Yeah, he could. He’d been pretending for twenty-five years, and if she didn’t like it, then maybe it was better for her to go.
He could handle the pain of losing her. Twenty-five years ago, he’d lost even more.
Chapter Thirteen
A little before noon, M. J. padded on bare feet into Tanya’s bedroom and sat on the end of the bed. The team had been out until the wee hours of the morning celebrating their by-the-teeth win, but M. J. had never caught up with them. She didn’t feel like celebrating after what happened with Tag. So she came home, crawled into bed, and was sound asleep by the time Tanya rolled in.
Swinging her legs around, M. J. spread out on the foot of the mattress and stared up at the Fathead of Yadier Molina. His right cleat was peeling away from the ceiling. Ending it with Tag was the right thing to do. He needed time to process everything and learn to love himself, and M. J. needed space to focus on the rest of this season. They owed that to themselves. Maybe someday when he’d healed and she’d conquered the female professional football world, they could try again. At the moment, she wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic.
“Did you pee the bed?”
Thank God for Tanya. M. J. smiled, but she didn’t take her gaze off the St. Louis Cardinals catcher’s intense mask-impeded face. “No. Just wanted some company.”
The mattress bounced as Tanya sat up and scrutinized her. “What’s going on?”
“I ended it with Tag.”
“What happened?”
“He’s got issues.”
Tanya huffed a laugh. “Don’t we all?”
It was true, and M. J. didn’t begrudge him that. She’d been willing to help him work through those issues—to a certain degree. She just couldn’t assume those issues and let them destroy her dreams. How could she lead a life that was all about authenticity when the man she was with was doing everything he could to hide a major part of himself?
“I can’t do processed and perfect,” she said.
“So stay away from American cheese?”
M. J. managed a chuckle.
“Hey,” Tanya said, pushing back the covers and scooting lower on the bed. “I’d take processed and perfect if it came with regular sex, even though I’d rather have him.” She pointed to the Fathead. “It’s something to think about.”
But M. J. wasn’t like that. She couldn’t ignore everything that was wrong in exchange for a little sex. It was a sucky time to realize she wanted more. “Sex isn’t everything.”
“Says the woman who’s been getting it.”
“I wanted it to be more,” she said, still staring at the silly Fathead, wondering if male athletes worried about similar things, balancing careers and relationships, or if they just had sex like Tanya was proposing—no strings—because society raised them to believe they could and should.
“Like what?”
It was going to sound corny, but in the spirit of honesty, M. J. said it anyway. “I wanted something fun and easy, sure, but I also wanted someone to share every part of my life with.”
“That’s why you have me.” Tanya nudged M. J.’s arm.
M. J. glanced at her, offering a small smile. “You know what I mean.”
“I know.”
Tanya curled up beside her, and M. J. felt a warm wash of gratitude soothe some of the pain. This unconditional love and support was so different from the tempered emotion she received from her parents.
She reached out and patted Tanya’s arm.
Tanya slapped a hand over M. J.’s hand.
She’d get through this bumpy patch. She’d be better, stronger for the wear, too. Her time with Tag had highlighted a few important things. One, M. J. was so damned blessed to have Tanya in her life. Two, if M. J. lost her focus again, her teammates could carry her sorry ass for the win. Not that she was going to be making a habit of that. And three, she had to do something about her family hang-ups once and for all. She couldn’t keep backing down or pretending the lack of support didn’t matter.
M. J. showered, ate, and readied for a late-afternoon practice, while she contemplated her next step toward unflappable football focus. Dad’s lack of interest in her athletic career hurt, and like it or not, it was threatening to distract her almost every game. All the pre-game glances at her phone, hoping he would call to wish her well. All the post-game texts, hoping impressive stats would sway him in her favor. They were covert and underhanded, because she’d never had the guts to tell him exactly how she felt. Oh, she fought for the right to play. She defended her decision and her team, but she never told him his lack of support and interest made her sad. Never.
