by Leslie North
God, he really was a fucking asshole.
“I’m sorry, Claire. For all of it. That you have to go through life without a brother. That I gave you such a hard time.” That I walked out on you this morning when all I wanted to do was stay. “That I didn’t ask you about him last night when you wore his tags.”
She nudged his good shoulder with hers. “That you didn’t ask me to dance.”
Warmth rippled through his belly, nothing whatsoever to do with a hot hoagie. “That, too.”
“I get it.”
“No. You don’t, Claire. What you said this morning was mostly true. But not the part about you not measuring up. See, it’s me that doesn’t measure up. If you knew me, really knew me, you’d look the other way. I’m not proud of my past. I’ve done shameful things in the name of survival. I cover those things with greatness. Hope people look the other way. We work toward the same goal, we both get what we want. I give you my word. Simple as that.”
“No more grief?”
“No more grief.” Though he couldn’t say the same about her. He couldn’t do anything about her brother’s passing, but he could do something about her grief here, now.
“Ever play football?”
Her gaze trailed his stare to the young men running routes and talking full-on smack. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. Come on.”
When she hesitated, he took her hand and tugged her toward the impromptu game. He introduced himself, a practice his mentor, Sol, taught him: Never assume people know you—that’s the moment you put yourself ahead of the game. He asked if they minded playing with a rocket scientist like Claire, at which she promptly protested and made a break for it. Marcus scooped her back and held her in place, the length of her back against his front. He showed her the proper grip on the ball. She was too smart, picked it up too fast. Marcus had hoped to hold her against him longer.
She tossed a few wobbly passes to some of the other players. What she lacked in upper body strength, she more than made up for in accuracy. The guys learned to play things tight and soon she made decent passes, even nailing a few spirals. Each time a guy caught her throw, she launched off her feet in a bouncing celebration worthy of the Super Bowl end zone.
And Marcus remembered the high of football. Coach Bana would have had a coronary, him risking injury on something like this, but he didn’t care. Sometimes it took bringing things down to earth and stripping the game back to basics to remember those early days with Sol.
The kids played it low key, but their energy rocketed from what he had observed earlier. Marcus joined the defense, content to let Claire shine at QB. She passed more than Brett Favre in quicksand, delighted at her new skill. Marcus never let an opportunity slip to toss her words back at her.
“The azimuth of your eye scan down field is anomalous.”
“Faster, not harder.”
“Your default scan of the field is left, right, left, sky, turf, my ass.”
To which she invariably blew him a kiss or stuck out her tongue.
The guys treated her with kid gloves, giving her bear hugs instead of sacks, but she held little back. One kid, Oliver, even ran the full length of their field with her on his back. He set her down gently on the grass in their imaginary end zone. She dissolved into laughter, ruddy cheeked and with a full halo of dried leaves in her hair.
To Marcus, she had never looked better.
Game over, Marcus posed for photos with the guys. For one shot, Oliver insisted Claire memorialize her choke-hold down the field then texted it to her phone. Guy was probably hoping for a lasting connection to Marcus, but Claire received the group photo as if she had just won a Nobel Prize.
Walking back to the practice field, just the two of them, she confessed. “I had no idea football was so…”
“Fun?”
“Invigorating.”
“More than yoga?”
“I may never do another modified eagle pose again.” She practically skipped along beside him. Her enthusiasm was infectious. “Seriously, thank you. I think I understand better now how much goes through your head as the team leader. It makes me want to tweak the tech to put less of a burden on you.”
“Music to my ears.”
“When do you leave for Denver?”
“Plane goes wheels up in two days. Bana always schedules an extra day to practice at altitude.”
“I believe in you, Marcus. Eggert isn’t ready. He doesn’t have the situational awareness you exhibit. His mechanics are faster, but you beat him in the mental game. Every time.”
“Unfortunately those quantifying numbers you turn in don’t always reflect the mental game. They’ll inform Sterling’s decision after Sunday’s game.”
Claire stopped, waited for his eye contact. “I won’t alter them.”
“I’d never ask you to. But we have to be real here, Claire. You’re here as either my savior or my downfall. And I won’t let you be my downfall.”
His voice emerged with more edge than he’d intended. They were good at that—casual one moment, adversaries the next. He was fast losing his ability to keep up.
“Just win Sunday. Okay?”
“A Rogue’s fan now, are we?”
His levity didn’t preserve all the yardage they’d gained together that day. Her next statement had all the seriousness of an unfavorable spread prediction.
“No. But I am a Kingston fan.” She whipped out one of those toe-curling yoga poses to stretch her height, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and jogged off toward the staff annex.
Keane’s warning echoed in his mind.
Woman like that gets under your skin, we all screwed.
Thursday and Friday passed in a blur. Claire devoted prime slots to Marcus, making her equipment available at all times to accommodate his trainers, his physical therapy, his workouts, team practices and a flurry of meetings—most of which involved him as leader of their team. They grabbed an hour here, ninety minutes there, seeing each other morning, afternoon, and evening until the team flew out Friday night. Had Marcus not seen progress, he might have cut back or ended their sessions altogether. But his numbers improved, and their interactions felt like a rising tide of optimism tempered with a subversive gravity.
