“It wasn’t advice. I was talking to her about you, man,” I say, poking his chest because he’s pissing me off. “Telling her you’re a good friend, how we did everything together as kids, and how we work together now. I mentioned we were working on a potential deal. And she fucking offered the information, okay?”
He holds up his hands in surrender.
A heaviness sets into my chest. Fuck. Now I’m that dude who questions his buddy because of a chick. “She’s a lawyer, you know. She knows stuff about business and deals.” I say, like I have to defend my thought process. But screw that. Jason’s had my back my whole life.
“Bet you don’t miss meetings with her though.”
I roll my eyes. “Low blow, man.”
The corner of his lips quirk up, like he’s saying, yeah, but you deserve it, asshole.
Maybe I do.
“But either way, I’ll look into it. That’s what I do.” Then his expression softens. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
It’s not entirely heartfelt, but I’m not entirely feeling that way either.
I wave a hand in the air, erasing the conversation. “Need to go. Can’t be late. I got a streak on the line.”
Then I take off for work.
At the stadium as we walk through our game plan, I put both my friend and the woman out of my mind. I have tunnel vision, and that’s all I need right now. I don’t talk to either one of them the rest of the day or on Sunday. By the time the team hits the field for kickoff, I’m in the zone.
***
And it’s not enough.
We lose and we lose hard.
After falling behind at the end of the first half, I have to throw even more. I’m chased around the backfield, tossing rushed passes, which turn into dropped passes, and then I launch a motherfucking interception that puts San Francisco ahead even more.
They pad their lead and never look back, finishing with what can only be described as a pummeling.
Elkins is as sullen as they come when we walk off the field. “I shouldn’t have left my lucky socks where my dog could get them.”
I snap my gaze to him as we head into the stadium. “Your dog ate your socks?”
Elkins nods, his face dejected. “My German shepherd chowed down on one of my lucky socks last night. I wore them for the first four games, but he found them and chewed the heel off one.”
I pat him on the back. “Pretty sure it was my shitty throws, not your dog’s taste for stinky footwear.”
Elkins shakes his head adamantly. “No, man. You never fuck with a streak. And I did. He taps his chest. “This one is on me.”
“Then does that mean if you catch twenty passes in a row like a badass mofo, that it’s all due to your socks, not your skills?”
“It’s different when you win. Winning is skills. But messing with a winning streak? That’s just something you don’t do.”
The conversation nags at me as I shower, as I head to the parking lot, and as I drive home that evening, dreading tomorrow morning’s first post-loss workout, because Coach will likely tear us a new one. The whole time I reflect on what Elkins said.
Maybe he’s right.
Maybe you don’t fuck with a streak.
But not for the reasons he said. Not because of luck, or superstition, or football gods shining in your favor when you wear smelly socks.
You don’t fuck with a streak because it ruins your focus. It messes with your head. And football isn’t just a physical game, it’s a mental one. When your priorities change, when you stretch yourself to fit in more than you think you can, that’s the real screwing with a streak.
That’s what I’ve been doing.
Once inside my home, I crack open a beer and flick on the TV. Force of habit takes me straight to SportsCenter. Why I do this, I don’t know. But there’s something about putting your finger in the flame. You know it hurts, but you do it anyway.
Let it burn.
Pointing the remote at the TV, I crank up the volume. Soon enough, the host launches into his football recap, and lands on my team.
“Drew Erickson has played impeccably all season, but today the Los Angeles Knights earned their first L of the season. Let’s dig into what broke their four-and-zero record.”
Part of me wants to shout, “It was just four games.”
But another part of me knows deeply that every goddamn game matters. Muting the TV, I park myself on the couch, head in my hand. What went wrong in the game? Where did I fuck up? How can I learn?
When I raise my face and take a long swallow of the beer, the answer rears its head once more.
“Fuck,” I mutter when I set down the beer.
Because I know.
I felt it nagging at me when Elkins talked.
We had a smooth, well-oiled machine—one that I’d turned around after a hellish last season.
Then I put my focus elsewhere. I took off the blinders and let someone in. A woman. And I’m crazy for her, but yet the second this thing between us moved up a level, my game fell apart.
And I don’t have the luxury of time. Of figuring out a balancing act. I’ve got one season with Los Angeles, and we’re more than a quarter of the way through it.
If I want to finish this year poised for the future, I need to realize sooner rather than later that there’s no room in my life for both football and falling for someone.
Grabbing the phone, I dial Dani’s number.
“Hey you,” she says, her voice soft. I don’t deserve her sweetness.
“Hey. How’s it going?”
“I’m fine. But enough about me. That was a tough game today. How are you doing?”
Her tone is comforting. She’s not trying to reassure me, or tell me I played great. She knows I didn’t. I’m glad she’s not lying just to make me feel better. But even so, I know what I have to do. Rip off the Band-Aid.
“Dani,” I say, clearing my throat. My tone makes my meaning clear, because her voice changes too. It’s no longer gentle and girlfriend-sweet.
She’s all pro attorney as she says, “Yes, Drew?”
I heave a big, fat sigh. “I think we need to cool it for a bit.”