The more M. J. thought about it, the more she wanted to do something about that. So, while Tanya watched Sons of Anarchy in the living room, M. J. snuck off to the back bedroom and called Dad. Of course, he didn’t answer, but she refused to let that dissuade her from reaching out and being completely honest with him. It was time she practiced what she preached.
She’d told Tag things weren’t fine if he couldn’t talk about them like they were fine. Well, that applied to her and Dad, too.
After the beep, M. J. said, “It’s me. Just wanted to say, ‘Hi.’” Among other things. “Call when you get a chance.”
She hung up and stared at the phone in her hand, wondering if Felicia wouldn’t call back first. Wasn’t that the way things normally worked?
A red light glowing over the email icon caught M. J.’s attention, and she clicked. It was a message from Coach—Thought you’d like this—and a forwarded link to a Cleveland sports blogger’s post about her season and career.
Rooney is the kind of athlete who changes the game . . . or in this case legitimizes it. When you watch her play it’s not women’s professional football; it’s football—period. I challenge anyone to watch a game and walk away thinking anything else.
Satisfaction swept over her, warming her cheeks. She read the post over and over again until her eyes clouded with happy tears. Recognition like this was all she ever wanted. To be judged as an athlete playing a game, not as a woman playing a modified sport.
Like she’d done so many times before, she clicked the forward button and typed Dad’s email address. But this time, her fingers flew over the keyboard, adding a personal note. When she’d finished, she’d written exactly what was in her heart: I wish you would see me this way.
It was a tall order for most men, but if this random sports fan with no connection to her could recognize her accomplishments, why couldn’t her father? He didn’t have to like football. Heck, she had a feeling Tag didn’t like football, either, but he came to see her play, and he talked to her about the games. He did those things because football was important to her.
More tears, and this time, they weren’t the happy kind.
For all Tag’s faults, making her feel less about who she was or the game she played wasn’t one of them. And that was so big—huge.
She doubted she’d ever find another man like that.
• • •
Tag wasn’t hiding. He just wasn’t in the mood to talk. The only person he wanted to talk to had walked away from him, because he didn’t want to talk about what she wanted to talk about. It was such a convoluted mess.
He sat at the breakfast bar in his parent’s house, staring at dictation charts, having burned a week’s vacation rather than repeat Monday again. He’d thought he’d be safe at work. After all, the ladies who answered his phones, prepped his patients, and filed his billing didn’t listen to sports radio podcasts. At least they hadn’t, until Monday around noon, when Marc rolled in, flapping his lips about “Tag’s brother” sealing another record-breaking deal, which led to the simple question, “Who’s Tag’s brother?” That led to the not-so-simple answer, “Jordon Kemmons.”
Within an hour, everyone in his office had perused the transcript on line, and they were eager to let their opinions be heard.
“You’re famous now,” Leanne had said.
For the wrong thin
g, Tag had thought, but he’d made some quip about hoping his fifteen minutes whittled down to five, and then he’d called it an early day.
He never made it home, though. After a phone call to his mother, he’d ended up here with a desire to get away and stay away until everyone else had forgotten about him.
The mudroom door opened and closed with a soft thud.
“You have no idea how much I love coming home to you,” Mom said, pressing a kiss on his cheek. She set her purse on the counter and smiled at him. “I feel like I should ask you, ‘How was school? Do you have homework?’” She laughed.
Tag barely smiled at the nostalgic quip, but he’d take a research paper and studying for an AP biology exam over this stress any day.
“Did anyone call?” she asked, reaching for the refrigerator and disappearing behind the open door.
It was a loaded question. She wasn’t really asking if the home phone rang while she was at work. She didn’t want to know if Aunt Ginny or some political action committee called. She wanted to know if any more reporters called . . . or if Jordon or Grey called . . . or if Tag called them.
“All quiet,” he said.