Sunday was D-day—decision day—so Claire and Jo worked overtime to craft VR simulations under forecasted lighting and snow flurry conditions expected in Denver and overlaid the movements of every member of the offensive line based on simulation models she had secured over the past few weeks. The simulations were pixilated and imperfect, but they captured characteristic motions and running gait and timing—everything essential to put the entire playbook at Marcus’s disposal. By the time he boarded the team charter bound for Colorado, he had virtually quarterbacked an additional three games and run through drills in all visibilities.
With the exception of a trip to the store to restock groceries and a favor to a friend to check on her place, Claire spent the weekend on a sectional couch large enough to accommodate the Rogue’s entire defensive line. Jo made repeated attempts to drag her out for activities she labeled fun, but sleep became a demanding beast. She missed Marcus but had caught her breath enough to realize he was a limited waystation on the road to her goals. Cryptic and frightening-sounding past aside, he had an endless supply of women and zero room in his life for anything but the great American pastime.
As a reminder of her mission, Claire enlarged and printed her brother’s military photo and slipped it into frames on the coffee table, the entry table, and her bedside table. Jo thought it was overkill. Claire thought it necessary.
She heard the Rogue’s score broadcast on the way to the team facility Monday morning. According to the radio show, the Rogues had beaten the Broncos in a sloppy overtime performance. At the mention of Marcus, she tweaked the volume. Every comment seemed to center around his shoulder. Her stomach twisted around her morning bagel. The prevailing opinion was the team would not make the playoffs.
Claire snapped off
the radio.
Jo had told her she should watch the game. Claire viewed it as three hours of her life, gone. Instead, she watched an old Montgomery Clift western Clay loved, Red River; had a memorable encounter with the neighbor’s pack of fuzzy chows while getting the paper; ordered the best Thai food she’d ever tasted; and wrote enough lines of new code to wallpaper the borrowed apartment.
Armed with fresh data she had downloaded from the team’s traveling server and a file cluster Coach Bana had emailed her, she arrived at the practice field just after five a.m. to set up her equipment and run reports. By six-thirty, Marcus hadn’t shown but Colin had. She hooked up lower-body sensors to the eager backup quarterback and worked him through feet positioning routes the quarterback coach had given her the previous week.
At quarter-to-eight, Marcus stormed onto the field like a hornet had flown inside his jockstrap.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked Claire, as if Eggert were a child, incapable of answering for himself.
“Hey man, it’s all right.” Colin’s tone was placating, his all right more like aight. He stepped between Claire and Marcus, hands splayed.
Marcus gripped Colin’s shirt and gave him a shove.
“What the hell?” said Claire.
“He ain’t supposed to be here.”
She didn’t know if it was his amped testosterone or being around his teammates that always devolved Marcus’s grammar.
“I invited him to stay when you didn’t show.”
Colin yanked free of Marcus’s grip and backed away. His expression went from scowl to nod. He adjusted his shirt. “Important game coming up. I gotta prepare.”
Marcus came at him again. “You son-of-a—”
Claire stepped between them. “Both of you, knock it off. There’s two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment here, and you won’t want to be within a four block range if your little pissing contest destroys any of it.”
The moment Marcus’s gaze collided with hers, he blinked out of his rage trance. His exhales were hot and fast, his nostrils flared like a bull teased by a billowing flag. Still, his eyes locked onto hers. It was powerful and frightening and breath-stealing all at once.
“Colin?”
“Yeah, ClaireBear?”
A muscle in Marcus’s jaw tremored at the nickname.
“Do your hundred-yard sprint, and we’ll take a reading.”
“Sure thing.”
Claire had never heard Colin’s voice so sickeningly pleasant, contrasting starkly with Marcus’s growls. He lined up on the end zone chalk and took off down the field.
“Jesus, Marcus. What’s gotten into you?”
“He’s just waiting, Claire. Just waiting for me to fuck up.”
“Isn’t that the purpose of a backup quarterback?”
Deep trenches formed between Marcus’s brows. “Whose side are you on?”
“The numbers. I’m on the side of the numbers.”
Marcus shook his head, scooped up a stray football near his feet, and paced three circular steps until he was right back where he started.
“You watch the game?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Claire!” Colin yelled from the far end of the field.
The hornets stinging Marcus multiplied and swarmed her own rib cage. She fired back, “Again!” with more sharpness than she intended.
Colin sprinted.
“I didn’t need to. I have all the game data.”
“How the hell are we going to do this if you don’t look up from your spreadsheets long enough to understand the game?”
“I understand you won. That’s all I need to know.”
“This is my life, Claire.”
“For God’s sake, Marcus, it’s a game. It isn’t war.”
Marcus nodded and backed away, his jaw cocked open as if she had surprised him with a right-cross. “You’re right. You’re right, Claire. It’s a game. We win. You get what you want.”
“Marcus, don’t leave.”
Colin streaked back through the end zone, his shoulders heaving with effort. “How was that?”
