Page 29 of Black Roses

The menu drops onto the table and Piper bursts out laughing. Her laughter is poetic. Exhilarating. Contagious. I start up as well. We try to stop but then one of us looks at the other and we crack up into a fit of giggles. I’ve never seen her look more beautiful. It’s as if all the stress that goes along with . . . beingher, is momentarily lifted. Her eyes water and she dabs at the corner of them with her linen napkin.

Our waiter clears his throat, reminding us that he’s still anticipating our order.

I pick up the wine menu and ask Piper, “Does a Chardonnay sound good?”

She nods and I proceed to place the order.

Another server brings us a hot loaf of bread and fills our water glasses from a crystal pitcher. I break the bread, putting half of it on Piper’s plate. “How do you feel now, five days after?”

“Pretty good. Just this morning, I went for my first run since the marathon. You?”

“I started offseason conditioning on Wednesday.” I instinctively rub my sore thighs. “They’ve taken it easy on me because of the race, but I probably pushed myself a little too hard trying to impress the powers that be.”

“What exactly is offseason conditioning?” She tears off a piece of her bread and pops it into her mouth.

“It’s a nine week program that keeps us from squandering away the muscle and agility we gained during the previous season. The first few weeks are limited to strength, conditioning and rehab—which decidedly I was in great need of.” I continue to explain the details of our workout program when she starts choking on a piece of bread.

She drags in ragged breaths between coughs, looking embarrassed to be drawing any attention. “Are you okay?” I hold her water out to her. “Here, try and take a drink.”

She pushes the glass away, instead reaching into her bag to pull out a water bottle. I notice she always carries one with her and I wonder if it’s a habit she got into while traveling. You can never be too sure about the quality of water in strange places.

She stops coughing and I nod at the bottle. “Are you a water snob or a germaphobe?” I joke.

She shrugs and caps the bottle, placing it back into her bag. “I just like this particular brand, that’s all.” She shifts uncomfortably in her chair. “So, you want to be the starting quarterback?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” I ask.

“No. Everyone doesn’t,” she says, her unease abundantly clear. “Why would you want all that attention?”

The sommelier brings us our bottle of wine. Piper watches with great interest as he opens the bottle and pours a taste into my glass. “Yes, this is fine. Thank you,” I tell him as he fills our glasses and places the bottle on the table.

“I don’t play football for the attention, Piper. I play football because I love the game.”

She takes a drink of her wine, eyeing me over the top of the glass. “Why is it so important to you?”

“Have you ever had anything you were really passionate about? Something that defines you to your very core? Something you felt you would die if you didn’t do?”

Piper shrugs and her eyes fall despondently to the table when it dawns on me she did have something like that. Skylar told me acting was her life when she was growing up. And yet she gave up her dream to travel the world aimlessly.

Or something forced her to give it up.

“Maybe you just haven’t found that one thing yet, Piper. You’re young. You still have a lot of years to figure it out. I was lucky. My dad signed me up for peewee football when I was five. He was my coach until I went to high school. It was something we always did together. We bonded over football. I guess that’s part of why I want this so badly. I think he would’ve been proud of me.”

Her eyes snap to mine. “Would’ve been?”

I nod. It’s been almost seven years, but my voice still hitches when I tell her, “My parents died in a car accident when I was sixteen.”

Piper gasps, covering her mouth in horror. “Oh, my God. That’s awful. I’m so sorry, Mason.”

“You can’t imagine how losing someone that close to you can change your life. I wanted to die along with them. I was their only child and didn’t have any relatives I could stay with. It was my football coach who helped me out of my depression. He took me in, letting me live with him until I went away to college. All of my anger, all of my aggression, all of my self-loathing—he got me to put it back into football.”

“Why did you hate yourself?” she asks, sympathetically, or maybe empathetically. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Itwasmy fault. I was driving.” I relive the moment in my head for the millionth time. I’ll never forget how time stood still and seconds became a lifetime. “I’m not sure I’ll ever understand what I was thinking when I swerved off the road to try and miss hitting a squirrel. A fucking squirrel. It wasn’t even someone’s pet. When I crashed sideways into the tree, I traded my parent’s lives for a goddamn rodent.”

She looks sick, her pale face displaying a look of horrified disbelief. “Did you really want to die?”

I swear the way she asks me the question, it’s the most introspective thing I’ve ever heard come out of her pink, pouty lips. I don’t look away from her. Her question burns a hole into my brain. Into my soul. She’s been there, too. She wanted to die. I’m sure of it. And it completely guts me.

---