Fair Catch

by Ruddick, Jessica

  “Then you’ll get to play.”

  “Right,” I repeated. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I had enough pressure without worrying about letting my sister down. “How’s soccer going?”

  “I’m not playing.”

  “Really?” A dull throb started pulsing in my temple. “Why not?” She’d played every year since she was four.

  Hell. The community soccer league had started months ago, and I hadn’t realized she wasn’t playing. I should have known. I would have known if I’d kept up with my siblings better. Sure, I was hours away, but it only took a few minutes to call. Guilt threaded its way through my veins.

  “Aunt Christy is here. She wants to talk to you.”

  “Bye, Em. I’ll talk—”

  “Jake?” My aunt was already on the line. I’d forgotten how awkward Emily was when it came to ending phone calls.

  “Hi, Aunt Christy,” I said. “How’s everything going?”

  “It’s going.” She sounded harried, which only made my guilt thicker. Her only child had left home to join the navy four years ago, so she and my uncle had gone from being empty nesters to guardians of three kids ages eight, twelve, and fourteen. My siblings were my primary concern, so I often forgot that my aunt’s life had drastically changed as well.

  “So, Jake,” Aunt Christy continued, “I need to know if you’ll be home for the summer.”

  Home… it didn’t exist for me anymore. Aunt Christy and Uncle Brian had sold the house I’d grown up in and moved the kids into theirs. I understood why they hadn’t wanted to move with everything else they were taking on, but their house wasn’t home to me.

  “I’ll come for a visit when classes end, but I have to be here for football.”

  “All summer?” Her tone was filled with exasperation.

  “Yes, all summer.” I couldn’t help but feel annoyed. She and Uncle Brian had insisted I stay at school to continue my studies and play football. She knew what that entailed. “What’s going on? Is there a problem?”

  “No, no problem. Just trying to line up childcare.”

  “Ben is fourteen. Can’t he handle it?” When I was his age, I’d done my fair share of babysitting my younger siblings. Granted, it was a lot to ask him to do it all summer.

  “Not if he’s in summer school.”

  “Summer school?” Ben was ridiculously smart, like so smart he could blow Steve Jobs and Bill Gates out of the water. It was only a matter of time before he invented some kind of technology that took the world by storm.

  “He’s failing English and history.”

  I groaned. Those weren’t Ben’s favorite subjects, but he’d always managed to ace them with little effort. Hell, with no effort, he should have at least been able to pass.

  “Is he around?” I asked. “Can I talk to him?”

  “He’s out.”

  “What about Ashley?”

  “Also out. Listen, I need to run and start dinner. But we’ll talk again soon, okay?” She disconnected before I had a chance to say bye.

  Guess poor phone skills run in the family.

  I tossed my phone onto the coffee table and scrubbed my hands over my face. I should have been doing more. As soon as I got my shit together, I would.

  Except when the hell will that be?

  CHAPTER 2

  Jake

  HALF AN HOUR later, a red Camaro zoomed to a stop in front of me, nearly running over my toes. Fuck. Did Carson always have to drive like a fucking madman?

  I yanked open the door and tossed a case of beer into the back seat before climbing in. Carson was peeling away from the curb before I’d even shut the door. We were running late for the draft-watching party Wyatt was throwing for FM4.

  Carson glanced in the rearview mirror. “What kind is that?” He swerved around a lady with two toddlers in tow. Christ.

  “Bud Light.”

  His lip curled. “I guess that’s better than Natty Light.” Carson’s tastes ran more sophisticated than mine, but then again, he came from money. That was why he drove a Camaro with less than a thousand miles on it. I personally didn’t care what beer I drank as long as it got me drunk.

  In the last six months, I’d consumed enough booze to drown an elephant. If I was serious about making a comeback in the upcoming season, I needed to lay off the drinking. Even knowing that, I struggled not to reach for a beer whenever I was alone with my thoughts because alcohol was the only thing that drowned them out. But that stopped today. My conversation with my little sister played on repeat in my mind. That girl had lost everything, and she wanted to see me play on TV. It was time to check my shit at the door and do everything in my power to make that happen.

