Page 52 of Write Me For You
Coach had lost faith in my remission.
The feel of June lifting and threading her hand through mine was almost my undoing. She laid her head on my arm. But I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even look at her, because then she’d know. She’d know I’d just had the rug pulled out from underneath me.
“It is not!” Emma shrieked. “Just because it’s at Christmastime, a Christmas movie it does not make! Ugh!” She turned to June. “June, tell me you agree.”
“I haven’t seen it, sorry,” June said, trying for normalcy too. But I heard the worry in her voice. Worry that something was wrong with me.
There was. It was all wrong—everything was going so fucking wrong.
Ten percent suddenly feltimpossible.
“June, you’re no help, girl,” Emma said, and the conversation around me faded.
I froze, trapped in the hell that was my plummeting determination.
Who was I if not a football player? I had June, I wanted June, but I needed football too. I wanted both.
“Baby?” June said, rubbing my arm. I looked to June, seeing Chris and Emma shooting concerned looks my way too. “We’re gonna take a walk. Are you coming?”
“Nah,” I said. My eyes found Banks and Williams. They were casually throwing a football back and forth. I rotated my arm and had to grit my teeth at how much it hurt.
I couldn’t throw a football at all now. I’d tried to accept it over the past few weeks, but now it was smacking me in the face. I wanted to play for the Longhorns, and I couldn’t even throw a damn ball.
“I’ll stay too,” June said.
“No!” I said a bit too forcefully.
June’s brown eyes widened in shock.
I pasted on another smile. “Go, Junebug. Take a walk. I’m…” I picked at the grass beside me. “I’m just tired.”
“Then we’ll all stay,” Chris said, nodding at me.
Suddenly, my anger fell away and all that remained was gutting desperation. “No,” I rasped. “Please, go.”
June nodded, and Emma and Chris got up and walked to the trail that would take them through the rest of Zilker Park.
June inched closer, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Jesse?”
“Please, Junebug,” I said, fighting back tears. “Just go for a walk. I’m okay.”
“No, you’re?—”
“Please,” I begged.
Her hand froze on my shoulder. When it slowly slipped off, I wanted to grab my girl and crush her to me—tell her everything that happened and beg her to make me feel better. Because I was sure only she could.
But I was falling the fuck apart, and if I did, I would finally have to reveal all of me and explain, that at times, I was all kinds of fucked up.
“Call me if you need me,” June said and got up. I watched her walk, and a flicker of pride sparked in my chest for my girl when she kept her head high, even walking past people who stared at her—at the most perfect girl in the world who was fighting with all her strength just to make it to eighteen.
When June turned back and looked at me, the expression on her face cut me. I gave her a small wave, one of reassurance, but my girl wasn’t reassured about anything.
Laughter sailed from behind me and I turned to watch Banks and Williams shooting the shit, not a care in the world.
And I stayed that way, wondering what that kind of cancer-freedom would feel like. I couldn’t remember anymore.
I just watched them from my place under a copse of trees so my chemo-wrecked skin wouldn’t burn.
