by Zoey Shores
“It won’t be a problem, Luke. Forget I asked.”
“Alright, Ryan … take care.”
“You, too.”
I take a deep breath as I deposit the phone back into my pocket. For now, I just have to trust that my brother will figure something out like he says he will. Right now, there’s only one thing I can let myself worry about: Saturday’s opening game.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: LUKE
Finally, it’s only hours away from the moment that’s consumed my thoughts for the last seven and a half months. It’s opening day, the first game of the year.
The whole campus is buzzing. On the way to the stadium, the sidewalks and walkways on campus and all around town were packed with students in Winthrop colors. Lincoln had to drive us all in his jeep to the stadium even though it’s well within walking distance, because if we tried to walk out in the open right now, the mobs of fans would be crowding us so much that we’d never make it on time. We learned that the hard way last year.
In the locker room before the game, the excitement of opening day has even caused a truce to break out between us and the Alpha Kappa guys. Petty rivalries and feuds aren’t taking up space in anyone’s mind today, not even the minds of the most bitter and grudge-holding; no, there’s only one thing consuming the players’ thinking today as we change into our uniforms: victory.
We get finished changing and we’re standing in the tunnel that leads out to the field. Some players are bouncing up and down, some rubbing their hands together to ease their nerves, some walking in circles, some talking to each other, giving each other last minute pep talks and pumping each other up with boasting.
Myself, I’m just standing quietly. My skin is still tingling with adrenaline, but there’s a calm pervading me as well. My heartbeat is steady, and my breathing is measured and calm. The one person on a football team who needs to always be calm and collected is the Quarterback. Ultimately, everything rests on my shoulders. I need to keep my nerves and excitement in check, and make sure that I’m heading out to the field with a clear, sharp mind.
I stand amid the team, looking out through the large opening to the field. The sun is bright, and the stands are packed. I can hear the mutterings and occasional hollering of the crowd, as stadium music is pumped in through the sound system.
Is Heidi out there? The thought bursts into my mind and takes firm enough possession of me that I find myself narrowing my eyelids and straining my gaze to try and make out individual people in the tightly packed crowd. It’s folly, of course – even if she’s out there, there’s no way I can recognize any one person in the far-off crowd from my vantage point, even with my immaculate Quarterback eyesight.
Besides, I can only see about twenty percent of the crowd, if that, from my perspective here in the entrance way.
Shit. I realize that my thoughts are beginning to turn towards Heidi, so I quickly refocus myself on the game at hand. There will be time – probably too much of it – to worry about the fact I’ve been thinking about Heidi too much since we got reintroduced last week.
Right now, there’s only one thing I can afford to think about as the leader of the Winthrop Wolves: kicking Michigan’s ass, and showing the whole world that the Wolves are here to stay.
It’s less than a tenth of a second before the two-hundred-eighty-pound linebacker, built with rock-solid muscle, slams into me.
I make my decision. Down the field, to Carson. I fling my arm forward at light speed, generating all the force I can muster. The ball leaves my hand and spirals downfield in an elegant arc through the air.
The linebacker crashes into me. My eyes lose sight the ball that still floats through the air as I fall to the ground. The linebacker, who crashed down on top of me, rolls off of me and gets to his feet. I prop myself up on my shoulders, tracing the sky to find the ball.
I notice it at the peak of its arc. It begins to descend, homing in on the end zone. I look down the field – Carson is running toward it, with a cornerback hot on his tail to break up the pass.
Carson puts one last effort into his run to create distance between himself and the defender as my he dashes into the endzone. My pass drops into his hands.
Touchdown.
The stadium erupts. The players who were downfield run over to lift me up from the ground, patting me on the back, on the helmet, chest-bumping. A perfect touchdown throw under pressure.
“Nice catch, Carson,” I say cordially as Carson hustles back to the line of scrimmage to celebrate with us.
“Nice throw,” he returns. The team is working like a well-oiled machine today. No room for the rivalries and pettiness that’s consumed us so much off the field. We’re all of one mind this afternoon: nothing matters but winning.
We walk back to our sidelines as the first quarter ends. It’s been as perfect a start as anyone could have dreamed. After that last touchdown, we’re now leading 17 to 9. Both our offense and defense has been top notch. And judging from the reactions of the Michigan players I’ve noticed out on the field, they weren’t expecting this level of play from us.
No one was.
Last year, we established ourselves as a team to be reckoned with, but still, no one would have slotted us among the truly elite teams, the national championship caliber teams. That echelon was thought to still be years out of our grasp.
This first quarter is going to force a lot of people to rethink that. Because Michigan is one of those national championship caliber teams, the kind of team first-round draft picks come from. And we’re wiping the floor with them.
Of course, this is football. That can change at any moment. We can’t rest on our laurels or get cocky.
Still, it’s impossible not to feel good right now – damn good.
“Son of a bitch!” Coach Riker exclaims as we walk onto the sidelines. “That’s some damn good play out there, boys! Damn good.”
Coach Riker is always supportive, but is sparing with his comments. When he says something that effusive, we all know he’s not blowing smoke. We’re playing our asses off today, and it’s all coming together.
