Path of Thieves

by Sunniva Dee

  Keyon flies in this morning too, while Mom is on standby in Rigita expecting updates as soon as I’m off the turf. I owe people to give it my all. More than anyone, I owe it to my girlfriend.

  Nadine should have landed in South Beach yesterday. It was late though, so it makes sense that she didn’t return my call. We haven’t talked much at all lately. I mean, she’s been busy up north with her aunt, and I’ve been getting ready for the tryouts.

  I’ve left her a few voicemails and texts. It was her schedule with the family, I’m sure, that made her not return them from up there. Little cousins and so forth. They all love my girl. Can’t blame them.

  I’m not going to lie and say I’m okay with a week of silence. Have we ever gone this long without talking? It’s niggling at me that the last time we talked was on the night I deserted my dad. Nadine doesn’t even know what happened. In hindsight, I wonder if I shouldn’t just have called her from the roadside.

  “How’re you feeling?” Liza settles a hip against the doorjamb, empty water glass in hand. “You ready?”

  I meet her with a semi-smile. “I’m okay. Can’t sleep though.”

  “Ha, no wonder. It’s a huge day for you. Make or break, right?”

  “Right, thanks, Liza. You know how to calm a guy down.”

  She snorts and saunters into the kitchen. “Hey, I’m not worried. You’ll make.”

  My phone is plugged into a wall socket. No overnight texts or voicemails illuminate the screen, and suddenly I wonder if Nadine hasn’t straight up seen the light about me. That last convo a week ago. She wasn’t happy. I must have sounded like I’d never be free of my father. High school is over for us, and Nadine will go to nursing school in a different state. If there was ever a moment for her to inconspicuously glide away, this is it.

  Our thing was never a match. I’ve heard of good girls falling for bad boys before, but Nadine fell for me, someone so bad I stole from her freaking family. She and I, we’re an obscene mismatch.

  Courtesy of Liza’s OCD, she’s settled into what she refers to as “their” apartment already. The old wall clock from Bear’s kitchen in Newbark hangs on the wall above the TV. It reads six a.m. Nadine occupies so much space in my head it’s hard to concentrate on what’s only hours ahead of me. Would she pick up if I called? I’d tell her my news if she did. Ah my girl is so sweet when she’s happy.

  Nadine doesn’t answer. I have to decide what I want. Do I insist and run the risk of upsetting her more? Yeah, I’ll do that.

  I get tired of hearing the beep on the phone, so I hold it away from me while I redial a dozen more times. She’s not going to pick up. Do I leave a message? Yes. Yes, I’ll do that too.

  “Hey, it’s me. I have good news. It’s real good news if you’re interested. No kidding this time. Call me back. Please?” I exhale against the phone, thinking of how to end my message. I send a side-glance to Paislee, who’s stirring. Then I turn into the couch cushions, lips on the receiver, and mumble, “I love you.”

  Nadine returns my call a minute later. My heart freaking stammers. I pick up and press the phone to my ear. Start with a typical, “Hey.”

  “Hey... How are you?” she asks, sounding breathless. My nonstop buzzing must’ve woken her up good.

  “Awesome but nervous.”

  “Why are you nervous?”

  “I’m in Gainesville.”

  She inhales fast. “What are you doing in Gainesville, Cugs?” She adds my name for urgency, letting me know I need to tell her right away.

  “Hold on.” I slip my flip-flops on. Head out the door and exit to the street. My back glides against the wall of the building until my ass hits the curb. Then I whisper out the night of the Rottweiler and the firearms. I tell her about the Doubletree, about Tampa, about Paislee driving me here. Last, I tell her about today.

  She’s silent for too long.

  “Nadine?” I finally say her name. “Nadine. You’re so quiet.”

  Her breath shudders, and she’s not as happy as I hoped she would be.

  “I’m trying, baby.” My heart picks up speed as I say it, letting me know that things are all wrong. “I’ll do my best today.”

  There it is, a sound. Nadine is sobbing. She did give up on me, didn’t she?

  “Are we okay? Please, don’t be so quiet.”