  A year ago, I’d been on track to potentially enter the draft. Now I’d been reduced to wanting to get playing time so my sister could see me on TV and brag to all her friends. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the headrest. It would be a tough road to get back to where I needed to be, but I’d gotten myself there once. I could do it again.

  I would do it again.

  “Jake? Jake!”

  I looked at Carson, who glanced at me with an expectant look on his face. Damn. He must have asked me something, but I hadn’t heard it. Focus was not my strong suit these days.

  “Sorry, man. What was that?”

  “I was just asking what you thought about Coyle. You know, that high school coach from Texas.”

  Coach Gurgin, the legendary football coach who had been at VVU forever, was unexpectedly retiring. The university was leaving no stone unturned in looking for a replacement. Gurgin and I hadn’t had a strong relationship, but he’d been understanding when I’d needed to take the rest of the fall semester off to deal with my parents and help with my siblings. He’d promised to hold my spot. Now that he wouldn’t be there, I didn’t know what that meant for me. I probably should have been more invested in following the new-coach speculation, but there was no point worrying about it until they made a decision.

  “I don’t know anything about him,” I replied.

  “Me neither,” Carson admitted. “But he’s a high school coach. Do you remember what it was like playing high school?”

  I shrugged. “High school football in Texas is a different beast than here.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Carson took the turn into Wyatt’s apartment complex much too fast and skidded to a stop in a parking space. If I drove like him, I would probably have hundreds of tickets, but Carson had never even been pulled over. Lucky asshole.

  When we walked into Wyatt’s apartment, he jerked his chin up. “Glad you guys could make it. Truitt, good to see you.”

  “Thanks.” I gestured to the case of beer I held. “Is it okay if I put this in your fridge?”

  “Help yourself.”

  After stowing my beer, I returned to the living room. Wyatt’s small apartment was packed, leaving nowhere to sit. It would have made more sense to watch at a bar or somewhere bigger, but anytime the team went out together, it turned into a spectacle. Besides that, Carson had told me Wyatt was trying to bring the team together. Bonding or some shit.

  Even though Carson and I were late, we still had twenty minutes until the first draft pick was announced. Around me, the guys speculated on where Freddie would end up. We had a few other guys in the draft, but they weren’t expected to go in the first round and therefore weren’t invited to attend live. The cameraman must have taken a liking to Freddie because the camera kept showing him and his entourage.

  “He looks nervous,” Wyatt’s girlfriend, Katie, commented.

  I turned my attention back to the screen. Freddie looked as cool and confident as he ever did, but then again, I didn’t know him that well.

  “I don’t know,” Wyatt said with a grin. “Angie looks worse, like she’s about to puke.”

  Now that I could agree with—Freddie’s girlfriend did look a little pale.

  Katie laughed. “Poor Angie. I don’t envy her right
now.”

  A soft curse sounded from the corner of the room. It wasn’t until then that I noticed Katie wasn’t the only girl. In the corner was a redhead sitting cross-legged. Her brow was furrowed in concentration as she carefully cut a piece of construction paper.

  The scene was familiar and felt like a punch to the gut. Growing up, I’d watched my mother do stuff like that all the time. She had been a kindergarten teacher. Though unlike my mother, this girl didn’t seem to be enjoying her task. Blowing stray hairs out of her face in exasperation, she rotated the paper to get a better angle.

  She was cute. Her dark reddish hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was hunched over the paper. I had the ridiculous urge to tell her to sit up straight so her back wouldn’t be tight the next day. Ben always complained about that when he spent too much time bent over his laptop.

  Against my better judgment, I crossed the room and lowered myself to the floor next to her. “Are those butterflies?”

  Her eyes lit up as she smiled. “Thank you. You’re the only person who’s been able to tell what they are. Or what they’re supposed to be, at least.”

