We stretched in silence for a few long minutes. Bailey’s brows rode low on her forehead as the gears in her head turned.
“I get it, Jamie. I really do.” She turned her head to face me. “But I still think it’s stupid.”
“What am I supposed to do? Defy my mother?” I wasn’t going to do that. If I was going to, I would have done it a long time ago.
“Heads up!”
Bailey and I both ducked as a football flew over our heads. It landed in the grass a few yards away. Jumping to my feet, I grabbed it.
“Sorry!” James Snow, the field goal kicker, called out. He held out his hands, inviting me to throw him the ball.
Cocking back my arm and planting my feet, I threw him a perfect spiral.
James caught it, a look of surprise on his face when it practically landed right in his arms without any effort on his part.
“Nice throw!”
I nodded, unreasonably happy with myself for completing an easy pass, before going back to stretching.
“What?” I sighed, feeling Bailey’s gaze.
“You’re good. You haven’t played since middle school and you’ve gotten better.” Her praise felt ridiculously good.
“Well, Dallin and I throw around all the time,” I responded as though she wasn’t there most of the time.
Bailey studied the football field as she stretched her hamstrings. I gave up on stretching, choosing instead to lay back in the grass and pout.
“They need a quarterback. You’d be perfect.”
I hated the tiny spark of hope her words ignited. Hope had no place in my heart where football was concerned and Bailey knew it.
“Just stop.” There was no way I was going to play football again. “I haven’t played in three years, anyway. They need someone who knows the system already. I’m sure they’ll work with someone already on the team.”
Bailey snorted. She was as football literate as either Dallin or I, we’d made sure of it.
“Who? Justin? Even if he could throw worth a dang, he needs another twenty-five pounds, at least, to not get killed.”
There was some truth to that. We were in a competitive conference. I knew of two guys who’d moved out of our school district because of Connor. They knew as long as he was there, they’d never get any playing time. And while coaches couldn’t actively recruit, no one was going to stop a kid from moving into their boundaries. Both of them were starters for their teams and they were both good.
I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to play. If I kept telling myself that then maybe the spark of hope would extinguish itself for good.
Chapter 5
Jamie
“Man, can’t you run any faster?” I yelled to Dallin as his thick legs, which were built more for staying in one place than for running, churned up the field.
“Just throw the ball, Barnes!” he called back, his arms outstretched to catch my pass, which fell right into his hands.
“I could throw it farther if you could run faster,” I taunted as he jogged back to where I stood waiting. It was late, after the football team’s second practice. Dallin’s car wouldn’t start and he called me to come pick him up. I told him I would as long as we could toss the ball around for a while.
“I could run faster if I hadn’t just finished my second practice of the day.” He passed me the ball once he was close enough. Dallin wasn’t an accurate passer at long distances. In my backyard? Yes. On the football field thirty yards out? Not so much. He was an excellent blocker, though. His thighs were like tree trunks.
“Excuses, excuses, Ralston.” I tossed the ball in the air, easily catching it again. “Come on, one more. You can even walk most of the way.” I called out a route I’d learned from him that was one of the plays the team used.
Dallin rolled his eyes, but he was already making his way down the field. This was a play from last year’s playbook when the team had a quarterback that could throw.
Once Dallin was twenty yards away, I began to back-pedal. Five yards, ten yards. Dallin cut across the grass, picking up speed. Cocking my arm back, I waited until he was a couple of seconds away from my target and let the ball go. It hung in the air making a high arc. Without adjusting his pace, Dallin reached out. The ball landed perfectly in his hands. Holding it in one hand above his head, he called out in an imitation of announcer’s voice and continued running into the end zone.
“Ralston makes the catch. He jukes left, then right. He fakes the defense straight out of their jocks. And he scores!”
Laughing at my friend’s antics, I jogged to give him a high five.
“Nice catch.”
Dallin collapsed in the grass, breathing hard. “Nice throw, but I’m done.”
“Wimp.” I sprawled out a few feet away.
“Whatever.”
“You should start running with me.” I knew what his response to that would be.
“Hells no.” Dallin was more of a gym junkie. He loved lifting weights and was strong as an ox. He had explosive speed in short bursts, but wasn’t a fan of endurance running.
Not that I was, either.
“So…”
And here it came.
Groaning, I rolled over onto my stomach. A face full of grass was bound to be better than anything Dallin had to say.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.” Dallin pulled up a clump of grass and threw it at me.
“If it has anything to do with me playing football, then yes I do.” I didn’t even bother to brush the blades off my face.
Dallin blew out an annoyed breath. “Why can’t we just talk about it?”
“Dude, you know how my mom feels about me playing football.”
“Dude,” he imitated me. “You’re eighteen, now. You don’t need her permission to play.”
He was right about that. I turned eighteen the first week in August. I could have graduated last year, but my parents kept me home an extra year so I wouldn’t be the youngest kid in my class. Instead, I was the oldest.
“I know I don’t need her permission to play. I just want her blessing.” And I didn’t have it. Our family had suffered enough. I didn’t want to add to her heartache.
