by Kim Karr
“You should help him with that,” Nick said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“I…we…” I stumbled with my words. “We aren’t together.”
Nick shrugged, and he looked so much like Lucas when he did. It was that I don’t give a fuck thing that Lucas wore so well. “Well, if you ask me, you should be.”
I had a thousand questions to ask him. Why would he say that? What had Lucas said? Had Lucas moved on? I mean come on, women everywhere were dying to get near him.
Just as I opened my mouth to speak, I saw Lucas back on the bench with the team’s physician, Dallas, and Aiden.
My stare had Nick whirling around.
And together we watched as the team physician extended Lucas’s right arm and pulled it until I knew it had snapped back into place.
“Shit,” Nick winced. “He’s probably headed to the hospital. I’m going to see if I can get down there and ride along. It was nice to finally meet you, Gillian.”
I nodded, tears stuck in my throat. “You too,” I managed.
He walked away, but then turned, “Gillian,” he called. I glanced over. “Don’t let him try to convince you it was for football.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
His cryptic words hung in the air because then he was gone. I walked down the steps and pressed my face against the glass to look down.
I felt like a kid outside a candy store who was not allowed to go in.
When I found Lucas on the field, he was just entering the tunnel with Dallas and Aiden and even Drake by his side.
The need to be down there with them had never been so strong, and I felt a wave of anger surge through me like I never had. I was mad. Pissed. Furious even, that I wasn’t.
I knew in this instant where I belonged.
And it wasn’t Minnesota.
30
Calling the Play
Gillian
The inside of a luxury box had glass panels that could be opened. It also included a bar, televisions, a small seating area, and a private bathroom.
The boxes were catered with champagne, canapés, shrimp, and sushi among the many other food choices. For those of us who had season tickets, there were allocated parking spaces and access to the stadium by separate entrances, away from the general public gates.
This box, the executive team box, had emptied out without me even realizing it. And with my nose still pressed to the glass, I mourned the loss of what I loved—both football and Lucas.
This wasn’t the place to break and shatter, but I couldn’t stop myself from coming undone, not anymore. I’d held it together for long enough. I had to let go, let it out, and then I had to move on.
The tears came fierce and raw and so hard I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Of course I couldn’t breathe, my heart was down there, in that tunnel, and I didn’t know how to get it back. I clutched my face and pressed my forehead harder against the glass to try to silence the cries, but I couldn’t.
“Gilly?”
Startled, I turned to see my father just staring at me, and I tried to catch my breath, to wipe the tears away, to hide this ridiculous display of emotion from him, but it was too late.
“Gilly,” he said again, this time his voice breaking. “Are you okay?”
The rush and rise of my tears wouldn’t stop, not even in his presence. I was worn out from pretending I was okay. “No, I’m not.”
He was in front of me and I never saw him move. He put a finger to my chin to lift my gaze to his. “Gillian, what is it?”
I shook my head, my voice stolen by emotion I had no idea how to face. Or how to put behind me.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” my father asked.
I nodded, not caring anymore that he didn’t like what I had done. “I loved him, Daddy. No, not loved…I love him, and he just left me without even trying to see if we could work things out.”
Despair lined his face.
Pushing out a breath, I spilled my feelings. “Like I was nothing to him. Like I meant nothing.”
His hand fit neat under my elbow. “He didn’t leave you because you meant nothing, he left you because you meant everything,” my father said.
I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
Gently holding onto me, he started for the door. “He did what he did because I asked him to.”
Anger spirited through me. “Why? Why would you do that to me?”
“Come to the office. We need to talk.”
I dug my Converse-covered toes into the carpet. “I can’t, Daddy, I can’t hear you tell me it’s for the best because it’s not. It’s not for the best.”
He rested his chin on my head, and I felt like a little girl again who had just skinned her knee. “That’s not what I’m going to tell you.” The dire tone of his voice told me this was serious, and I relaxed my body enough to move.
Trying to move through Bears headquarters was nearly impossible. It was a flurry of activity. People and press were everywhere, but the way my father moved, no one dared approach him.
Heading down the hall, I found myself staring at the framed clip-art drawings that lined the walls. They were of team uniforms through the years, dating back to the very first blue jerseys with tan colored vertical striping, all the way to today’s Nike-designed orange and blue ones.
As we walked by the open door to the equipment room, I looked in. Cabinets were stocked from the floor to the ceiling with everything from chinstraps to sunflower seeds. The sign just inside read, “We Issue Everything Except Guts.”
Guts weren’t a problem in the NFL, maybe just for me.
The offices were just ahead.
Moving through the double doors etched with the team logo in frosted glass, I felt a sharp pain in my chest as we passed the locker room. Hard rock music was cranked up, which meant the players were still there. Was Lucas still here too, or had he already gone to the hospital? My father would know, but I didn’t ask.