  I shrugged. “My mom was a kindergarten teacher.” For once, I didn’t trip up over the use of past-tense verbs. Though my parents had been gone more than six months, I wasn’t used to it. I still expected the ringing phone to be my mom asking when I was coming home to visit. I wondered if it was easier for my brother and sisters to remember that our parents were gone because they had been used to seeing them every day, and now they didn’t. Or hell, that probably made it harder for them to cope. I didn’t know. Since I was seven years older than Ben, I’d never been particularly close with any of them, and being away at college had only widened the disconnect.

  The girl next to me held up her hand, displaying two bandage-wrapped fingers. “Did her hands look like this? I swear this paper hates me. I’m the only person I know who gets paper cuts from construction paper.”

  I stared past her fingers to gaze at her face. Her eyes were light blue. The cutest bunch of freckles were splattered across her nose and cheeks, and I wondered if she had freckles all over. My gaze drifted down to the area of her chest that was exposed by her V-neck shirt before I caught myself.

  The girl dropped her hand and her gaze, and I looked away hastily, realizing I had taken too long to respond. “She was, uh, quite skilled with scissors,” I muttered. I didn’t really want to talk about my mom. This girl didn’t seem to know my parents had recently died, so she didn’t look at me with concerned pity like other people did sometimes. I wanted to keep it that way. “What’s your name?”

  “Sorry! I’m Rachel, Katie’s best friend.”

  “Jake.”

  “I assume you’re on the team?”

  “Yeah.” That one-word answer was easier than getting into my up-in-the-air status. Except, you know what? Fuck that. My status wasn’t up in the air because I was going to make damn sure that not only did Emily get to see me play on TV, but that I was the best damn wide receiver on the team. Now that Freddie was gone, there was a huge, gaping hole in the offensive, but it was one that I could fill. My determination grew stronger.

  Rachel peered at me, obviously trying to remember if she’d seen me on the field. “What’s your last name?”

  “Truitt. I only played one game last year before I was sidelined.”

  She nodded. “Hopefully, you’ll be healthy this year.” For a moment, I felt bad that my word choice had misled her into thinking I’d been injured, but I shook it off. The truth was that even after I’d been ready to play again, the team had already found a rhythm that didn’t include me. My season had fallen victim to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra.

  “I’m good to go,” I assured her. Healthy? Definitely. In shape and ready to play? Eh… not so much. But I would fix that before summer conditioning started. I nodded toward the stack of paper. “Do you want help with those?”

  Shock crossed her features before I was rewarded with a dazzling smile. A dimple formed on her left cheek. Her teeth were straight but natural, not in perfect alignment like braces left behind. Damn, she’s cute. I wasn’t normally attracted to redheads, but this one was doing it for me.

  “That would be awesome.” She rummaged in her bag and came up with another pair of scissors.

  My first cut went too deep, and I nearly decapitated the insect. “Uh… how precise do these need to be?”

  She looked at my paper and laughed. “At this point, I don’t care. Mrs. Davidson will get what she gets. I don’t even know why she needs so many.”

  A collective shushing sound came from the other side of the room, and Wyatt turned up the volume. The pro football league commissioner stepped up to the podium. “For the first pick of this year’s draft, Washington has selected Carlos Ortiz, running back, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.”

  As the countdown started until the next draft pick was announced, the guys started discussing the choice.

  “Was Freddie supposed to go first?” Rachel asked quietly.

  I shrugged. “It was a possibility, but he should go in the top ten at the very least.”

  “Okay. I like football, but I’ve never paid much attention to the draft.”

  My dad had been more of a baseball fan, but once it had become evident football was my sport, we’d watched it together every year from the time I was ten until I left for college. “One day, I’ll be watching you get drafted,” he would always say. I hadn’t put much stock in his words until my senior year of high school when college scouts came to watch me play. I hadn’t believed it was possible until then. Though he always had.

