Page 12 of The Brotherly Shove

Maryann Lawson is nothing if not a sweetly sarcastic pain in my ass, but dammit I love her.

"What are you talking about woman? I was in the gym six days a week for five months straight," I scoff at her, trying to hide the pinch in my face when I attempt to cross my legs and think better of it when my foot cramps.

Six days a week training by myself at the twenty four hour gym next to the supermarket on Knights Road has absolute jackshit on NFL training camp, as it turns out. I can't remember being so sore in my entire life. I expected that the amount of training versus playtime this season was going to be unbalanced, but I was naive enough to think that as the newbie and the guy whose ass will be keeping the bench warm and toasty all year that I might not have many eyes on me today.

Wrong. So fucking wrong.

From the second I left Adler's office, it felt like every single coach, assistant and trainer was on my ass. I ran so many drills and threw so many goddamn footballs that I'll be genuinely surprised if I have the grip strength to jerk off ever again. The only plus side to it all was that I was mostly doing one on ones with Kasper as he ran me through what I can expect for the rest of training camp, meaning I got to avoid Lennon for most of the day. He found me during lunch, but thankfully there was enoughcommotion with everyone chatting and getting excited for the season that it didn't leave me vulnerable to any Len-induced emotional breakdowns.

"You might have been doing your squats, but you were sulking while doing them," Mom says around a mouthful of Oreos, and my stomach gurgles with a pang of jealousy and longing. I have to live my sweet tooth dreams vicariously through her right now. I'm pretty good at eating a moderate diet and letting myself indulge in certain things like burgers and alcohol without it affecting my game, but put a package of cookies—any cookie, snickerdoodle, macaron, even oatmeal raisin, I don't discriminate—in front of me, and I blackout. I get transported to another world. It's just me and my chocolate chips riding a comet across the milky way. Once I start, I can't stop, so I must avoid them at all cost. I won't have the pleasure of experiencing the sinful sweetness of the glorious Oreo cookie until at least January.

"Ma," I groan, and she shakes her head.

"Fine, I'll let it go. You totally weren't sulking," she draws out sarcastically while making over exaggerated finger quotes. "Changing the subject. How was seeing Lennon?"

That is so not changing the subject, and judging by her cocky, all-knowing mother smirk, she knows that all too well. I'm not ashamed to say that when Lennon broke my heart last year, I ran to my mommy like a little kid with a scraped knee. I hadn't told anyone about my crush on him, so even though I was hurting, it had felt really cathartic to just let it all out and cry on my Ma's shoulder. At the time, she'd been nothing but supportive, allowing me to wallow in my grief and marinate in my feelings. If she had any feelings about the way I suddenly stopped mentioning Lennon so much, why he never came over for any of the plans we'd made for that summer, she never mentioned them. At least, she hadn't mentioned them at the time.

Since the day of the draft, though, she's been a real pest about the whole situation. At least once a week since we found out that I'd be playing on the same team as Lennon again, she's pushed me to do something. Anything. Reach out, tell him how I feel, even if all it accomplished was giving me closure, she's been insistent that I need to make a move.

Obviously, I did not take her advice.

"It was fine," I say with what I hope is a nonchalant looking shrug.

"That's nice. Now tell me the truth," she answers with that perfectly cool and calm 'I'm not buying your shit' mom tone. It honestly amazes me how perceptive she is when it comes to me. I blow out a long breath.

"It was…better than I expected and yet still supremely awful," I say as I start to pick at my cuticles. It's a nasty habit and one I should probably work harder at breaking because the tiny cuts I get as a result of my picking are always super painful when I inevitably get hit directly on them with a football.

"Care to explain?" She asks, and even though my answer is no, I do. I've known the woman for twenty-three years. She's not gonna let me get away with avoiding the subject.

"It was just…I don't know. I thought I'd completely lose it when I saw him in person. I didn't though, and that part was good. But you know Lennon. He went right in for the hug and I almost couldn't take it. As soon as he touched me, it was like my skin was on fire. I immediately remembered what it felt like to be so close to him, and it made my heart ache in my chest." I rub at my sternum because even now, I feel the pain pulsing there.

"Aww, Breaker. I'm so sorry. Did you have to spend a lot of time with him practicing?" she asks, and I shake my head.

"Nah, we were sort of seperated by position today. Not a ton of team stuff," I answer, bending the truth just a bit. There was plenty of team drills, I just wasn't apart of them. I didn't get tooclose of a look at the NDA I signed earlier, but I'm fairly certain I'm not supposed to talk about the meeting with anyone, not even Ma. I'm not going to give her the inkling that I might be getting more play time than we expected until the powers that be give me the okay.

"You know, Booger, if you had just reached out to him…" she trails off, knowing that I can fill in the blanks myself.

"I really don't need and 'I told you so', Ma. It's easy for you to look at the situation and tell me what I should or shouldn't have done, but you can't feel my feelings. You can't understand how fucking hard this whole thing has been on me. I couldn't have reached out to him. I physically could not have done it. I didn't have it in me. I barely have it in me to look at him now, so please spare me the lecture. I'm trying my best, okay? This is me trying."

I jam a finger into my chest, pointing at myself just as a knock on the door breaks me out of my verbal spiral. I'm thankful for it, because even though I don't like the direction my attitude was headed, I'm powerless to stop it. I don't like talking to my mom like she has no life experience or wisdom to offer me but in this particular situation, there's no way she can understand the magnitude of my heartbreak.

"That's my dinner, Ma. I gotta go."

"Alright, Booger. I'll stop with my opinions. Just…" she pauses, thinking for a moment. "Just know that you have people in your corner. You don't need to sit alone with all of this. Remember that."

I nod, and after a quicklove you, goodbye,I manage to hobble to my door and open it, picking up the miso salmon grain bowl and green juice I ordered from the local salad spot off of my doorstep. Fuck, what I wouldn't give for a box or five of Girl Scout Thin Mints instead of this bowl of healthy sadness right now. I'm aware that my aching muscles need all the waterand nutrients at the moment, but salmon doesn't exactly scream 'eating your feelings' which is all I want to do.

It feels like it takes me twenty minutes to make it over to the couch and get my dinner set up. Of course I forgot a fork because I'm still getting used to California where they don't put plastic utensils in every takeout container. By the time I practically crawled to the kitchen and back and checked the time, it turns out the whole ordeal had actually only taken me sixteen minutes.

Small victories, I suppose.

I eat my dinner with little fanfare, mindlessly watching an episode of Storage Wars that I've seen a thousand times—the one where the 'YUP' guy gets into a fist fight with the auctioneer—and then slowly drag my ass to bed without cleaning up after myself. The mess on the coffee table is a problem for morning Breaker.

It's only a little past seven, but I couldn't care less about that as I strip down to my boxer briefs and slide into bed. This king size mattress is the one true luxury I allowed myself to splurge on when that signing bonus hit my bank account. Laying here in the middle of my jersey sheets with my fluffy pillows and thick, cozy black comforter, I feel like the meat in a stuffed-to-the-brim burrito. As soon as I lay down, my eyes start to droop closed. I quickly turn to set an alarm and plug my phone in, thankful for the shower I took at the facilities so that I don't have to worry about going to sleep all nasty. I ask Alexa to turn off my lights, and she does. I turn on my side, cuddling into a pillow.

Even as exhaustion overwhelms my mind and my body, the last thing I see behind my eyes as I drift off to sleep is Lennon's bright blue irises, his pink lips, and his ridiculously over the top, toothy smile that never fails to bring me to my knees.

CHAPTER 8

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