Dallin was silent for a long time, long enough I figured he was going to drop it about football.
“Coach is going to have tryouts on Wednesday. A mass email is being sent to all students tomorrow morning.”
That spark of hope I’d felt that morning talking to Bailey wasn’t as dim as I wanted it to be and Dallin’s words just fanned the flame. Damn it.
“Good for him.”
Dallin snorted at my less than mature response. “You could try out, Jamie. You’d get the position.”
Rolling over, I sat up. “I’m not trying out.”
Dallin sat up as well. “What’s next, Jamie? What else is her fear going to keep you from doing? Going off to college? Flying on an airplane?” His direct gaze met mine. “Hiking in Hawaii? Rock climbing?”
I flinched. He wasn’t just throwing out random things. Everything he said was a direct hit to my heart. “That isn’t fair, Dallin.”
“No, what isn’t fair is not living because you are afraid. What’s worse is keeping someone else from living because of your own fear. And you know that’s what’s going on here, man.”
He wasn’t wrong. And I hated it. I hated that I had to deal with this. I hated that I couldn’t just live my life, make my own choices without fear of hurting my mother. In so many ways we were doing better. But there were other times, dark times, when we weren’t.
How could I rationalize being the reason for more of them? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t make that choice.
Would I?
I helped Dallin give his car a jump and then called Leah Collins. I’d been talking to Leah all week, flirting at cross country practice and texting. Within minutes, I’d picked her up and we were back at the school. It was dark and Leah smelled good. Her lips were talented and she was in agreement tha
t this was just a one-time thing.
For a few hours, I forgot all about missing my dad and worrying about my mom and wanting to play football more than I wanted anything else.
Later that night, laying in my bed, I couldn’t forget Dallin’s words. What would I do? I’d been living in a bubble. A bubble that would burst in about ten months when I graduated from high school. Graduation had always seemed so far away, this nebulous thing I wouldn’t have to worry about for a long time.
Now, it was staring me down. Taunting me. Forcing me to face decisions that were starting to feel real. Moving away. College. My own life. Making my own choices. Leaving Mom.
Would I continue to allow my choices to be influenced by her? Would I hold myself back from doing things because of her fears for my safety? Because she was afraid of losing me?
I didn’t blame her, I really didn’t.
I was five when my life drastically changed from the one I’d always known. It wasn’t unusual for my parents to leave me with my grandparents for a long weekend while they went on a trip. I had a special suitcase with rollers and a picture of SpongeBob on the front. I even had special pajamas and stuffed animals I only pulled out when I was going to their house. This time, however, I was going to be at Grandma and Grandpa’s for a whole week while my parents celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary in Hawaii.
I packed my bags and prepared for a week of homemade cinnamon rolls, cookies, and helping Grandpa in the garage. My favorite thing was handing him different tools while he worked on his projects.
To this day, I clearly remembered my parents hugging me before they left. My mom’s eyes filled with tears as she studied my face a little longer than usual. They hadn’t ever left me for this long before. She was worried. My five-year-old brain couldn’t understand what the big deal was. I was ready for them to leave so I could get down to business having fun at my grandparent’s house. I remember waving as they both headed to car that would take them to the airport. It was the last time I ever saw my mother walk.
One week turned into two and then turned into three. I remember being confused and restless when my parents still hadn’t come to pick me up. I talked to them both on the phone and they sounded fine. Why weren’t they coming home?
Well, the reason they didn’t come home was because my mom was in the hospital. During one of the hikes in Hawaii, my mom slipped on a muddy embankment and tumbled halfway down a mountain before getting caught at the base of a hundred-year-old tree. Rescuers had to get her out by helicopter. She’d lain there for two hours before being transported to the nearest hospital equipped to handle her injuries.
Injuries that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
When Dad finally did come to get me and take me home, it was to a home I’d never seen before, in a neighborhood I’d didn’t know anything about. There was a cool ramp outside, though, next to the stairs leading to the front porch. It was fun to run up and down. The doors were extra wide and there was weird equipment in the living room that I later learned were to help Mom since she couldn’t use her legs anymore. The biggest difference was that Mom still wasn’t there. Dad explained that she was going to stay at a rehab facility for a couple more weeks to learn how to deal with not using her legs before she came home.
It was a lot for a five-year-old to take in and I think it was a year or so before I finally came to terms with the fact that my mother couldn’t do the things she’d done before the accident. She was still my mom and she loved me, but she was sad a lot and things were so different.
Pretty much the only good thing about moving to our new house was meeting Bailey. She moved into the house next door to mine not long after we moved in. Her mom had just married her step-dad so she was dealing with major life changes, too. We bonded in the patch of grass between our two houses and the rest was history. We’ve been best friends ever since. Dallin joined our little posse in the third grade when his parents moved in across the street. We were the three amigos.
After Mom’s accident, she became even more protective of me. But I loved football, a love I’d learned from my Dad and when the time came for me to play in elementary school, he signed me up against her wishes, although neither of them missed a game in six years of play.