“Oh,” she says crisply.
“It’s not you. It’s that I’m losing my edge. I need to focus more on the game,” I say, my tone tinged with regret. “We had a good thing going. We had a great streak. And I put it on the line by letting myself get more into you. I can’t take a chance. I need to impress the coach and the team and the city so they keep me. My contract is up at the end of this season.”
She’s quiet for a moment. I have to wonder if I should have done this in person. But then, I’m glad that I can’t see her. If I did, I’d want to touch her. To kiss her. To take her in my arms again. It’s better this way. I keep caving when I’m with her, and that’s the problem. “I understand,” she says, and her voice is cold.
I hate the frozen sound. I hate that she’s shifted so quickly. But I don’t get to hate her reaction, because I’m the one who gave her this news she didn’t expect. It must be like a brain freeze to her. It came out of nowhere, and now she has to deal with it. But I have to deal with my mistakes too.
“Good luck, Drew,” she says, “I know you’re going to have a great season.”
She hangs up.
Chapter Thirteen
Dani
I shift my gaze away from a parasail floating above the ocean, returning my attention to my sister. We’re at a beachside bar to celebrate since she just aced one of her key nursing school exams.
I can’t even bear to look at the parasail.
Which is an utterly ridiculous emotional response. Drew and I never went parasailing. We simply talked about it. I’m not even at the café where we had our first drink. We’re a few bars down. Ally wanted to surf this afternoon, since I left the office a couple hours early, but I wasn’t in the mood to get on the board, so I’m nursing my frustrations with margaritas.
I’d like to say the margarita is the bes
t medicine, and that it’s inducing Drew amnesia. But no such luck. Aimlessly, I swirl the straw around the dregs of my drink, wishing it were a magic potion to make me forget him. Since there’s nothing—not a damn thing—I can do about the situation. It’s like he handcuffed me with his breakup. Like he silenced me in court with a gag order and I’m left slack-jawed, wide-eyed, shocked.
The only thing that’s taken my mind away from how he cut our love affair off at the knees is work. Blessed work. It’s been my steady during my twenties, and it’ll do the same in my thirties, I’m sure. It’s the one thing that I can control, so I’ve been doing a ton of it this week, burying myself in it. Even today, I logged ten hours, since I was at my desk at the crack of dawn. All the work reminds me of what matters most in my life. I have my sister, I have my family, I have my job, and I have surfing for fun. I don’t need him to complete me. I’m better off focusing on the things that are steady and constant. The things that I can rely on. Not a man who changed his mind on a dime.
Even so, parasailing with Drew would have been so fun. We talked about it the other night after we screwed on my kitchen counter. A hot flurry of tingles races down my chest from the memory. The man was relentless, and he fucked me with passion, and tenderness, and the last time, with sweetness. The last time felt like . . . making love, even on my kitchen counter. The way he looked at me, how he held me as he drove deep inside me, and then how he never took his eyes off me. After, he didn’t just tell me how much he liked fucking me. He told me all the things he wanted to do with me outside the bedroom arena. “I want to take you to the movies, and I want to take you up on that surfing lesson we never had, and I want to go parasailing with you,” he had said that night, then he kissed my neck. “And play you in whack-a-mole and beat you.”
I’d laughed and swatted his chest. “You competitive bastard.”
He nodded and kissed me more. “I am, but I want to do all those things with you because I’m crazy about you.”
I sigh heavily. So much for being crazy for me. Lot of good that did. I raise my chin, take a hearty sip of the last of my margarita remains, and then set down the glass.
“So I should dye my hair green, and get a mermaid tattoo?”
I blink and wrench back. “What?”
Ally laughs and points. “You’re so not paying attention.”
I sigh. “I was. I swear I was.”
She shakes her head, amused. “You weren’t. But I understand.”
“Sorry. It’s just a crazy week and I’ve been working all hours.”
“Sure.” But it’s clear from the way she says the word that she doesn’t believe me. “That’s exactly why you’re not focusing.”
I give her a pointed look. “I have been working hard.”
She reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “I know, sweetie. But that’s not what I mean. Have you thought about talking to him?”
I roll my eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about. There’s nothing to discuss. This is a black-and-white situation.”
“And yet you’re an attorney. You’ve always told me that every situation has shades of gray. How can this be the only black-and-white situation?”
“Because it is,” I say firmly. “He ended it because he was losing his focus. I can’t make him regain his focus. We didn’t have a misunderstanding. We didn’t have a fight. There’s nothing for me to talk about with him.”
Ally arches an eyebrow. “I beg to differ.”
I don’t know what she could possibly beg to differ about, but I’m curious as hell. I sweep my hand out, giving her the floor. “So differ, then. Tell me.”
“You saw the game on Sunday right?”
“Of course.”
“And did San Francisco not play its ass off in that game?”
I nod. We are both football daughters. Ally knows the game inside and out. “They were great.”
“No one was going to beat them. He’s an idiot if he thinks he lost because of you.”
Can’t argue there. But that’s the problem. I can’t argue with him on this because he gave me no choice. So I simply agree with my sister. “He’s definitely an idiot. But it’s not my place to convince him of that.”
