Page 49 of Playmaker

I snort. “Not sure how much good it did.”

“Me either.” She laughs.

I’m not sure what she’s expecting to find, but my room is very bland. Carpet, blue walls, and a twin-sized bed my feet hang off. There’s a desk on the far side littered with different trinkets I’ve collected over the years, and shelves filled with football trophies line my walls.

“Hmm.” She spins around, taking it all in. “I have to say, I’m slightly disappointed.”

“How so?”

“No pornographic magazines? No sexy posters of women in bikinis?”

I send her a devilish grin. “Oh, those are all under my bed.”

“Wait, really?”

Giving her a look as if to say,Seriously?I add, “No, Maddie. I don’t have sexy magazines or posters hidden anywhere in this room. Despite what you think, sex isn’t all I think about.”

“I don’t think that’s all you think about.” She scans my rows of trophies, seeming deep in thought. “Well, I never used to.”

“What changed?”

For a heartbeat, her body tenses, and based on that action alone, I know what she’s remembering.

My living room six years ago.

“Nothing exactly changed,” she lies. “You grew up and we drifted apart. The boy who loved Pokémon became more interested in girls and football, and I accepted that. You made where I stood in your life clear, so I took a step back from it, and as the years went by, I became okay with the fact that you weren’t the person you once were. I tried to l—” She clears her throat and starts over. “I tried to like the new version of you instead, but after . . .”

After my mom passed, I became a dick.

I can finish the sentence for her.

Leaning against the door frame, I point to my desk. “Top left drawer,” I say.

“Huh?”

“The top left drawer of my desk,” I repeat. “I want you to look inside it.”

With a wary expression, she peers in the drawer. “A binder? Why do you want me to—” An enormous grin crosses her face when she opens it. “Oh my god. Your Pokémon cards? You kept them?”

My eyes soften as she flips through the endless pages of trading cards, the tightening sensation in my chest—theloveI have for her—bordering on consuming me whole.

“I didn’t change who I was completely. I still take pride in my collection, even if I don’t talk about it anymore.” Any hobby of mine that actually mattered died as soon as my mom did, but I didn’t have the heart to throw away the evidence completely. It sounds stupid, but in my mind, if I got rid of them, it’d erase the memory of my mom, too, so I locked them away in a drawer and thought I’d forget about them for good.

It never worked.

“This is amazing,” she continues. “I can’t believe you—” Something falls out of the binder and lands on the floor, and Maddie stares at her feet, where the photo lies face up. When I recognize what it is, I can feel the color drain from my face.

“Our—” She shakes her head as if she’s dreaming. “That’s our photo from Myrtle Beach.”

My heart races when she bends down to pick it up, holding it between shaky fingers. The photo has seen better days. It’s faded and worn around the edges, and the left corner is ripped. I’ve looked at that photo too many times to count, and it shows. It’s clear how many times I’ve run my thumb over her face, trying to remember a time when life was better.Simpler.

“You kept it,” she whispers, blinking back tears. “Why?”

Closing the distance between us, I grab the photo from her hands and stroke my thumb over the faded part that matches my print. It seems so long ago, and yet it feels like yesterday. I can still remember the dryness of my mouth when she climbed into my lap. I can still feel the electricity that sprang through my veins when I wrapped my arms around her waist and held her close for the first time. We were both so young, and yet it’s clear what we both wanted.

Each other.

My chin is on her shoulder and my smile is filled with braces, and her smile is brighter than the damn flash on the camera. I knew it back then that she was special, and everything I’ve ever done, even hurting her, was to protect her. If I went back and had the choice to change it, I wouldn’t. I’m not proud of who I became after my mom passed, and if I’d been selfish and kept her close, I would have done something stupid like use her to numb the pain of grieving. As soon as I got into high school, sex became an outlet for me. Itstillis, and Maddie is worth so much more than what I’m capable of giving her.

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