Fourth and Inches

by Kata Čuić

  “So, I picked you up and off we went. Only, by then shock was starting to set in. I couldn’t keep you in my arms. I repeatedly tripped over my own two feet. My knees were shaking. I think I was calmly hysterical, if that makes any sense. I kept talking to you, pretending you were only mad at me because I’d seen your boobs in less than their finest state and without your permission. I tried to get you to forgive me. Promised to do all your calc homework, buy you all the chocolate you could eat, bring you your favorite flowers.”

  I still don’t know what her favorite flowers are.

  “What are your favorite flowers, Evie?”

  “Roses,” she chokes out.

  “Roses,” I repeat. “I would’ve bought you roses. What color?”

  “Yellow.”

  Like the ones she left on my locker when she was trying to convince me to go to Homecoming with her.

  She gave me her favorite fucking flower, and I threw a fit like a goddamn spoiled jock because I was supposed to ask her to Homecoming.

  “Anyway, you started coming to, and I have never been so fucking simultaneously grateful and terrified in my life. It was obvious you had a concussion. You threw up all over my shirt; you faded in and out. You thought I was Jackson at one point. You told me your boyfriend was going to kill me, and begged me not to touch you because you loved him.”

  Evie gasps, the same sound she made when I hit her.

  “Yeah.” I nod, feeling the sickest joke of the cosmos punch me in the gut all over again. “The first time you told me you loved me, you weren’t even really telling me. You were telling him.”

  “He didn’t deserve any of my words. I’m sorry I ever wasted a single one on his ears.”

  Me, too.

  I’m sorry, too.

  Sorry doesn’t change anything.

  “I don’t remember much after we got back to the Ironville High campus. Mike and Alex found us and were yelling at me, but you wouldn’t talk to me anymore. You closed your eyes and I didn’t think they’d ever open again. My whole bedroom was every shade of blue I could find, but not the same as your eyes. I didn’t think I’d ever see that color again.”

  Evie crawls toward me, wrapping her body around mine until I can barely breathe.

  She holds on as our sobs compete for loudest, ugliest, most gut-wrenching.

  We’re not a team, anymore.

  Teammates don’t work against each other this way.

  I have no idea what time it is when I find my voice again. “So, now you know.”

  She startles at my shoulder, like she could have possibly fallen asleep, curled up with the monster who failed her so completely. “If it’s not too much trouble, would you tell me everything about all the days I forgot, too? I don’t remember our first kiss, and that’s always bothered me.”

  My brain struggles to comprehend her request.

  Why isn’t she pushing me away?

  Slapping me?

  Reviling me?

  Giving as good as she got like the fucking fighter she is?

  “You…you want to hear about our first kiss?”

  “Please.”

  Until dawn casts our home in a pinkish-gold wash of new beginnings, I tell her stories of all the things she doesn’t remember.

  Because she wants me to.

  I carry her to bed when she falls asleep, and tuck her into the cloud she asked for the night I won the Heisman.

  I run a quick errand and leave yellow roses on the nightstand, then kiss her soft lips before leaving for the team’s training facilities.

  I have to make her proud of me again.

  She wants the best quarterback she’s ever seen.

  I can’t undo the past, but I can fucking own the present.

  And the future.

  “Everything’s going to be fine.” Patty reaches her hand across the kitchen island, entwining our fingers.

  She’s been so calm, cool, and collected this past week. It reminds me of Mike.

  Never one to break under pressure.

  He finally called my phone, not Rob’s, to wish me luck on the procedure tomorrow. And to free me from the last vestiges of the burdens I bore.

  “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did when you told me. I promise you, I’m happy now. Happier than before. Everything happens for a reason, and Chelsie leaving me when she did wasn’t your fault. I get it now.”

  “What do you get?”

  “There are some problems we can’t solve. We have to let the people we love make their own mistakes. Real love isn’t fixing everything. It’s standing by someone even when they fuck up. And loving them, anyway.”

  It still hurts my heart he thinks he was the one to blame for his actions that night, but if he says he’s happy, then I’m going to take him for his word. And learn from his hard-won lessons.

  We can’t fix everything for everyone else. We can only fix ourselves.

  I wish I could be more confident the surgery tomorrow morning will fix me.

  “Do you have any more questions? Any concerns? I’m a registered nurse practitioner in the state of Ohio, you know.” Patty fixes me with a rueful smile.

  There’s no detail I don’t already know except the results.

  “You could take your boards again and be a registered nurse practitioner in the state of California,” I remind her, my mouth full of food that tastes like cardboard.

  She pushes the noodles around on her own plate, sighing. “I’m actually going to move back to Ohio once this all blows over. I just haven’t found the courage to tell Rob yet. I think the divorce is hitting him much harder than I expected. I always hoped once he was an adult, with his own career, his own family,” she points her fork at me, “he’d realize it was a long time coming. Husbands aren’t supposed to treat their wives the way I’ve been treated all these years.”

  Patty and I have shared many glasses of tear-diluted wine in the past several days. She’s known about Gary’s infidelity all along. In her misguided maternal way, she was only trying to spare Rob the fallout of her loveless marriage.

