Page 133 of Whistle

“I’m not Lance.”

“No, you aren’t.” He readily agreed. “I loved him with the soft heart of a boy, but you… you’ve claimed the jagged heart of a man.”

This was a good time for a daddy joke, right? Except, oh, I couldn’t breathe.

“I’m afraid I’m going to blow up your life. Our lives,” he confessed. Probably the most vulnerable thing I’d ever heard him say.

Rueful, I pulled back. “Are you forgetting the time you bailed me out of jail and then I almost got you shot?”

His laugh was rumbly and reeked of fondness as though he thought my crimes were cute.

“You can’t blow up my life, Em. I did that all on my own. But you can make it better.”

“You really believe that?” he asked as if I couldn’t possibly.

“Yes.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I do.”

“I still have to talk to Landry.” He cautioned me. “My job?—”

I cut him off, not wanting to hear it. Not wanting to acknowledge how this conversation was one step forward but two back. “I know, Em. You need time.”

He’d told me about his past. He’d confided his biggest fear.

It’s not what you asked for.

It’s something!

Something is not everything. Everything doesn’t ask for time. Everything is time.

And time is the longest distance between two hearts.

30

Coach (Emmett)

How could one conversation sum up twenty years of life?

How could something that ripped me apart, created chronic turmoil inside me, and basically shaped my existence be explained so briefly?

It pissed me off.

I’d built up Lance’s death as this major hurdle. This defining moment. And yes, it was. But speaking it out loud felt almost anticlimactic.

Maybe it wouldn’t feel so anticlimactic if I’d told him the entire truth. If I hadn’t left out the most important part.

You’re a chicken shit, Emmett.

I pushed away those nagging thoughts. Pretended they didn’t even plague me.

Maybe that’s how life is. Unbalanced. Experiences that are briefly explained but felt profoundly.

I’m getting real sick of that word, bro. Feel.

Feelings are gross. They muck everything up. Which was exactly why I’d stayed away from everything except swimming and my daughter all these years.

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