Page 68 of Near Miss

My season is arguably off to a great start. And usually, I’d be all about celebrating that. I’d be chasing the stupid, meaningless awards each week because who am I if I’m not winning at this?

And it’s not that I don’t care. I do. But a few months ago, this would have been the only thing in the entire world I wanted, and I wouldn’t have even had to chase after it.

They all would have belonged to me, week after week.

Old Beckett Davis was a certainty.

This me, though—I’m not sure he’s certain about anything.

I don’t know what I’m going to kick like on Sunday. I don’t think I can trust these stupid legs anymore.

Maybe it’s because that was the only thing I ever knew about myself.

But I think I’m learning other things about me.

I think real me, whoever he is, might actually be a good friend—and it’s not because I pay for things for my family, or I deliver on the field. He’s allowed to have bad days and complicated days and all the other days everyone else gets to have.

He can be who he is and still be worthy of a girl who isn’t just a girl, a friend who isn’t just a friend, brushing her lips against his on a crowded rooftop bar.

Still worthy of her time and attention and the three seconds she gifted me when she let her guard down, even though I had a bad practice that day and couldn’t kick for shit.

Maybe whatever lives inside me behind the stupid grin and the stupid dimple might be worthy of a lot of things.

I wish I was with her now, not here in this stupid chair at the stadium.

Coach does this thing each week—when we’re back to practice after a game, no matter the outcome, we don’t open the week examining our mistakes. We sit in one of the conference rooms after the morning workout and we talk about everything that went well.

This week, he talks about me.

“Special Teams Player of the Week.” Coach Taylor points the football towards me, and I feel myself sink lower in my chair. I’d turn my hat forward and pretend I couldn’t see him if it wouldn’t be so obvious.

“Four field goals. All over 50 yards. That’s not counting the extra points. You haven’t missed all season. Special teams secure wins, and you do what you need to do to make sure the offense and defense can do their jobs.” He pauses again, like he’s mulling something over, while everyone else claps or smacks the desks in front of them. “That record is yours, Davis. You’re the best kicker in the league. We’re going to be with you when you take it. It belongs to you, just like a championship belongs to this team.”

He sits back against the desk, the knots in my shoulders loosen, and I think he’s done. He’ll move on to the next thing he deems necessary to laud and the next ego he thinks he needs to inflate, so we all go into this week feeling like we’re unstoppable.

“That”—he punctuates the word with another point of the football that feels a bit like it’s cutting me—“is the Beckett Davis we know and love. That’s the Beckett Davis we need. Welcome back.”

It’s supposed to be motivational.

That’s the Beckett Davis we know and love. That’s the Beckett Davis we need.

Like that’s the only version of me that ever mattered.

Welcome back.

Each letter in those two words lands on my shoulders at once, and I don’t feel particularly worthy of anything anymore. And I bet if I looked down, I’d see the legs of my chair cracking through the concrete flooring.

Greer

In the way that Beckett becomes a habit, so does going to his house after particularly difficult shifts, usually when I’ve spent hours stealing organs from teenagers who didn’t ask to die and putting them in teenagers who desperately just want to live.

A safe space, if you will.

A place where I can avoid things, and I’ve been avoiding a lot of things, including the fact that alcohol short-circuited my brain and I brushed my mouth across his in a too-intimate gesture in a too-public space outside the confines of this room. Where I don’t have to dissect my innermost feelings about my surgical career.

A boy definitely lives here in this bedroom—but it’s lovely and beautiful. A giant wall of exposed brick stretches behind this king bed that probably cost more money than I would ever want to know. An oak dresser riddled with important things—pictures of his family, his favourite watch, and a particularly important football.

A high-pile rug that covers most of the usually cold cement floor, and floor-to-ceiling paned windows with a wonderful viewof the city. You can just make out the outline of the stadium from here.

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