  While her only child could never understand why his mother stayed with his father, she was giving the best years of her life to keep the ruse of a stable, loving family.

  Rather than be a hypocrite and remind her clearer communication could have saved them both much heartbreak, I steer the conversation in a lighter direction. “Are you afraid to tell him you’re moving back or are you afraid to tell him why?”

  She blushes. “Well, I-I don’t know what you mean.”

  I almost choke on my pad thai from giggling. “So, you don’t remember two nights ago when you gushed about your budding romance with Dr. Lawson from ortho after a full bottle of Napa Valley’s finest red?”

  Her eyes, the same chameleon color as her son’s, widen until they’re the size of the plates in front of us. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Oh, Ma.” I hold my side as my stomach hurts from laughter I haven’t let loose in what feels like ages. “You totally did. It was the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  She sags in her seat. “Oh, thank the Lord. If you’re describing it as cute, then I obviously didn’t blab to you about the hot sex.”

  Now I’m choking for an entirely different reason.

  The front door swings open and Rob walks in, a dimpled, wide smile on his face. “What are my two favorite ladies laughing about?”

  “Nothing,” we lie in unison.

  Parental sex is something no child ever needs to hear about, regardless of age.

  Clear communication, be damned.

  “Okay,” he draws out as he approaches, then drops a kiss on both our cheeks before settling onto a stool beside me. “We all ready for the big day tomorrow?”

  Patty points an accusing fork in my direction. “Mostly. Except someone is going to be very hungry if she doesn’t eat a full meal before beginning her fast in a few hours.”

  Rob glances at my mostly full plate, then at me with a raised eyebrow. “Are you getti
ng sick of your favorite? Do you need steak? Because I can grill you a mean steak.”

  “We don’t even have a grill!”

  “I can go out and buy one when I go pick up the steaks. Just say the word.”

  Patty laughs, but I roll my eyes. “Rob? Do you want steak?”

  Everyone knows it’s his favorite food. Including the Falls Fanatics who send steak of the month club boxes to the condo multiple times a month. Rob always throws them away, claiming they’re contaminated.

  “I already had dinner, but I will do anything to watch you eat steak.”

  Sometimes, being a professional athlete must really suck. Rob likely had a carefully planned meal of plain grilled chicken, enough broccoli to make me barf, and some heart-healthy carb like sweet potatoes, minus the butter and brown sugar.

  Patty cuts into Rob’s weird food fetish with her own professional opinion. “It’s completely normal to be nervous, but you still need to eat. Nourishing your body will be a key component to your recovery.”

  Spoken like a true football mom. And nurse.

  We’re lying on our sides, facing each other in bed. Both sets of eyes wide open in the darkness.

  “You should try to sleep, baby.” Rob caresses my cheek in that familiar spot, the weight of his gesture holding more meaning to me than it ever did before.

  “Am I keeping you awake?” My tossing and turning wasn’t a problem in the past month when I slept during the day while Rob was at work.

  With Patty here, I dare not stick to that schedule, hoping to ease her transition into divorced life with as little turmoil as possible. She doesn’t need to be worried about her son’s love life when her own is changing so drastically.

  Rob sighs. “I can’t sleep, either.”

  “You should,” I insist. “You have practice tomorrow. You need to be completely focused on the game against Toledo this weekend.”

  “For the last time,” Rob wraps his hand around my neck and pulls me closer. “I’m not going to practice tomorrow. I’m taking you to the hospital. Byers and Shawn have made all the arrangements. My coaches have approved it. The media won’t know anything.”

  I should pull away when he kisses me, but I don’t.

  I shouldn’t have let him make love to me the night following his confession, but I did.

  If I’m going to be the other woman, I’m going to do it right.

  He can use me to finally let go of the guilt that’s been consuming him, and I won’t complain.

  I’ll happily send him onto the love of his life whole, without regret, and ready to give his all to a new relationship and future.

  That was the whole point of this bet, to begin with.

  I once pushed him into Julie’s bed, hoping she could give him the same.

  How ironic I’m the only woman for this job.

  There’s no longer any doubt in my mind a new woman has filled my shoes completely. And how could there be after the last words I heard him say to her?

  I never realized until recently I should thank you for the day you came into my life, even if it was only tangentially and by accident. I didn’t know what love was before then. It wasn’t until I almost lost it that I realized its importance. So…yeah. Thank you. That’s not nearly enough, but I’ll be eternally grateful for what you’ve given me.

  Rob breaks our kiss, resting his forehead against mine. “No matter what happens tomorrow, nothing will change between us.”

  “I know.” A sob catches in my throat. We’ve come full circle. I never imagined where this road would lead us, but I’m finally confident we’re where we were meant to be.

  After everything life has thrown at us, we’re overcoming.

  We’re healing.

  We’re rising above.

  Just as Rob rises over me.

  I allow his searing kiss to penetrate my soul, thankful for the opportunity to experience an otherwise nameless depth of emotion.

  “I love you,” he whispers.

  I absorb the words, believing their full meaning.

  Every touch, every moan, every pleasure and every pain, I commit to memory throughout the night.

  True love doesn’t always end with happily ever after.

