Page 72 of Sexting the Coach
When he finally did look at me, it was like he didn’t know me at all.
The moment the door shut behind him, I’d risen to my feet like a zombie, shuffling to my bedroom and collapsing into my pillows, the sobs rising up and over me like an ocean of sorrow and panic.
I cried for Drew.
I cried formyself, too. The fact that I’d been told to stay behind while they went to the emergency room. It was never said out loud, but the hidden truth there was ear-splitting loud—you’ve done enough.
Drew didn’t want me around. I didn’t even want myself around. I’d packed a bag that night and called Karlee, still hiccupping and snotting all over myself, and gone to stay with her until Drew came home from surgery. And I spent most of the spring and summer after that at Karlee’s place, avoiding my brother and my family until Drew finally went off to college.
Just a normal student, without a scholarship and without a team. Thanks to me.
So that night, when my dad couldn’t look at me—that was the last time I cried like this.
Now, Hattie hovers around me, her hands up like she might be able to shush me into not crying. Mabel sits in the corner of the room, her dark eyes resting on me.
Hattie keeps shooting her concerned looks. Mabel keeps staring at me.
“Elsie,” Hattie says, not for the first time. “You don’t have to do this.”
My hands shake. I’m right in the middle of packing up my things, my suitcase clam-shelled open in the middle of my room. Normally, I’m a meticulous packer, but now I don’t even bother to fold the things as I drop them in. Underwear, socks.
“She’s right,” Mabel says, crossing her arms. “Just because you lost your spot on the team doesn’t mean you need to flee the country.”
“I’m not—fleeing the country,” I manage to say through the hiccupping sobs. “I’m going to Denver.”
“Which doesn’t make any sense,” Hattie says, glancing at Mabel again. “Since you hate it there.”
I do hate it there. But right now, I hate it here more, and I can’t deny the comfort of goinghome.Even if after Drew’s accident, it never really felt fully like home.
“We’ll talk to them,” Mabel says, her voice lowering further. “I’ll threaten to quit if they don’t take you back.”
I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling my friends the truth.
Of course, when I burst through the front door, already shaking with sobs, barely getting it out that I no longer had a job with the Squids, they’d thought I was fired. That would make sense.
But it’s not the truth.
The truth is that I couldn’t let Weston lose his spot. That I couldn’t risk his coaching career. Not after how hard he’s worked to get here, not with everything he’s had to give up. Not after dealing with Fincher and working through his injury.
Not with the way I feel about him. I couldn’t watch him lose it, just because of me.
“Does Weston know?” Hattie prompts, her voice an octave higher than normal. “Did you tell him about…?”
“No,” I manage. The crying comes and goes, and right now it’s pretty shallow, the shaking surface level and the tearsrunning silently down my face. My cheeks and eyes feel raw to the touch, and I try not to wipe the tears away, since there will just be more later.
I’m not looking at them, but I can sense Hattie and Mabel communicating something silently. Probably that they should encourage me to tell Weston the truth. Or that they should ask me what I’m planning to do about the baby.
I have no idea. But it’s not like I can tell Weston about it—he doesn’t want kids. He made that clear. I’ve already thought it over and over in my head—involving Weston is the last thing I should do.
It doesn’t help that every time I allow myself to think about it, I oscillate between various scenarios. The one I know is most realistic is that Weston would take full responsibility for the baby, regardless of how he feels about me. That we would split custody, and he would pay child support.
But in some moments, I find myself thinking of the worst case scenarios, my recent distance from him allowing me to transpose thoughts and feelings on to him that don’t make sense with what I know about him.
I do it anyway, hurting myself with the false reality of him being dismissive, telling me it doesn’t matter. Or accusing me of being with someone else.
Deep down, I know that he wouldn’t do something like that, but my emotions are all over the place. Everything feels out of my control, and it’s like running through these nightmare scenarios at least allows me to feel sorry for myself.
It’s an old habit, running the worst through my head again and again. It’s what I did after Drew’s injury.
