse finally took pity on me.

  “Sir.” A heavyset black nurse woke me. “She throw you out?”

  Letting out a long breath, I answered, “Yep.”

  “Hmmm.” Her big brown eyes studied me.

  I held my hands out. “Before you throw me out, too, I can’t leave. She needs me right now.”

  She quirked an eyebrow at me that said she didn’t believe the shit I was saying.

  “She does. I know it doesn’t look like it.” I wanted to give up and go home, too. Hell, I’d been sitting on this hard floor for over sixteen hours waiting on her to need me. But I knew she would come to me when she was ready and not a moment before and I was okay with that. I had to be. For her. My heart ached for her. And I wanted more than anything to hold her. I rubbed my hand over my chest. “Right now she needs me outside this door, but soon she’ll need me inside that room and I want to be here when it happens.”

  My voice sounded sure. I wanted to be as sure as I sounded. And my heart was. But my brain was trying to make me doubt Hazel’s love and need for me.

  The nurse nodded slowly. “Okay, then. Well, at least come get a chair from the nurses’ station. I can’t stand to see you sitting on this dirty ass floor one more minute.” She turned and motioned for me to follo
w. “Come on, then.”

  I followed her down the hallway a bit and waited behind a counter while she rolled me a comfy looking desk chair.

  “Do you happen to have two pencils I could borrow, too?”

  Pursing her lips, she rolled her eyes. “You’re pushing your luck, boy.”

  She looked around and came up with two pens. “This is all I have.” She tried to hide a small smile. “You’re lucky you’re pretty.” She handed over the items to me and I set them in my chair and rolled it back to Pops’s room. I placed the chair next to the wall before removing the pens and sitting down.

  I sighed, thankful for a soft place to sit. I looked back at the nurses’ station and found my angel nurse looking back at me. I gave her a thumbs-up and mouthed, “Thank you.”

  That time I actually caught her smile before she looked away quickly. I placed a pen behind each ear and leaned back and reached around for my wallet out of my back pocket, pulling out a piece of paper I’d had since I was twelve years old. I pulled one of the pens out from behind my ear and drew a little something on the paper before leaning down and sliding it under the door with the pen in my hand.

  Sitting back in my chair, I watched the bottom of the door, praying for that paper to appear again. I needed anything from her. Just like that night long ago, I just needed to know she was okay and to let her know I was still here. I always would be and one day she’d understand that. Come hell or high water, Oliver “Winnie” Knox was hers to depend on and to love.

  For minutes that felt like hours I watched the bottom of that door until finally I grew too tired and leaned my head back against the chair and wall and closed my exhausted eyes.

  It had been a restless night. I’d finally gotten some sleep in the recliner next to Pops’s bed, but it hadn’t been much. Between the nurses coming in and out to check on him and the noises of the machines, sleep was few and far between. The sun hadn’t come up yet and Pops still hadn’t made a sound. I felt fresh tears leak out of my eyes. It felt like at this point I should be out of them. But they just kept coming. I was making an effort to keep my shit together. I couldn’t have anymore episodes where I was hurting myself. Pops wouldn’t want that. So I made a promise to myself that I would stay alert and aware and most of all calm.

  I just needed him to wake up. I needed him to razz me, give me a hard time, tell me a dirty joke. Anything. I wouldn’t leave his side until he did. He was all I had. I stretched in the uncomfortable leather recliner and got up, giving up on the notion of sleep. I checked my phone for the millionth time. Six a.m. I headed to the restroom to pee and to brush my teeth with the toothbrush and toothpaste the nurse on duty had brought me last night. By the time I was done with all the grooming I could do with the limited supplies I had, I couldn’t bear the thought of getting back in that shitty chair, so I walked around the room, pacing a bit, nervous about what was to come. Was he going to wake up at all? When he did, would he have brain damage from his sugar being that high? My brain ran through all the outcomes the doctors broke down for me last night. The unknown truly drove me mad. I liked routine. I didn’t like surprises. I wanted to feel safe and right then, right there, I felt terrified. Not safe at all.

  As I paced by the door to Pops’s room, the foot of my sneaker slipped on something and I squatted down, looking for what almost tripped me up. I picked up a yellowed and old looking piece of paper, holding it close to my face so I could see what it was in the dark of the room.

  My heart slipped right up out of my chest and felt like it had settled right in my throat and this time no matter how I tried I couldn’t swallow it down. For others it would just look like an old, worn-out piece of paper with a bunch of tic-tac-toe boards drawn on it, all of them played. Except one, which had clearly been drawn with a pen instead of a pencil like the others. But to me this piece of paper meant so much more. He still had it. After all these years.

  I leaned against the door, sliding down it until I with my back to it, my ass to the floor. Clutching the piece of paper in my fist, I buried my face in my hands and sobbed.

  I pressed my fingers into my eyes, begging myself to get it together. I cursed these stupid tears, these awful sounds that ripped from my body. I wanted to reach inside myself with my hands and shake my stupid soul. Why the hell did that piece of paper undo me like that? Why did it shred me, break me, free me like it did?