  She pulls in a breath. “I lost faith for a moment. Thought you were back to shopping, and I just couldn’t... deal with it anymore.”

  “It’s ‘stealing,’ Nadine. ‘Shopping’ is when you pay with money.”

  Her laughter distorts against the microphone. “You’re right. Ah this is unbelievable.”

  “We good?” I need more words.

  “Mm-hmm.” Her affirmative pitches high like it’s packed inside a whimper. But then she clears her throat and says exactly what I need. “Yes, baby. We’re so good.”

  My hair drips sweat into my eyes, making me blink fast. I shake it out of the way. The field is large, green, inviting. Players storm forward. They’re with me, against me, shoving, tackling, kicking. They shout curses or mutter encouragements in passing.

  I’ve never been more focused. This is my game. I take it, eat it oyster-raw with no judgment and no fear. There’s thunder in my chest, throbbing in my veins. Muscle, bone, and limbs are hot-greased for war.

  I reach through tight coverage and convert a third-and-long.

  On a bubble screen, I juke the cornerback seventeen yards after catch.

  I haul in an eight-yard pass for a touchdown.

  When the coach waves me off the field, a chunky wrist bent for my hasty departure, I feel my back straighten and my head angle up as I meet his stare.

  “Hmm.” He points, two fingers in the air and a quick twist at his QB. The QB bobs his helmet in understanding. Then the coach returns to me. “That was pretty impressive. That how you play?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “How are you under pressure? Is this a typical day on the field for you? I don’t recall having received any new stats on you.”

  “I know. I was out of commission with injuries,” I say. “This is the most pressure I’ve ever been under though, and I’ll always do my best because I’ve got everything to lose.”

  The coach’s eyes seem to shrink as they pierce me again. “Tell me why the Gators are so important to you. Tell me what you have to lose.” Around us, trainers, players, and spectators mill about.

  I could hold off, not give him pieces of me I can’t take back. Clearly, my game is good enough. At least it was today. But he wants more. Does he want me to bare my soul, tell him my insecurities? Do I need to discuss my setup for failure ever since I moved to Florida?

  Paislee and Nadine’s presence at the entrance as they dropped me off together, a cotton-candy breeze of anticipation.

  I square my shoulders. “The Gators are my number one team. It’s always been a dream to play for you. That part is easy. What’s harder is to explain what I have to lose.”

  Their gazes as the door swung shut; Paislee’s bright feline intensity and Nadine’s coffee-dark belief in me.

  I suck in courage, a rush of air to my lungs. “I’m not sure where I would have been if it weren’t for football. My life so far hasn’t been all that easy.” I let out an uncomfortable chuckle, because whose lives are easy? “I won’t go into detail about ‘home,’ but when I started playing, I instantly knew football was my thing. The bad shit just disappeared whenever I played.

  “Then I got injured and thought I’d blown all chances. I wasn’t going to play anymore, wasn’t going to college. Ha, let’s just say I’ve had a few dark months leading up to now.”

  Coach’s arms are tight over his chest, features knitted in concentration. I don’t know if I’m telling him too much or too little. Maybe I’m babbling about the wrong thing?

  “Other people
, Bear included, believe in me and think I fit in here. They’ve worked so hard, insisting that I didn’t accept defeat without coming to the tryouts.”

  I shake my head, because what I’m about to say sounds chick-flickish. “You asked me what I have to lose, sir, and the short answer is this: I’d lose what makes me me. If I give up, I give up on me.”

  I’m weak, suddenly, in need of oxygen. It’s that leaden sensation of knowing you can never reach your goals. “To give up on football is like losing your breath and not knowing if you’ll ever catch it again.”

  I’m numb. Leaned back and numb on Liza’s sectional. We’re all here.

  Nadine is warm against my side, and I squeeze her close. Three giant pizza boxes tile the table between us and the TV. We have a Gators recap playing. Bear comments, while Paislee and Keyon back him up. Me, I have no opinions tonight.

  “You were hungry.” Paislee tosses a stare back at me from her crisscrossed position on the carpet.