  Closing my eyes for a moment, I wondered if there would ever be a time when a memory didn’t sneak up and sucker punch me.

  “Do you want a drink?” I asked.

  Rachel shook her head. “I’m good, but thanks.”

  I stood and went to the kitchen to retrieve one of my beers. Instead of taking it back to the living room, though, I guzzled it in the small kitchen.

  A moment later, Carson joined me. “Are you okay?” He was the only person there who knew about my yearly draft-watching with my dad. Carson had used it as a bargaining chip to get me to come out that night, saying my dad would’ve wanted me to. Though he was probably right, it was still a dirty move.

  “I’m fine.” I wasn’t, but this was nothing compared to experiencing the first Christmas without my parents. Soon a year will have passed, and there would be no more firsts without them. It would just become my norm.

  “Who’s that chick you’re talking to?” Carson asked. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  My immediate instinct was to tell him to back off. Carson was smooth, and girls were drawn to him like moths to a flame. He wasn’t a bad guy, but I wouldn’t want him dating my sister. He was more the type of guy I would want at my back in a bar fight.

  “She’s Rachel, Katie’s friend.” Though I tried to keep my tone casual, it had a definite hands-off vibe. I didn’t know why I cared—I’d just met her—but she seemed like a nice girl.

  Carson studied me for a beat, reading between the lines. “Nice. There’s one single girl here. Figures you would—” He broke off as the telltale chime sounded, indicating another draft pick was in. “Come on.” He left the kitchen.

  I grabbed another beer out of the fridge but stared at it in my hand. What the hell am I doing? If I had any hope of being in top form for the fall season, I needed to lay off the booze, starting immediately. I shoved the can back onto the shelf and shut the door.

  ***

  Rachel

  JAKE RETURNED TO the living room just as the second pick was announced—a defensive tackle out of Michigan. The guys started talking immediately, and again, I didn’t follow a lot of what they were saying.

  I turned to Jake, almost forgetting my thought as my eyes locked with his whiskey-colored ones. They were deep and intense. A girl could get lost in them. Not necessarily this girl,
but a girl. Who am I kidding? He was gorgeous. He had tanned skin even though we were coming out of winter, a full mouth, and chestnut-colored hair I wasn’t too proud to admit I was jealous of.

  “I thought quarterbacks always went first,” I said.

  “It depends on what the teams need,” he explained. “Quarterbacks tend to go early, but a ton of quarterbacks were picked up in last year’s draft, so there isn’t as much of a need this year.” He gestured to the butterflies I’d abandoned. “Giving up?”

  “Yup.” I stretched my legs out in front of me and leaned back against the wall. “I’m a monster. Now those poor first graders won’t fully understand the life cycle of a butterfly.”

  Jake solemnly shook his head. “I’ll know who to blame when the country is in shambles twenty years from now. If only our future leaders had properly learned about butterflies, maybe World War Three wouldn’t have to happen.”

  I snorted. “For real, right? I don’t even know what these are for. They could be an elaborate bulletin board decoration for all I know.” I pursed my lips. “Come to think of it, they probably are. Mrs. Davidson is a sweet lady, but her time-management skills are awful. She wastes time on a lot of unnecessary things.”

  Jake picked up a butterfly and inspected it. “I don’t know. These seem pretty important.”

  “I think they’re stupid, which is a sure sign that I’m not meant to be an elementary teacher.”

  “Who says you have to be?” He shrugged. “There are other jobs.”

  Remembering too late that my hair was in a ponytail, I shoved my fingers into it. Sighing, I pulled off the hair tie. “Normally, I’d agree with you, but a degree in education isn’t going to get me very far in other fields.”

  “So change majors.”

  “I would except—you know what?” I stopped myself before I fell down the rabbit hole of whining about my problems. “We’re here to celebrate Freddie. You don’t want to hear about this.”

  The side of his mouth quirked up. “Actually, it’s kind of nice to think about someone else’s problems for a while.”