  The destination isn’t the point.

  It’s all about the journey.

  It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.

  “I should’ve sprung for a wax,” Evie giggles. “On your dime.”

  She’s much more relaxed, and funny, now that they gave her something to kill her anxiety while we wait for her scheduled OR time.

  “Why would you need a wax?” She doesn’t even have a car, to my knowledge.

  “Because the surgeons are going to see me. Naked.” She wiggles her eyebrows, then breaks into more laughter. “I feel so bad for them. I’m scarred, hairy, and not at all a supermodel.”

  Oh. That kind of wax.

  I frown at her constant self-esteem issues, but I can’t say I feel too bad about the surgeons not being aroused by her naked body. “Baby, it’s their job. They’re not looking at you like a woman they want to date. You’re their patient. I’m sure they’ve seen far…worse than what you have to offer and never batted an eyelash.”

  She breaks into more laughter, then reaches out a hand to nearly stab me in the eye. “You have the prettiest eyelashes. It’s really not fair. Women would kill for those gorgeous, long, naturally-curled lashes.”

  “Aww. I bet you say that to all the guys.” I grab her hand and wrap it in mine before she can do any more unintentional damage.

  A nurse I haven’t seen before pops her head inside the curtain of Evie’s pre-op holding cell. “How are we doing in here? It sounds much better now.”

  “All’s well that ends well, ma’am.”

  Maybe they gave her too much Ativan. She’s awfully small, and awfully dorky just now, even for Evie.

  “Oh my God, you’re…you’re…”

  “Her husband.” I stand at the side of my wife’s bed, willing this lady to understand.

  Today, I’m not the starting quarterback for the Sacramento Gold Rushers.

  I’m not a Heisman trophy winner.

  I’m nothing more than a science-loving man, clinging to the hope of modern medicine for a better outcome than what’s been laid at our feet.

  “Of course.” The petite blonde blushes, but doesn’t say anything else before leaving us alone again.

  I reclaim my chair and pray nothing more will come of it. It’s impossible for Shawn and Byers to vet everyone for professional conduct. They can’t change rosters in a freaking massive hospital, after all.

  Evie’s chewing on her lip when I return my attention to her. “What if it doesn’t work? What if this is all for nothing? What if…”

  I put my free hand over her mouth. “Baby, it’s fine. It’ll be fine. We’re already here, so let’s just see what happens.”

  She nips at my hand until I relent. “I just don’t want to go through all the pain I know is coming for nothing.”

  Hearing that kills me. There’s nothing I can do but be here. It’s so fucking unfair she has to shoulder this burden alone. “You know what you need? A distraction.”

  She scrunches her cute little nose up. “What kind of distraction? If you put on a strip tease for me, I’m not sure any of the nurses will be able to handle that level of hotness.”

  Oh, yeah. I can’t pass up this opportunity. Not when her tongue is so loose.

  “I was thinking more of a list.” I dig my phone out of my pocket and bring up the notes app.

  “What is your obsession with lists, anyway? You have a list for everything, I swear.”

  “I’m a jock, remember? I think of lists as my playbooks for life.”

  Evie rolls her eyes. “Like the list I made for you in high school.”

  “Yep.” Damn. I need to frame that thing and hang it up on one of the bare walls in the condo. Pure gold, that list was. Still is.

  “What lis
t are we making today, Superjock? How to care for a post-surgical patient? Life with a chronic pain sufferer? How to keep your best friend in her appropriate box?”

  That last one makes me crinkle my forehead in confusion, but whatever.

  I’m counting on the drugs in Evie’s system to give me a direct, unfiltered line to her brain.

  “I was thinking something a little more…fun.”

  “Oh. Well, then.” She attempts to sit up straight in her bed. “Fun is my middle name. What are we titling this list?”

  “I thought you didn’t have a middle name because that’s not a typical Greek thing?”

  “Hahaha,” she deadpans. “Don’t try to distract me from my distraction. What list are we making?””

  She is so fucking funny and easy to mess with right now.

  “Evie’s Sex Bucket List.” I type it into my phone as I say the words aloud.

  Her rolling laughter jerks my attention away from the screen. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope. No joke. This surgery is going to be a success, and all your wildest dreams are about to come true. Now…tell me what you would want if you could have anything your dirty little mind ever cooked up.”

  Some things won’t ever be possible with a guy my size. It’s not like I’m having dick reduction surgery. That doesn’t even exist. Yes, I’ve checked. But, no reason to rain on her parade just now. The trick is to get her in the best possible mindset for what she wants.

  Every good athlete knows mental state can make the difference between winning and losing.

  “Anal.”

  I have no idea how she manages to keep a straight face, because I’m cackling like a middle school boy on the inside.

  I pretend to write that one down, but instead tap out:

  1. Anal play a possibility.

  “Okay. Next?”

  She seems to mull it over, finally getting into the idea. “Hmm. I dunno. My brain’s kind of fuzzy.”

  “Can you remember anything you used to want? Maybe something you fantasized about in high school?”

  God knows I was a horny bastard then. Looking back, I can’t believe all the different scenarios my mind imagined, heedless of my size being a potential issue.