Page 6 of The Quarterback
Wes jogged up and leaped, snatching the ball midair. Colton cursed and took off after Wes, who darted away, laughing over his shoulder. Anton and Patrick and Josh were suddenly there, surrounding Colton, and Wes and the guys played keep-away, tossing the ball over and around him as he leaped and jumped and tried to dive for the ball. “I’m not a damn receiver!” he shouted.
“Thank God for that,” Anton rumbled. He hooked the ball to Patrick, who sent it on a fake back to Wes.
Wes’s gaze caught on something in the bleachers, over Colton’s head. He grinned, fake pumped once, and then spun the ball straight to Colton’s arms before breaking off and jogging to the stands.
“Ahh, Justin’s here,” Josh said.
“You can always tell when he shows up,” Patrick said, laughing.
Colton pretended to hurl the football at Anton, aiming for his belly. Anton buckled, his voice high and sharp in a fake scream, before he jogged away with Josh and Patrick. Colton followed Wes, trotting to the bell of the bleachers, where the lowest part of the stands met the field. Justin had come down to lean over the railing and beam at Wes, who gazed up at him like Justin was the sun in Wes’s personal sky. Wes laid his hand over Justin’s, his grass-stained glove engulfing Justin’s slender fingers.
Colton hung back, rubbing his cleats on the lawn. Sometimes he didn’t know whether he was welcome when Justin and Wes got like this. When the rest of the world fell away and it was like the whole stadium could be roaring their names, and still, Wes and Justin would be gazing into each other’s eyes, grinning those lovesick grins.
Wes was his best friend, and Justin had quickly become one of his closest buddies, too, but three was still an odd number.
“Hey, Colton.”
He looked over, and there was Nick, a few feet down from Justin and Wes.
Nick was laughing under his breath. “Only have eyes for each other, huh?”
“Sometimes.” Colton shrugged. Smiled at Nick and passed him the ball. “You guys here for the scrimmage, or just coming by to say hi?”
“Here for the scrimmage.” Nick palmed the football, running his hand over the laces. “I’m heading out of town tomorrow. I wanted to see you guys before I left.”
“Beers tonight?” Colton caught Nick’s pass in the center of his chest. Nick could throw a football better than some of the guys on the team. He sent the ball back to Nick as Wes stood on his tiptoes and kissed Justin over the railing.
Beers tonighthad become their shorthand for the four of them going out: Justin and Wes and Nick and Colton. Wes only went out with Justin, which made sense, and Justin only wanted to go out if they were meeting up with his dad. He never said why, but he didn’t have to. Colton understood that bone-deep yearning for a father, the poignant prickling of pain when you wanted and hoped and tried so hard, but all you heard was silence.
His dad had walked away when Colton was five years old. Colton used to imagine that, thanks to his name being all over ESPN, his dad would show up out of the blue one day, appear in the stands at a game, as proud and happy as Nick or Wes’s dad was, a little boy’s fairy tale come true. But he never had, and Colton had decided the man was probably dead. It was easier to imagine that than to accept that his father didn’t care about him at all.
Nick did care, and he was there for Justin, even though Justin still had that hunger that clung to him, a need for his father’s acceptance and love and presence in his life. That kind of hunger wasn’t satiated quickly. Justin seized his dad with both hands, folding him into his life in ways big and small. Nick came with Justin to watch practice, and came out with them for beers, and showed up once at a block party to drop off ice and more drinks, sticking around for ten minutes before he left. Justin and Wes went to his place for dinner at least twice a week and sometimes spent the night in the bedroom Nick had given them. When they all went out, they usually ended up on Nick’s balcony after, as if they didn’t want the night to end. Colton had woken up on Nick’s couch to find Justin and Wes cooking in the kitchen and Nick handing him a cup of black coffee more than a handful of times.
Maybe they made a weird foursome of friends. Wes and Justin, Colton the third wheel, Nick the dad. If Nick had been boring or a douche, it wouldn’t have worked. But he was surprisingly easy to be with. Like Justin, but without the hard edges. Solid, with a different kind of life experience grounding him. Justin was a survivor, while Nick was accomplished, similar personalities shaped by different lives. Why wouldn’t Colton like Nick if he liked Justin, he’d said once when Orlando asked him why Justin’s dad hung out with them so often. “He’s cool. It works, man.”
“I’m free. I’m heading out of town in the morning, so I can’t stay out late,” Nick said, catching Colton’s pass. “What about the rest of the guys? You want to hang out with them instead?”
“I can ask if anyone else wants to come with us. But I think most of them are studying. Finals are coming up. Or they’re hanging with their girls before summer break.”
“You don’t need to study?” Nick’s eyebrows arched.
“I’m an ergonomics major.” Colton grinned. “I turned in my final project a few weeks ago.”
“And what life-saving invention did you come up with this time?”
“A footrest for when you’re playing video games and you’re sitting on the couch for hours. You know how that makes your back sore? Not only does this solve that, it’s also got a built-in battery pack, so you can charge your controller without having to get up.”
Nick shook his head as Coach blew the whistle, calling everyone back from break. Wes and Justin broke apart, Wes jogging backward as he said something to Justin in French, who winked and replied in kind. Nick and Colton shared a grin and a tiny eye roll, and then Colton ran after Wes, grappling him from behind and forcing him to turn around. Wes pummeled his back, but finally he spun toward practice. He took one last look at Justin, though.
Colton looked back, too, and saw Justin watching them both, waving to Wes as Nick settled into the bleachers.
Coach had them stretch again and then divide into teams, offense versus defense, for the final half hour. Colton traded playful jabs with his backup, a redshirt quarterback finishing up his freshman year, as he lined up to take the first snap. It wasn’t a serious scrimmage, and his backup hung with the offensive coordinator, watching Colton’s moves, to learn from and to critique. The defensive coordinator was on the field on the defensive side, watching and bellowing out corrections in between plays.
Pads thudded against each other, that plastic-on-plastic crunch and grind. No one went down, though. Linemen dug their hands into each other’s pads and pushed each other around, smack-talking and grunting as Orlando and Wes ran their routes. Colton called pass plays and runs, handed the ball to Orlando and then threw it to Wes on the next play. He went deep to Dante on a touchdown attempt, but a good block by the corner knocked the ball down.
Anton, the defensive captain, had been working his guys with new plays, new matchups against Colton’s offense. He had a roster of rookies he was training, true spring-semester freshmen who were coming in early to try to get up to speed. With so much new blood, he was throwing out defensive sets Colton hadn’t seen before, forcing him to read new matchups and call audibles on the line.
God, he loved this, loved the game. Loved those microseconds where he took in the defense, the pattern of linebackers and linemen and safeties, and slotted through the thousands of plays he’d faced over the years, trying to remember the perfect way to cut through the defense. If the defense lined up with two deep safeties down the center, he sent up the sideline. If they were showing heavy on the strong side, Wes’s side, he automatically looked to the weak side, analyzing the matchups and running through his best receiver options on a read rotation.