  Apparently, I still have a double slice of the Meat-lover’s Delight ready to go in my hand. “Huh. How many have I eaten?”

  Nadine kisses my cheek. “You’ve downed over half a pizza all on your own. I think you like Sebastiano’s very much. You need them on your speed dial now that you’re moving here.”

  moving here

  moving here

  “Nah, there’s no telling who they’ll pick.” The corners of my lips twitch. I’m not sure if they’re about to pull down in some awed pout or up in a grin. I turn to find Nadine’s mouth. Grumbles of “gross” and chirps of “goodness so cute” hit us.

  “When will you know?”

  “In a few days, they said.” Thankfully, I’m not about to cry. No, I’m trying to finish our kiss without breaking into a laugh. It’s not sexy to laugh and kiss at the same time, but then again, it’s not every day someone like me killed it at the Gators tryouts.

  “I could be a Gator,” I whisper to her.

  “You will be a Gator,” she whispers back.

  “I’d blow it.” But then I shake my head, and so does she.

  “You’d never blow it. You were born for this.”

  “You’ll be too far away,” I say. She will.

  “We’ll figure it out.” Nadine watches her fingers rake through my sloppy mohawk. “People have done long-distance before.”

  “Worked well for your sister and me.” It makes my face warm that Keyon’s listened to our conversation.

  “It sucks!” My sister shakes her head. “You better think twice, because having a hot boyfriend in a city where everyone wants a bite of him—”

  “Will you quit it?” I aim a frown at her.

  “Not cool, Paislee.” Bear nudges Liza closer as if she’s the one who’ll live far away. Liza pushes her hands against his chest while she tells my girlfriend she’d never let Bear live in Gainesville alone.

  I’m quick to grab Nadine’s hand. “You have nothing to worry about, okay?”

  Nadine’s giggle is soft. “You guys are hilarious. It’s, like, the boys against the girls, right? Boys think it’s fine, and girls think it sucks.”

  “Why don’t you do your nursing thing in Gainesville instead?” Liza asks. “It’d be a blast. We could hang out all the time.”

  “That’s like asking why Cugs can’t come to my town to play football.”

  “They don’t exactly have elite football at Western Nevada University.” Bear has degraded to accepting pizza crust from Liza’s hand. Oh their future.

  “Well, they don’t exactly have Doctor Tamara Cardillo in Gainsville.”

  “And... she is?” I’m not the only one blinking.

  “Only the number one expert on cultural and religious ethics in nursing in the entire country.”

  “Was about to say,” Bear mumbles dryly.

  Nadine angles her head back, sending me one of her sweet smiles. “We’ll make it, right? We’ll fly between, spend long weekends and breaks together.”

  “Babe: not on student aid.”

  “Babe: I’m a trust-fund baby.”

  I tackle her into the cushions and kiss her a little bit more.

  Ugh. There’s the biggest lump in my throat. I feel like I’m trying to swallow a whole, boiled potato. Or like I’m a sap.

  “You all right over there?” Nadine smirks. I roll my eyes, because there’s snow everywhere outside our cab window. Roads and countryside and trees have been dusted for so long that the layers are thick, and I can hardly see the original shape beneath them. I don’t know what to do with such familiarity.

  “I’m fine. What about you ‘over there?’” I add with her inflection. She’s not “over there.” She’s formed in the crook of my arm, a perfect piece of my puzzle.

  “Uh-huh. I can’t believe how gorgeous this place is.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it?” I choke on my question mark and the hot potato in my throat makes me tear up. I could blame allergies. In Glacier Country? Eh, then again.

  “It gets dark early here though, doesn’t it?”

  I clear my throat. “In the winter, it does, but the sun just turned, so the days will get longer again.”

  “Seriously? The sun turns in the middle of the winter here?”

  I smile and nod my chin into the top of her head. “It does everywhere.”

  Thanks to a broken rib, I’m off football-duty for the holidays, and Nadine and I are spending the last half of Christmas with my mother and who she calls her “good friend, Mr. Markeston.” Paislee and Keyon arrived a week ago. Because of the Coral Mansion having more bedrooms, the two of them sleep at his parents’, while Nadine and I will stay at my mom’s—in separate rooms, we’ve already been warned.