It’s up to our defense now to keep our lead strong, and not allow Michigan to score any extra points. As hot as the offense has been today, the defense has been just as solid, so there’s no worry among us on the sidelines as the Michigan offense takes the field. An atmosphere of conviviality prevails. We’re trying not to get ahead of ourselves and turn this into a premature victory celebration, but the excitement and pride up and down the sidelines from the players, to the coaching staff, to the training staff, is palpable.
I’m looking over our playbook when something out of the corner of my eyes grabs my attention. A figure – a familiar figure. I gaze up from the laminated sheets of x’s and o’s and turn my head to the side. My heart skips a beat when I see Heidi Locke.
Holy fuck. She’s gorgeous.
She wears a classy pencil skirt with a dark yellow and black plaid design. The fabric hugs the soft curve of her hips, and gives expression to the roundness of her ass, outlining the tantalizing shape. Tucked into the skirt is a blue blouse, with sleeves that expose her bare arms, and her luscious, radiant skin. I can’t see her face, as her head is turned away from my gaze, speaking with the offensive coordinator.
I wonder from a moment what in the world she could be speaking with the offensive coordinator about, before my eyes are once again drawn down the slope of her back right to those delicious shapes her skirt frames.
“Keep your eye on the ball, Tanner,” I hear Archer say on my other side.
He’s wearing a shit eating grin when I turn to look at him. He obviously got the drop on my checking out Heidi.
“I can’t blame you, though. Damn, she’s a looker. That’s the girl you were talking to the other night, right?”
A surge of jealousy rises in my chest when I hear Archer comment on Heidi’s looks. It’s a ridiculous emotion that I’m angry at feeling. What the hell is my right to be jealous over Heidi? But that a
ttempt to rationalize away the emotion doesn’t keep it from being there.
“Yeah,” I answer, forcing my eyes away from Heidi’s alluring figure and back down to the playbook.
I can tell Archer is dying to tease me more over this, but he knows as well as I do that it’s the game we need to be focused on.
“We hitting more running plays this quarter?”
Archer is a Running Back, and like all RBs, he’s starved for the ball. We had so much success in the first quarter with the passing game that I can tell he’s getting jittery and restless. He wants his own highlight reel in the first game of the season and wants the chance to show the world that he’s a top talent.
“Makes sense that we would,” I answer. “We’re so far ahead we don’t really need to take risks with long passes.”
“I’ll go talk to coach.” Archer heads off to plead his case for more chances to run the ball. I’m sure coach will oblige him, especially since it looks like our defense is holding strong right now. When you’re ahead by as many points as we are, the clock is your friend – you want to run it down and limit the time your opponent has to possibly make a comeback, and nothing runs down the clock like run play after run play.
I make an effort not to look back over to Heidi, even though the question of what she’s doing here nn the sidelines stays burning in my mind. I need to focus on the game, and I’ve learned over the last week that whenever Heidi enters my mind, it’s hard for any other topic to compete with her.
It’s for naught, though; because before long I hear voice directed at me. “Luke Tanner. Heidi Locke with the Winthrop Bugle. Are you surprised by the Wolves’ dominant performance so far?”
I look up at her and see her with a small notebook and a pencil in her hand. Her eyes look serious – totally no-nonsense. I remember that look. She’d get that look whenever she was studying for a test or working on a difficult homework assignment. The same way I approached football, Heidi approached academics.
“You’re our sports reporter this year?” I return her question unanswered, with one of my own.
“Hopefully,” she responds. I can tell by her demeanor she trying to maintain a wall of professionalism between us. “I’m kind of competing for the position. Anyway, do you have a comment about how the game is going so far?”
“Yeah. You write that Luke Tanner says this is just the beginning. This is the game that proves that the Wolves have arrived. We’re good enough to compete against any other college team, even the best. And we’re going to the playoffs this year. That’s my personal guarantee.”
Heidi’s eyes light up as she scribbles down my response in her notebook.
Just as I finish my statement, I see that our defense has made another big stop, forcing Michigan to punt the ball away. “We’re back up!” one of the teammates yells to us, a signal for us to get our helmets back on and get back out on the field, ready to score some more points.
“That the kind of quote you were looking for?” I ask Heidi slyly as I rise back to my feet.
She cocks up her right eyebrow in intrigue. Despite the wall of professionalism that I can tell she’s trying to impose between us in her position as an on-the-field journalist, I can feel sparks of magnetism going off between us.
“Something like that,” she answers.
“Tanner, let’s go!” Lincoln slaps my on the shoulder as he jogs out to the field with the rest of the offense. I take a deep breath, recenter myself and get my mind back into playing focus. It’s time to widen this lead.
Back in freshman year of high school, before I got kicked out, my coach used to always tell us, especially when we were ahead at halftime: “as fast as you can get ahead, you can get behind.”
Old Coach Goslin’s words are ringing in my ears with two minutes left in the fourth quarter.
First, Michigan’s QB threw a beautiful spiral down the field to their stud receiver, one of the fastest in the league, for a Hail Mary touchdown.