He had this ridiculous idea M. J. would call. And it was ridiculous, because it wasn’t like he was calling her. He wanted to, but he kept hearing her words: We would’ve lost, because of me, because my head and heart were here with you.
Tag didn’t want to be her liability.
“That’s good.” With her hands full of vegetables, Mom hit the front of the refrigerator door with her hip, closing the appliance. “Right?” She dropped the armful on the counter in front of him. “It means the hubbub is dying down. That’s what you wanted. That’s why you’re here.”
Tag nodded. When Sports Illustrated called two days ago wanting exclusive rights to the reunion story in print and offering a cover, Tag feared the worst was yet to come. But maybe that had been the peak. Maybe things would settle for good now.
Mom slid a cutting board and paring knife toward him. “Then why are your shoulders all bunched up? Why aren’t you smiling with relief after two quiet days?”
Tag cut into a red pepper, decapitating the stem. “I don’t know.”
She eyed him like she used to when he was a kid, calm and steady, like she could wait all day for him to crack. “I think you do.”
Of course he knew. Deep down, he was feeling guilty about more than letting M. J. walk away. He’d been avoiding Jordon and Grey, lumping their calls and voicemails with the unwelcomed contact of journalists, because he didn’t want to face what they might have to say about the interview. Tag hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic about claiming them as brothers . . . when they’d been nothing but enthusiastic to claim him . . . but only after twenty-five years. He’d let that fact hurt him too much during the interview, and he’d said things that downplayed the importance of the relationship they’d started to build. Worse, he’d made statements that could call into question his respect for them and their career choices.
He wished he could take back the bulk of what he said. He wished for a lot of things, lately, not the least of which was that he could be a strong, polished, impervious man who knew just what to say and when to say it. Instead, he was the kind of man who crumbled under pressure—just like his biological father always said he would.
You can’t cut it, boy. Now, go away.
And that’s exactly what Tag did. He cancelled patients, traded game coverage, avoided Jordon and Grey’s calls, and let M. J. leave without pulling out all the stops to make her stay.
All these years, he was still listening to Francis Kemmons.
Tag dropped his head into his hands and shook away the disgust.
“What is it?” Mom asked.
He wanted so badly to say, “Nothing. I’m fine. Everything is okay,” but he’d been trying to say those things for years, and they just weren’t working. “I can’t seem to forget him,” he whispered. “Twenty-five years, and he’s stuck in my head.”
“Look at me.” Mom stood beside him, lifting his chin with her hand.
“I’m sorry,” Tag said, struggling to make eye contact. “For bringing this up again.”
She wrapped him in a fierce hug. “You have nothing to be sorry about. That man, on the other hand, deserves an afterlife of tortuous reparation.”
“I keep trying to remember one good thing he may have said about me to counter the bad and gain some ground again, but there’s nothing. He knew me first. He saw the real me before you, before the surgery, before the private schools and money made me a Howard. If you take away all those things, am I who he said I am?”
Her fingers dug into his jaw as she held his gaze. “You listen to me. You are my son, it doesn’t matter what that man thought about you or said about you. He was wrong. People are wrong all the time, every day, for reasons too numerous and complicated to list. All that matters is that you feel the truth right in here.” With her free hand, she pointed to his heart. “We love you, all of you, even the parts you can’t seem to love yourself.”
Tag nodded slowly, his neck stiff from the heavy emotion stuck in his throat.
“And I want you to remember something else,” she continued. “That man said there was no place for a boy like you in baseball. Well, my beautiful, precious son . . . ” she released his jaw and smoothed her hand against his cheek, “he was wrong. You are living, breathing proof that he was wrong. Every time you walk into that clubhouse to cover a game, every time you work your magic and get another man, like your brother, back out on the field, I want you to remember he . . . was . . . wrong.” Her voice was loud and shaking. “It’s time you start living that way.”
They were both crying, and it wasn’t pretty. Tag wasn’t proud of the moments that brought him here, but for the first time in his life, he felt her words as truth in his bones.