Once we were in his office, he closed the door behind him. The monitor behind his desk was still replaying a practice, most likely the very last one, and the bookshelves above it were lined with binders detailing every minute of every training camp he’d ever run.
Right now I knew my father should have been meeting with the press, standing on a platform in front of a throng of media just outside the entrance to the dining room, but instead he was here, with me.
He didn’t go behind his desk like he usually did, instead he went over to the sofa and motioned for me to sit down on it. Only after I did, did he pull out his wallet and remove a piece of paper that looked worn.
I’d never seen it before and wondered what it was.
Once he sat down, he started to unfold it, but then stopped and looked me over. “Gillian, I have something to tell you that I should have told you a long time ago.”
By the time he finished telling me what really happened the day I was born, that my mother hadn’t been actually going to see him play, but rather she was leaving him, I was in such shock that I had to swallow over and over, hard, before I could force myself to speak without my voice crumbling.
That shame on his face was almost too much to bear, but hearing the guilt in his voice was enough to make me want to crumble all over again.
“Oh, Daddy.” It was all I could say before I lunged across the sofa and threw my arms around his neck. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“You’re wrong, Gilly, it was. I put football before her, and when I refused to change that, she died because of it.” The unsteadiness of his voice scared me. He was always the one who held it together, no matter his temperament.
I pulled back and shook my head. “Life in the NFL might not have been for her, but what happened was an accident.”
He handed me the letter. “I want you to read this and then maybe you will understand why I did what I did. I did it for you,” he said. “For her,” he added softly.
With trembling fingers I took the worn piece of paper, and read the let
ter that the woman I had never met had penned to my father the day I was born.
My Dearest Jack,
I am writing this letter with so many regrets, but I can’t go on like this. This is taking the cowardly way out, but I know I can’t face you and see the disappointment on your face when I tell you I’m leaving you, because I feel that same disappointment in myself as well.
From the moment I heard your voice I knew that you were a special person. We talked for hours and shared our most intimate secrets. We laughed, played, and laughed some more. I remember our first kiss and the tingles that went through my body, from the top of my head, to the tips of my toes and straight to my heart. It was kismet.
The time we have spent together over the past ten years has been filled with both sorrow and joy, but it’s the sorrow I can’t live with. Our lives were never normal. They will never be normal. Life in the NFL is not normal.
Looking back, I can clearly see that over the years we grew apart. But by some miracle, we now have a daughter on the way, and those things I had been feeling before we she was conceived, suddenly seem like a mountain on my shoulders. A burden I can’t bear. A weight I can no longer carry.
You know as well as I do, that as time has passed, the feelings we once felt for each other have slowly changed. While you have continued to ignore my pleas to change your lifestyle, I have grown more resentful of the time you are away.
This may sound selfish, but I want our daughter to have a normal life. I want to be able to go out for fish tacos whenever I crave them. I want a husband at home to be with me, love me, and do the same for this child I am carrying. In order to make that happen, I have to be selfish.
I know I sometimes took more than I gave. That I pouted when I should have understood. That I cried when I should have laughed. That I was angry when I should have been grateful. But I acted in those ways because I was unhappy.
I apologize to you because I did nothing to change that. Instead, I let my emotions get the best of me, and I spewed angry, hateful words that I cannot take back.
Our daughter will always be our daughter, as you will always be her father just as I will always be her mother. But she will need more than the woman I have become.
I know that in deciding to move back to Louisville, I have made severe and life altering decisions for the both of us. But I need to find the sunny day to what has been a night filled with angst and turmoil. I need to find normal, and give normal to our daughter. In order to do that, to be the best mother I can be, I have to leave you—for her. I’m putting her first. She deserves normal.
There is no proper way to say goodbye, so I’ll end with, please understand.
Jill
There was so much I didn’t know about in this letter, and yet I wasn’t angry or upset, but I was sad. Sad for what they’d had and lost. Sad for her. Sad for him.
A tear slid down my check, followed by another. I glanced up at my father, and then back down to the letter.
The words written on the page gave me a glimpse into a marriage I never knew was troubled. They were brutally honest and heart wrenching at the same time. They were selfish and selfless. But most of all, the words written were in the past.
They had loved each other, but this life had driven a wedge between them. I hated that. I wanted to think what my parents had together had been more than a love that had been lost, so I re-read it.
This time slowly, carefully, pausing after every sentence. Kismet, she had called the love they once shared, and I found something profound in that.
But when I came to the words, fish tacos, for the second time, I knew Lucas had known something about my father and mother way before I had.
What, he knew, I wasn’t sure. And why it mattered, I wasn’t sure either. But I was certain that what we had was kismet, as well, and like my parents, it was lost, just for different reasons.