“Run like a true…starter.” Marcus spat out the words and fired the football at Colin, cruise-missile style.
Colin caught it and smiled.
After a stare-down that contained the subtext of a week’s worth of team drills and a fist fight to rival the climax of Red River, Marcus walked off the field.
7
It took Marcus ten minutes to ice his temper about Eggert and ten hours to work up the courage to go to Claire’s apartment. He had spent most of his day off at The Hive, ordering new equipment and trying to forget his familiar pattern of pushing people away when they got too close. Strapping on a pair of boxing gloves had always reduced him to his essence. The gloves stripped away his glory, his fame, all the history he had clawed through to separate the man from the boy until Marcus was left with the truest version of himself. The version he allowed no one to see. The version Claire drifted so dangerously close to.
His anger toward Eggert was a riptide—ever present, lying in wait, but beyond the area in which he swam most days. Manageable. Deeper than he was willing to plumb, for it would mean his time on top was coming to an end. But seeing Eggert with Claire, in his space, in his capacity, using the familiar nickname, instigated a rogue wave of jealousy that had leveled him and tipped him into his old impulsive ways of dealing with things—blood and fear and strike before struck. So he pummeled the boxing bag with his good arm, spent the day filling the emptiness inside with the kids from the neighborhood, and went to her apartment to apologize.
He brought her a gift from Darius—a flower sprouted between the concrete cracks behind the gym—because Darius believed it was an omen of hope—good things to come, as his dead grandmother always said. Marcus didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a weed. Nevertheless, Marcus held onto the stem as tightly as he held on to the hope that the man Claire saw today on the practice field hadn’t made her want to distance herself. Run. The only way through it was the truth. Sol had taught him that.
Marcus straightened his collar and knocked.
She didn’t answer, but he thought he heard movement inside.
He pulled out his phone and sent her a text.
I’m sorry. Please open the door.
He waited.
Nothing.
I’m out, Claire. I’m sorry I failed you.
The nothingness decayed his gut.
Marcus turned to leave.
Tumblers cleared the lock. The door opened.
A slice of Claire appeared, disheveled and quirky and perfect. She wore a skirt that extended to her bare toes, patch-worked out of old T-shirts, a million different colors, though he couldn’t discern all of them. Beer shirts and travel shirts and Greek letters. Somehow he knew they had been Clay’s. Her eye makeup was smeared, ashen. He felt certain he had added to the grief already there. She held her phone. No chance to run from the truth now.
He held out the tiny yellow bud. “From Darius.”
She took it. A ghost of a smile touched her nude lips.
“May I come in?”
The door opened wider, but she didn’t wait for him. She padded quietly to the kitchen, filled a glass of water from the sink’s filter spout and watered a cactus near the sink like she intended to float it out to sea. City noise filtered through an open patio door. The room’s ambient temperature felt the same as outside. A chill skipped along each vertebra in his back.
As if sensing it too, Claire wrapped her open hoodie around her tank top like a bandaged wound.
“Can we sit?”
Claire shrugged and followed him to the sitting area with a killer view of the skyline. Somehow, somewhere along the way, the woman before him had become the only view that mattered.
“I was late this morning because I met with team doctors and my orthopedic surgeon. I took a sack in overtime that set my shoulder back. A bruise, real
ly, but any other direct trauma could take me out for the rest of the season. They want to take it week by week, but Eggert is in against Oakland.”
“And you believe this somehow fails me? A hit over which you had no control?”
“If I don’t improve, your work remains unproven. I sink, you sink.”
Instead of sitting, she drifted to the glass door and looked out at the sunset. “What you must think of me. That I would care more about my technology than I would about you being hurt. We’re alike, you know. Our passions sometimes run from us. If we don’t rein them in, they run, unchecked.”
She lost him. He couldn’t help but think she addressed something greater. His gaze drifted to the coffee table, to a man in uniform who had Claire’s eyes tucked into a rigid frame, preserved behind glass. Again Marcus felt unworthy.
“It’s my instincts, Claire. I used to sense them coming, the hits. Not much different than a soldier in battle, I suppose. You settle back into this unthinking place and pray like hell your training kicks in before you get leveled. I’m losing those instincts, Claire. I’ve already lost them with you.”
She turned to face him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You got me mixed up and sideways. I thought I knew where I wanted you—how to be around you without being with you, but I’m not so sure anymore. Knowing how we left it, that I had turned into someone I used to be and you witnessed it…I’m just not him anymore, and I need you to know that.”
“Why do you care what I think?”
“Because you’re real. Unaffected by the things other people preoccupy themselves with. How much money I make. What kind of car I drive. How many first down conversions I put up, and how it compares to thirty-one other quarterbacks around the league on any given Sunday. You care about how I feel, what I want.”
“You say you want things for the team over yourself, but I didn’t see that today, Marcus. You had a setback. One week, maybe more. I thought you were the kind of man who puts action behind his words. If you really believe in team over the individual, you’ll help me prep Colin for next Sunday. He isn’t you. But with your help, he could come close.”