Page 118 of The Thing About My Rival

A groan rolls around the room.

“But she texted me to say she’ll be watching,” I lie. “And she wants to see you win like true champions, true sportsmen, who are a credit to the game.”

I’m absolutely certain that’s what she would have said—if she were talking to me.

“Call her,” shouts Schumann. “Do a quick video chat so we can all say get well soon.”

“And so she can tell us not to play like a bunch of asses,” Hammond says.

The rest of them agree that’s a great idea.

Shit. Not that I’d underestimated how much they’ve grown to love her, but I didn’t expect a widespread call for me to video chat her into the pregame speech.

“Sorry, guys. But I’m sure she’s not up to it. It might be food poisoning. And she might be watching the game from the bathroom.”

There’s a general murmur ofew.

I seem to have gotten away with that.

“Okay, right.” I slap my hands together. “Now let’s get to business.”

The room falls silent, and every eye is on me. What a long way we’ve come in the eight short weeks since Miller introduced me and most of them couldn’t bear to look at me.

Ordinarily I’d be delighted by their rapt attention, but in this particular moment it feels like a heavy responsibility.

“You all know what you have to do today. You know how those guys play. You know how they work. Lord knows you’ve seen all the videos.”

There’s a groan, because Wilcox made them watch hermontage of clips over and over. She slowed down the parts that highlighted each Orlando player’s skills and habits and played them again and again, until they’d penetrated our guys’ heads so deeply it would be like they were born knowing exactly how every member of the opposition would act in any situation.

“You can grumble all you like, but Coach Wilcox made sure you now know those guys as well as you know your own dicks.”

“Except for Anderson,” Schumann shouts up. Anderson’s dick usage is a running joke because he has seven kids. And he’s only twenty-nine. There are two sets of twins, but still.

“Now is not the time for Anderson’s super sperm,” I tell them.

“That’s what she said,” two of the guys crack at the same time.

The room erupts in laughter, and my mind shoots back to making a “that’s what she said” joke to Wilcox while we ate hot dogs on Boston Common. She rolled her sparky eyes—then, at the first available opportunity, made one right back at me.

The knife in my chest is back, as is the gnawing in my stomach and the twist in my gut that tell me I’ll never find anyone who fits with me the way she does.

But it’s over. She hates me again. And she’s moving to fucking Portland.

And my emotional angst about it needs to fuck the hell off until after the match. Right now, I have to focus one hundred percent on this team, this game, and us winning.

Be in the moment—isn’t that what Ashanti said in the last group session before today? Yes, I went to it, but only because I knew she was giving an inspirational talk andthere’d be none of that throwing the ball around the room and spilling your childhood crap.

“Get your mind on the game,” I tell myself as much as the guys.

But right at that moment my mind ignores its own advice and flashes back to talking to Tom after my Pulacini’s dinner with Drew. While I flailed around in a bunch of confusing feelings, he used my own words back at me. And those same words suddenly seem perfectly fitting for this very moment.

“A wise man once said”—no way will I ever admit that wise man was me—“that you can’t always control the timing of your life. Sometimes you have to just go with it. And it’s true. Today we need to go out there and play our own game, not let them dictate it. But if every now and then they do, we have to just go with it, and beat them at their own game.”

“Coach finally went woo-woo on us.” Bakari’s quip is greeted by chuckles.

“No fucking chance,” I tell them. “Now, look. We’ve come so far. Never in a million years did anyone ever think we’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of qualifying for the playoffs. But there’s still a sliver of hope. So we’ve already beaten everyone else’s expectations of us. And today we have to beat our own.”

I push up my jacket sleeves. It’s getting warm in here. “All the pundits—yes, even Sharpe and Rossi—are saying we’re already winners just for even being in with a chance. But they’re talking bullshit.” I pause for dramatic effect. “What are they talking?”

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