  Rigita opens before us, a cluster of low wooden houses in whites and reds and beige. I do remember this, what home looks like.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve been here,” I start but trail off as the taxi stops in front of the same cottage I left behind long ago. I cried when I left. I freaking cry now.

  Mom folds her arms around me. I can’t see her; I’ll open my eyes once I’m done being a wuss. Her voice warbles against my ear while she talks about gratitude and disbelief at having me step onto our driveway. I say something like, Good to be home, and, Meet my girlfriend, Nadine.

  “Ma’am, it’s such a pleasure to finally meet you.” Nadine’s voice is the sweetest. “I’ve heard so much about you. All amazing things.”

  “Oh goodness, aren’t you a doll? Cugs, you didn’t tell me that you’d captured a veritable southern belle! And she’s so polite.”

  When I hold the front door to the house for her, she gushes, “Aww, and you’re a veritable southern gentleman too.”

  “He really is.” Nadine bats her lashes at me, stoking Mom’s fire. I grimace in response, because my examples to the contrary abound and no one knows better than Nadine.

  I hold my breath as I enter my old bedroom. Sure, it boasts new bookshelves and curtains, but my kid-sized desk is still here, and the posters of Yu-Gi-Oh and Courage the Cowardly Dog remain on the walls.

  I choke another bout of unmanly emotion. “New bed?”

  “Yes! I said to Richard that I was saving up for a new bed instead of your old race car—”

  “Race car?” Nadine hides her glee behind a hand. Oh she’ll use that tidbit against me later.

  “Mm-hmm. I need to be careful with that man. He just goes right ahead and fulfills every wish I articulate.”

  I run a hand over the headboard. “Yeah. If it weren’t for Markeston, I wouldn’t be here right now. Nadine would, though, little Miss Trust-Fund Baby.”

  “Gah, Cugs!” Cheeks pinking, Nadine scrunches her nose up even though she was the one introducing the expression. “Anyway, my flight was courtesy of Nana. Her fiancé before my grandfather was an Eskimo. He died before they could get married.
Anyway, Nana is sure Cugs is Eskimo too, so she’ll probably pay for every flight here.”

  “Whoops, I hope she’s not too upset when she finds out he doesn’t have an ounce of Eskimo in him.” Mom leads the way and opens the door to Paislee’s old room.

  I pretend-zip my lips closed. “Who needs details?”

  Nadine mimics my gesture and winks at me. “I love your house, Ms. Cain, and Rigita too. It’s beautiful here.”

  “Oh you’re so sweet. Please call me Margaret.”

  A Lincoln Town Car pulls into the driveway. It dwarfs Mom’s little Corolla. I think that someone’s being dropped off, but then the Town Car stays, and Markeston swings his body out of the driver’s seat, strides to the back, and opens the trunk.

  My mother is so fast. I can’t believe the way she sticks her feet into a pair of high-heeled shoes and scurries out the door. She presses her palms together too, which makes me seriously worried for her balance on the ice.

  You think she likes him? Nadine bites her lip to keep from laughing.

  No telling. Your guess is as good as mine, I mouth back.

  Some nights have the potential to blow minds. Elegant stairs leading up to wrought-iron-clad oak doors don’t make those nights. Neither do the marble floors I cross, the high ceilings, fireplaces in every room, or the scent of pine in the Coral Mansion. No. What etches this night into memory is my family.

  People can be all sorts. At times, we’re tired. We’re exhausted, petty, mean, and judgmental. But with the right coach and guidance, we can become our best and what our loved ones deserve. Tonight, that potential floods me.

  I tip my head up to watch the flames paint my mother’s features a warm amber. She holds a small box, unwrapped and open. A necklace is cradled in her palm, and she’s angling it toward the light.

  “Wow, you really shouldn’t have.” A shy glance at Markeston, who kisses her forehead and assures her that he really should.

  “I’m only sorry it came late.”

  Keyon uncaps a beer for my sister, bright eyes moving past her to Nadine and me. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”