Francis Kemmons wasn’t to blame for this mess. Tag was. He’d given a dead man way too much control.
“Thank you,” Tag said, hugging her, feeling the familiar warmth and comfort surround him.
“No, thank you, for opening up and talking to me. I always said I wouldn’t push you, because you’d talk more when you were ready. I also said that would be a day we’d rejoice, because then we’d have indisputable truth that you were rising so far above it, it would never hurt you again.”
That was what M. J. had been trying to say.
Mom patted him on the shoulder as she returned to the vegetables.
Tag stared at the mangled pepper in front of him, and then he straightened his back and exhaled what remained of the emotion he’d been holding in. “Just so you know, I screwed things up with M. J., too.”
Mom never looked up from the vegetables. “Then fix them.” She made it sound so easy.
“I will. I want to, but I also want to make sure there are actions behind my words. You know, proof that I’m making progress with this, so she doesn’t have to worry about being burdened or distracted again.”
Mom smiled. “That sounds wise.”
He was on a roll now; filled with a strength he didn’t know he had. “And I need to restore any goodwill lost between me and Jordon and Grey.”
“Good man.”
There again, Tag needed a plan—more than an apology.
His phone buzzed against the counter. Before he even looked at the number or name, he determined to answer it. He was done hiding.
“Unknown Caller,” he announced, exchanging reassuring glances with Mom before he answered with a steady, “Hello.”
“Dr. Howard?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Neil Forest from Sports Illustrated. Do you have a minute?”
Tag’s stomach flipped, but he stayed the course, because he did, in fact, have a minute—more actually. Tag would devote every waking minute to making things right.
Chapter Fourteen
“Two more games,” M. J. yelled above the noise in the locker room as she slapped her hand against the inspirational
words above the door and jogged into the hallway.
Her teammates roared behind her.
If they won the next two games, they’d have home field advantage. Good things happened on home turf. She repeated that like a mantra all through warm-ups, feeling loose and ready, which was a plus when she took the first hit. Being loose meant M. J. absorbed the blow and bounced back without too much fanfare. She preferred the crowd noise to come from plays like the thirty-two-yard touchdown pass she dealt to Janie down the leftfield line.
Unfortunately, that was the last time the Clash made it anywhere near the red zone in the first half. M. J. wished she could say the same for Buffalo, who’d sacked her twice and hurried her every play in between. She glanced at the scoreboard on her return from the locker room. 21-7.
“We are not out of this.” She went down the line, slapping every helmet on the way. “These people came to see a win. Let’s give it to them.”
She pointed up at the stands, her line of vision following. Somehow, in the spattering of people, she narrowed in on a familiar face. Dad.
“Shit,” she whispered, vibrating with more than adrenaline now. He was here. He’d never even called or emailed back after she forwarded the link to the blog post.
Deep, shaky breaths moved in and out her mouth. She could not afford to get distracted by this. Not now. She needed to win.
Tamping down the emotion building in her chest, M. J. took a spot beside her offensive coordinator and locked her mind on football.
Eventually, the Clash’s running game showed up, exploiting some cracks in the defense. They picked up some good yardage and added fuel to M. J.’s inner fire. Following two first-down conversions, she dropped back to pass, releasing the ball in an arch up the middle to Jillian, who only had one woman to beat. She did so with flair. Juke, spin, and sprint.
“Touchdown Clash,” the announcer bellowed, and then he recognized M. J. as the league-leading, record-breaking passer she’d just become.
Her feet seemed to hover above the turf, making the walk to the sideline slow and dreamy. She’d known she was close—maybe even somewhere in the back of her mind she knew the exact yardage she needed to make her mark—but until the announcer said it, the momentous moment hadn’t sunken in. Now that it had, satisfaction tingled every inch of her overheated body, but then she saw the scoreboard. 21-14. She didn’t have time to bask if she wanted to win. One possession to tie, two to take the lead.
Hearts Are Wild Page 54