Page 86 of Most Likely to Score
“Don’t write checks I can’t cash. Don’t make plays that are too risky. Do everything I can to make sure I don’t get in harm’s way.”
“But what if it happens anyway?”
“Then you deal with it, man. You just deal with it. Do I want it? Hell no. Do I think about it? Sure. Do I get out there and play as hard as I possibly can because that’s what I signed up for? Yes. Yes, I do.”
I let out a frustrated groan. “My head is a mess right now.”
“It’s game-time, man. That’s not a good state to be in.”
Pushing my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose, I try mightily to shove away this awful feeling. If I thought jealousy was bad, it has nothing on sheer dread. “I ran into Garrett Snow. He’s done. Finished. Can’t play anymore.”
“That sucks,” Harlan says with a sympathetic sigh. “But it happens. It’s a risk we take. You have to find a way to get that out of your head right now.” He grabs my shoulder and squeezes, even though I can’t feel it through the pads. “We have a game to play. Just know I’m your brother-in-arms out there. I have the same worries.”
Some of the tension in me loosens. Maybe I needed to give voice to these fears to let them go.
He points to the exit. “When you go through that tunnel, you check them at the door. You leave it all behind because you put everything on the field. That’s our job. Let’s go do it.”
Offering a fist for knocking, I smack back. “Let’s do it.”
All I can do is what my father taught me. Give more than one hundred percent. Give everything. This iswhat I’ve done my entire life on the field, and when I’m playing ball, I don’t have to worry about what to say or how to love a woman for the first time in my life. I do love Jillian. I’m madly in love with her.
But for the next sixty minutes, I have one job, and that job is to move the ball.
As soon as I run through the tunnel and onto the field, where I’m greeted by the cheers of our fifty thousand hometown fans, I leave everything behind.
It’s game time.
35
JILLIAN
“Sushi!” my father declares from his spot at the fifty-yard line. “I still can’t get over the fact that you let them serve sushi here.”
He gestures dismissively at the aproned guy peddling California rolls in our section while the teams take a time-out in the second quarter for a commercial break.
“You do know I don’t have any control over what they serve at the stadium?”
He flubs his lips. “Next thing you know it’ll be barbecued kale.”
“Dad, you live in California. They serve wine here, too.”
He scoffs, lifting a cup of beer. “I have my beer, and I’m good to go with my foam finger,” he says, waggling a blue number one on his hand. “And look, I even put a number eighty-six on it for your beau.”
Beau.
Is Jones my beau?
I wish I knew.
The sound of the fans drumming their feet drowns out my sad, pathetic sigh. I thought we were doing the whole let’s-be-together thing. But so far, we’re doing the same thing we were doing before.Nothing.
I try to tell myself it’s timing. It’s the weekend. There’s a game. I have to understand that. Hell, I should understand that better than anyone.
My dad leans in closer, bumping me with his shoulder. “What’s going on with the two of you?”
It’s like he can read my mind.
I squeeze my eyes shut as a sob works its way up my throat. “I feel so stupid,” I mutter, and I didn’t plan to say that, but he’s my dad. He’s the one who has comforted me my whole life over bruised knees, bad days at school, and my first teenage heartbreak with a boy named Randall. A flash of fear cuts through me. Is this going to be my newest heartbreak?