The end came crashing down toward the end of my eighth-grade season. I played quarterback and I’d started for both seventh and eighth grades. (Thankfully, Connor had gone to the other middle school in our district.) I was good. Maybe not as good as Connor, but good. It didn’t matter in the end. It was a quarterback sneak and I ended up on the bottom of the pile with a concussion.
Out of the game.
Out for the season.
Out forever.
My dad hadn’t been able to talk her around after that. Our family had been broken enough, he told me. She couldn’t handle it if I got broken, too. So, I was forced to quit. I took up running to deal with my frustration. It was an extremely poor substitute. But Bailey was there and that helped. A little.
I wish Dad had taken his own counsel about not doing things that might break one of us. I had to give up football, but he kept going on his annual rock climbing adventures with his roommates from college. Mom spent a month before the scheduled trip every year ignoring him, breaking down only a few days before to beg him not to go. I guess he figured we’d given up enough.
Every year, he ruffled my hair and kissed the tears from her cheeks before driving away.
It was always a long few days until he drove back into the garage, until the one time he didn’t. Even after receiving the call about the accident, she still sat at the window watching the street in front of our house for hours. Hoping. I think Mom still hadn’t forgiven him for leaving us.
Yeah, so that’s why I didn’t play football. Because my mom was a wreck. I got it. I really did. I knew better than anyone. After all, I was the one she kept awake at night with her sobbing. It was during that time I moved my room down to the basement.
I’d never been more thankful for Dallin and Bailey, who both stole into the basement I’d turned into my own little apartment. I didn’t think any of our parents realized how often they stayed the night, distracting me from my own grief while my mother wallowed in hers one floor above us.
And it sucked.
But damn if I didn’t love the game. Damn if it didn’t flow through my veins as surely as my own blood. On the field, it was like everything in life clicked into place. Like a puzzle piece you turned this way and that, trying to get it to fit. My life only turned in the right direction to fit into that spot when I played football.
Good grief, I sounded like an idiot. Even in my own head. Football wasn’t everything. I knew that. I got it. But I still loved it. I was good at it. I wasn’t just good, I was talented. Something about it made football more than just a sport to me. It made it an opportunity.
One I’d given up.
But dang if I wasn’t tempted. Dallin had dangled a carrot tonight. And not just any carrot, the carrot.
And I’d be damned if I knew what I was going to do about it.
Chapter 6
Jamie
I was shaking. I’d driven into this parking lot hundreds of times and I’d never been so nervous. I’d woken up this morning with a new resolve. Instead of tugging on my trusty runners, I dug through the closet in the hallway of the basement. It was the graveyard of all my old sports equipment.
Shoes that had been run into the ground.
Tennis rackets, bent and out of shape from being used as swords by Dallin and me.
Climbing equipment.
Football cleats.
Miraculously, they still fit. I slid my feet into them and raced out the door before I could talk myself out of it. I was in the driver’s seat before Bailey made it out her front door and she hadn’t noticed my footwear. I was glad. If I had to talk about it, I might talk myself out of it.
The last day had been filled with introspection. I’d basically hidden in my room for most of the la
st twenty-four hours, my mind filled with thoughts I didn’t want to think.
About football. My dad. My mom.
Painful, irrational, unwanted thoughts.
I hadn’t been able to escape them. I also hadn’t been able to get my conversation with Dallin out of my head, the one where he asked me when enough was going to be enough. How long was I going to let my mom’s fears keep me from doing the things I wanted to do? Needed to do.
“Are you alright?” Bailey’s voice was soft and tentative and it woke me up from my panic induced stupor.
Taking a steadying breath, I forced my grip on the steering wheel to relax. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
I opened the car door and set one cleated foot onto the asphalt. I was doing this. I was freaking doing this. I let the feeling of determination fill my body. I wasn’t afraid of football. But I was deathly afraid of disappointing or hurting my mother. And what I was about to do, would accomplish both.
It was also the most excited I’ve felt about anything I’ve done in years. And it felt like the most right thing I’ve done ever.
I was so focused on my own thoughts, I didn’t even notice Bailey walking beside me until she snatched the hem of my sleeveless workout shirt in her hand.
“What’s going on, Jamie? I’ve been talking to you for the last thirty seconds and you haven’t heard a word I’ve said. What are you doing? Why are you wearing those?” She gestured to the cleats on my feet.
“I’m, uh, going to try out for the quarterback position.” Whoa. Saying it out loud, voicing my intentions, brought the decision into bone jarring reality.
Bailey’s eyes widened with surprise and something else. “Really? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged. “I hadn’t really made up my mind until this morning.”
Bailey frowned. I wasn’t really known for being impulsive. At least not with something like this.
“She doesn’t know?”
I shook my head and started walking again. If I didn’t, there was a real possibility she would try to talk me out of it. I needed to commit. I needed to act.
The Perks of Kissing You (Perks Book 3) Page 4