After I finished reading the letter one more time, I carefully folded it back up and set it on the table in front of my father.
I looked at him, at the lines on his face, the sadness in his eyes. I think he expected me to be angry. I think he expected me to look at him differently. I think his expectations were incorrect.
This time when I spoke, it was with the strength I had learned from him. “It was okay, Daddy—that this life wasn’t for her. It’s not for everyone. In fact, I bet it’s not even for a small fraction of the people in this world. But it’s okay that it was for you.”
He blinked a few times and I could clearly see there were tears welling in his eyes. This was a man I’d never seen shed a single tear. “Do you understand now why I want for you what I couldn’t give her?”
There it was, wasn’t it? After all these years I finally knew the reason behind his need to give us a normal life. “Normal?”
He nodded.
“But Daddy, I don’t want normal.”
“You don’t know that, Gillian. You haven’t given it a chance.”
“You’re wrong, Daddy, I do know what I want and I know what I don’t want. When I think of going to Minneapolis and working nine to five, I break out in a cold sweat. When I think of staying in one place for the rest of my life, it makes my stomach hurt. When I think about a life away from football, I feel like a black cloud is hovering over me. Normal is not what I want. I don’t want the same things she wanted. I’m not her.”
All he could do was stare at me.
“How can you not see,” I whispered. “I’m not like her, I’m like you.”
He blinked again, and this time swallowed.
I reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I want what you’ve wanted your entire life—this life—football.”
And then that one single tear slid down his face. “Then let’s make it happen.”
Now I was the one staring completely open mouthed.
“We. Can. Make. It. Happen,” he said as a smile slowly spread across his mouth.
And then for the first time in almost five months, I laughed.
I actually laughed.
31
Dual Threat Quarterback
Lucas
I had been knocked down, but not out.
Back on my feet, I found myself pacing, and not over my injury. My shoulder would be fine.
An MRI confirmed I hadn’t torn the labrum and that there was no tear in the rotator cuff, which was the team physician’s biggest concern after he had relocated my shoulder.
If either of those things had happened, there would have been a chance I’d never play football again, and just when I was getting started. Or I thought I was just getting started anyway.
That was until I had listened to that cryptic message Coach left on my voicemail. I should have answered the damn phone when it rang, but I hadn’t. Then again, I had been out cold.
After refusing to ride in ambulance, because come on, I wasn’t dying, Dallas drove me to the hospital. Four hours later, after numerous examinations and a lot of poking and prodding, I was released with instructions to follow up with the team physician. I was also given some pain meds to help ease the throbbing.
The drive back to my place seemed to take forever. Dallas said nothing. I didn’t either. Everything was so raw.
What I’d done hadn’t been smart, but it had won us the game and a place in the playoffs. This meant the Bears had a shot at the Super Bowl. Still, that didn’t change the fact that I made a stupid play.
Of course, Gillian also weighed heavily on my mind, but that was nothing new. It was just catching sight of her walking through the stadium before the game had my head spinning. Seeing her and not being able to talk to her was like being punched in the gut over and over again.
“Take it easy the next couple of days,” Dallas told me as I got out of his car.
I nodded in his direction. “I plan to do just that.”
The minute I walked through the door, though, Thor jumped to his feet. “Hey, man, you’re back. I’ve been waiting for you to go meet the guys.”
I blinked a few times, trying to clear my head of Gillian. “Meet the guys?” I asked. “This late?”
He tossed his trademark grin. “Yeah, they’re at that all-night strip club, and they really want you to join us in the victory celebration.”
Of course he had already known my injury wasn’t serious because we had been texting for hours, but still, he paused when I took my coat off and his eyes landed on my arm in a sling. “You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
He grabbed his keys and wallet from a pile of stuff on the side table. “Okay, then come on.”
Tossing my coat over the back of the sofa, I shook my head. “Sorry, not tonight.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.” He clapped me on my good shoulder. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Thanks, man, I will,” I said, and headed to my room, stepping over Thor’s shoes, cleats, and helmet as I did.
He was proving to be a real slob.
The late night partying might have been the NFL lifestyle, but not for all of us. The job we did was so physically demanding, there was no way anyone could function if they overdid it. Maybe that was just me. But hell, I didn’t even drink and if I went out, I still had issues the next day.
Besides, I was not only both mentally and physically exhausted, I was second guessing my decision to let Gillian lead that normal life her father wanted for her.
To keep myself from doing something stupid, like calling her. To stop thinking about her being back in Chicago and close enough to touch. To block out the white noise I felt from knowing she had been there watching what had happened to me and not being able to tell her I was okay—I took the prescribed painkillers and went to sleep.
I woke up to my phone ringing. While reaching for it, I made the decision to ignore it. I laid back down for another hour before I finally listened to the message.