“I know. But it’s not like you to just accept his explanation when he’s so patently wrong. I’m not saying get back together with him. I’m not even saying you can change his mind. But I am saying you should make your case for not taking the blame. Whether you get back with him or not isn’t the point. He shouldn’t go about thinking that loss had anything to do with you. It had to do San Francisco.”
My sister is right. Drew didn’t simply lose the game. San Francisco won it. The other team was hell-bent on victory, and I don’t have to let that rest on my shoulders.
“They were like a freight train,” I say, adding on to Ally’s point.
She nods. “Damn straight.”
“They weren’t stopping for anyone.”
Ally makes a chugging sound, like a train careening down the tracks. “Not just a freight train. A silver bullet,” she says, piling on this metaphor.
I laugh, but inside I feel stronger, more confident. I might take on the weight of all these other things—work, and my sister, and my own strict devotion to how I want to handle life’s responsibilities—but a win or loss of the team I work for? That’s not mine to bear.
“You really think I should say all that to him?”
Ally’s voice is emphatic as she answers. “Yes, yes, yes. And if it’s any consolation, Jason said he’s miserable as hell this week.”
I smirk. Admittedly, I find some small consolation in that detail, but whether he’s miserable or not isn’t the point.
Even though I disagree with his decision, I respect the fact that he has to live, work, and love on his own terms.
And I have to do the same.
For me, that means closure. That means saying what needs to be said. I don’t need to do it face-to-face. I don’t want to open up a conversation where I’ll get hurt again. But I need him to hear my words.
I start with a letter. Taking my time that night, I write down my thoughts. The most important ones. Then I sleep on it. The next morning, I head over to his place, knowing it’s safer and more private to leave this letter here than at the stadium.
I slide it under his door. I’m glad he doesn’t have a neighbor who likes to water the porch plants.
When I walk away from his door, I do so feeling like at least I was able to say my piece.
Drew
I startle when I see a white envelope on my floor after I unlock the door. A bead of sweat drips down my forehead from a morning run after a weight-room workout, and I wipe it away as I bend to grab the page.
“Love notes?” Jason asks as he follows me inside and grabs some water from the pitcher in the fridge.
“Not sure,” I mutter as gruffly as I can, mostly to hide the goddamn flutter that hits my heart unexpectedly from seeing my name in her handwriting. True, I’ve never seen it before, but I know it’s from her.
Sliding open the envelope, I take out the sheet of paper and unfold it as I park myself on a stool at the kitchen counter. Jason grabs the stool across from me and hands me a glass of water. I take a thirsty gulp, then flip open the page and read.
Hey Drew,
I hope you’re having a great week, and that practice is treating you well. I’m writing to you to share something on my mind. Please know I’m not asking you to change your mind. I respect your decision. You have to play the game how you have to play the game. But I wouldn’t be a card-carrying football fan or coach’s daughter if I let you go about thinking you lost for the wrong reason. The truth is this—San Francisco was sharp. Its defense was unbeatable that day. You were forced to throw a few seconds sooner than you would have liked. Your receivers weren’t firing on all cylinders, and they dropped passes. Your offensive line didn’t protect you as well as they should. That is all. You aren’t losing your focus. The game is just that—it’s a
game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you’re amazing, and sometimes the other team has all the points in its favor. I have no doubt you’ll keep showing Los Angeles how lucky they are to have you. I know that’s how I felt for those few brief days when you were mine.
All my best,
Dani
I read it again, letting her words soak in, till I can feel them deep in my gut. She’s not the first one to say this about the game. Some of my teammates did too. Coach hinted at it. But she’s the first to say it so clearly, and so well. And she’s the first one to say it in a way that gets why I felt shitty about my performance. Joining this team as the starting quarterback has been a huge opportunity for me. It’s the chance I’ve longed for to prove myself. I want to make this franchise happy. I want to stay here. I want to have a career here.
But even so, maybe I’ve gotten something wrong. My heart feels heavy when I look up. “Shit.”
Jason raises an eyebrow. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, man,” I say, sucking the crappy feeling back in.
“You sure?” he asks, skeptically.
“Absolutely. Just a note from . . .”
“By the way,” he says, tipping his chin to the paper. “Dani was right.”
I tilt my head to the side. “About what?”
“Qwench. That little bit of information turned out to be spot on,” he says, looking me in the eye. “I made some calls. Asked around. Turned out she was spot on. The company did have some trouble with tax fraud, but did its best to hide it. If it weren’t for her, I’m not sure I would have found out about it, to tell you the truth.”
“Really?”
He nods several times. “She helped us, man. It wasn’t widely known, but she was looking out for you. Had your best interests at heart. I’m really fucking grateful for that.”
A smile pulls at the corner of my mouth. Can’t help it. I’m proud of her for wanting to help, and grateful to have the both of them looking out for me.
Except . . . I don’t have her.
I sigh heavily, then drag a hand through my hair. “I’m glad she was helpful. And listen, I’m sorry if I sounded like an ass questioning you in the first place.”
Out of Bounds Page 10