Then, their explosive defensive end smashed through our offensive line and knocked the ball out of my hand right as I was about to throw a pass – one of their defensive players picked it up and ran into our endzone for yet another touchdown.
From then on, Michigan just flat-out played the perfect game. They played as well as we had in the first quarter. Before any of us knew it, the score was 31-27, with Michigan leading.
Not even close enough for a field goal to tie us up. No, if we want to walk off our home field with the win we earned in the first quarter, we’re going to need to reach deep and get a touchdown. Easier said than done against a Michigan defense that’s really found its groove in the second half.
It’s our turn to take the field right as the two-minute warning expires. We have no time outs left; every play – every second – has to count. As we line up on the field, the exuberance that reigned earlier in the first quarter is now gone. There’s an energy, but it’s silent and tense. Terse. Our eyes are narrow, and our jaws are gritted; we speak to each other only enough words to communicate the next play.
It doesn’t start well for us. We make some short gains initially, but we run out a lot of the clock doing so.
None of my passes can seem to connect with any of our receivers. As our success feels more and more like a thing of the past and we all become increasingly cognizant of staring defeat in the face – defeat, on the very first day of the season that we all felt was so promising just short hours ago – the team spirit that the promise of victory allowed to blossom in the first half begins to wither.
“Why don’t you try to extend the play long enough for me to get some separation down the field, Tanner?” Carson shoots at me as we line up for a third down. It’s his first barb aimed at me this afternoon.
I bite my tongue, refusing to take the bait. I call the play and we line up for the snap. Only thirty seconds remain on the clock.
The ball snaps into my hands. One of the Michigan defensive players is able to break through my blockers, and he’s hurtling towards me. In a split-second, I scan down field. I launch the ball straight down, knowing that there’s no good choice to make, hoping that someone can make a play on it.
Both Carson and Tristan sprint to my throw, but neither can make it in time. The ball falls to the turf. It’s fourth down. Our last chance.
As the leader of the team, I always try to keep a cool head. Everyone else on the team can panic when the situation seems dire, but never the Quarterback. When the QB – the leader – panics, you can forget about it. The game’s as good as over.
Even though I know all that, I’m having a hard time suppressing the doubts and frustrations. A loss is one thing; but a loss when we were up by so much after just the first quarter? That’s a catastrophe.
Could it be that our early success was nothing but a fluke? Were we just taking advantage of the rustiness of Michigan in the opening game? Was this last half a more realistic preview of the rest of the upcoming season – us, the Wolves, getting put in our place by more established teams like Michigan, teams we still haven’t caught up to?
As we walk back to the line of scrimmage and prepare for our very last chance, I’m having a hard time visualizing victory. Early on last year, in one of my first games as a Winthrop Wolf, Coach Riker said something to me that’s always stuck in my mind: “If you can’t visualize a way to victory, then you can’t make it happen.”
We’re fucked, then. Because I don’t see what we can do on this last play that can dig us out of this deep hole we’ve found ourselves in.
As I stand ready to receive the snap, I look over to the sidelines for just a split second. I notice Heidi. She’s standing on the sidelines, looking straight at me. The wall of professionalism she tried to maintain while she was interviewing me earlier has dropped. She’s not watching as an impartial journalist right now – I can tell, she’s rooting for us. For me.
Her hands are clasped together near her face. That face wears a sincere and imploring look, her big, soft
eyes wide with attention and hope. As has happened a dozen times since I’ve seen Heidi again here at Winthrop, I find myself transported back to the past, to a memory I haven’t called to mind in so long, but which I’ll never forget.
My first game as the starting Quarterback on my high school team. Heidi and I had just started dating, only the week before. A freshman starting as Quarterback on a high school team was nearly unheard of, but my old Coach saw so much potential in me during the pre-season practices that he decided to take the risk and give me the opportunity. He bet on me.
And in that game, I was letting him down.
Nothing was going right. I was making mistakes. And we were tanking. I could sense that Coach was about to bench me any minute.
Then, one play turned it all around. I pulled out a perfect throw, under pressure, for a touchdown.
And it was all because of Heidi. All because I saw her in the stands, jumping up and down, cheering a shouting for me.
Heidi, who was always so reserved and soft-spoken. She was letting go of all her reservations, screaming her heart out, all for me to succeed. Not because she cared about football, but because she cared about me. Not because she wanted the team to win, but because she wanted me to win – not just to win a football game, but to win in accomplishing my goals and fulfilling my dreams.
I decided in that moment that my next pass wasn’t going to be for the team. It wasn’t going to be for the school. It wasn’t even going to be for Coach Goslin, who put so much trust in me and gave me an incredible opportunity. It wasn’t even going to be for myself. It was going to be for Heidi.
And that’s what allowed me to pull it off.
The memory of that night and those feelings flash through my head in a split-second. Suddenly, I can visualize victory. I can’t just visualize it, I can taste it. I don’t just believe that I can pull this off – I know that I can. Because I can tell, I can sense, that Heidi believes I can.