  All of a sudden I wasn’t a twenty-something-year-old woman who took care of her grandfather and ran a small video game shop. No, I was fourteen years old and sitting on my best friend’s brother’s bathroom floor. That hadn’t been the first time I’d cut myself, but it had been the last. And I’d tried to hurt myself again tonight. I felt sick with myself.

  My father’s physical abuse of my mother and me had led me to cutting in my early preteen years. The first time I’d cut myself it was because I’d wanted to punish myself for not being able to protect my mother. But what eleven-year-old kid could? But that was when I realized that cutting myself felt good. It was something I could control when I felt like I couldn’t control anything else in my life. I couldn’t control when my father would drink. How he would react when he got home. I spent too many years walking on eggshells, never knowing. But the cutting, I knew the deeper I cut the more it would hurt, and the more it hurt, the more it would bleed. I was in control of that.

  The day Oliver discovered my scabbed up arms was the day I’d been moved to my pops’s home. It was the day custody had been given to him from the state because of too many domestic calls to the police from our neighbors. I didn’t talk about it with Scarlett or anyone. I’d been ashamed and embarrassed. She and Oliver had a dream home life, with parents who had adored them and doted on them and who would one day grow up to be amazing people. I hadn’t thought she would understand, but I knew differently now.

  Spending that night with Scarlett and Oliver had saved me. Because despite how shitty my parents were, I still missed them and loved them. It was a child’s way—to love their parents unconditionally. Pops had let me stay with the Knoxes while Amor had set my room up.

  When Oliver had found me that night sitting on the couch alone while Scarlett slept, I was terrified. I didn’t know what the future would hold. I didn’t know if my pops would keep me. If I would go back home eventually or if one day I’d end up in foster care if my pops couldn’t take care of me.

  Playing video games with my Winnie had been one of the best things ever on one of the shittiest days of my life. And when he’d discovered my freshly cut arms from the day before I’d felt such shame.

  Hiding in that bathroom hadn’t deterred him. He’d been there for me, just like he always was, just like he was right now. He still hadn’t given up on me when I’d given him reason after reason he should. And he still had this piece of paper from that night. It gutted me how I pushed him away and still his love for me persevered.

  I clenched my eyes closed and fisted my hand around the piece of paper, but that didn’t stop the torrential downpour of tears. It didn’t stop the high-pitched keen that escaped my throat. I hadn’t wanted to love him. I threw out excuse after excuse. He was too young. He was my best friend’s little brother. But the truth of it was, he was my rock. My one. The love of my fucking life. He was mine. That’s all he’d ever been.

  I leaned my head back into the door with a thump and used the sides of my hands to wipe away what felt like a lifetime of tears.

  “It’s okay, Hazel.”

  My body locked tight and I looked around the room. Oliver sounded so close I thought he must have snuck in at some point, but that’s when I realized he was on the other side of the door. I turned my body until the side of my face was pressed to the door. I lifted my hand and laid it there, too, trying to feel him. “Winnie?” I squeaked out through my tears.

  Had he been here all day and night, just on the other side of this door, waiting on me? What the hell was wrong with him? I was going to kill him after I hugged him.

  “Th
e one and only. Unless you know any other good-looking football players named Winnie.”

  I hiccupped out a sob at the sound of his deep voice. It was like a balm to my soul.

  “Don’t cry, baby, please. I’m here. I’ve been here all day and all night.”

  His sweet words led to a whole new round of crying. I didn’t deserve him. And that’s what this all boiled down to. I’d felt that way from the beginning. He deserved so much more.

  “You gotta stop crying, Hazel. It’s tearing me up over here, ya know? It makes me wanna bust down this door that’s not even locked.” He paused for a minute and I listened, my cheek and hand plastered to the door, too scared to open it up because I knew what it would mean. It would mean that I’d have to accept that Oliver loved the bad parts of me as much as the good parts. And if that happened I’d have to let him see it all. And that was so scary.

  “You know, you’ve been putting doors between us for a long time. And one day you’re going to realize that a door isn’t going to keep me from you. Because I’m always here, Hazel. Right on the other side, waiting. And all you have to do is open the door.” He paused for a moment. “That’s it. It’s so simple and yet so hard. And trust me, I know it’s difficult for you. But if you just opened up, I could love you like you deserve to be loved. In difficult times like these, I could hold you up a hell of a lot better if there wasn’t always a barrier between us. But I’m a patient man, baby, and I loved you since the first day I saw you. I’ve loved you since before I even knew what love was and so I’ll be here waiting.”

  I wiped at the uncontrollable onslaught of tears.

  “You take your time. I’ve got the rest of my life,” he finished softly.

  He was willing to wait the rest of his life and I was letting a stupid door stand between us.

  I leaned up, finding the doorknob with my hand, turning it, and pulling the door open while I scooched back on the floor.

  There he sat just on the other side of the door, his eyes so hopeful, it made my heart soar.