Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 131821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
This is what I’ve been waiting for.
What I’ve trained my whole life for.
I’m the starting quarterback at a D1 college, and I’m about to show every person in this place exactly why it’s my picture hanging in the halls.
And that’s exactly what I do.
I ball out, all my boys right there with me, and by the time the clock runs out in the fourth quarter, the scoreboard reads thirty-four to thirteen, Avix U Sharks.
I’m keyed up, jumping with my teammates as we enter the tunnel like a pack of wild wolves after a hunt. We’re loud and rough, laughing and joking, blasting rap music in the locker room as we listen to Coach deliver a fiery speech that has us banging our lockers in victory. When he leaves us, the speakers bump even harder, and we go about our own business.
I pull my phone from my locker, my smile wide.
It falls a split second later when my eyes focus on the screen.
There’s a message from my dad, my sister, and even Lolli…but nothing from the girl who started a routine I clearly became dependent on.
After every game last season, Payton would message me, without fail. If she was able to watch, it would be a joke about home runs or nothing but net, playing up her lack of knowledge of the game that she knew drove me crazy. If she didn’t, she would search for the results, coming back with a sassy little remark, and I just knew she was smirking that cute little smirk when she sent it, usually because she was teasing me, talking about how so-and-so’s tight pants being the reason the tackle was missed that led to the game-winning touchdown she found on the Avix Inquirer Instagram page. None of it made much sense, and I knew she understood more than she let on—I spent a ton of time breaking it down for her, after all—but that was the fun of it. Playful teasing she started. It was our thing. I never wondered if her message would be waiting for me. I knew it would.
It was a guarantee.
Keyword was, my man.
Frustration claws at my skin, and I toss my phone in my locker with an angry huff, doing a double take when I spot Chase a few lockers away, grinning down at his screen.
Without realizing I’m doing it, I’m rushing over, tearing the phone from his hand. “Who are you talking to?” I snap.
“Bro, what the hell?” He yanks it back, shoving me away, but not before I see the name on the screen.
Guess Lolli messaged him, too.
Chase studies me with narrowed eyes, but I spin away, squeezing my lids closed a moment.
I don’t hit the showers.
I grab my shit and get the fuck out.
Payton
Lifting my camera, I follow the newest addition to the team as he flies off the starting line, sprinting to the end and blowing his opponent out of the water.
I’m pretty sure it’s in good fun, a locker room bet maybe, seeing that they tugged their pads off their shoulders and dropped them to the turf.
He spins, smiling as he swipes his hand through his dark hair.
The team is shouting and shoving on number thirteen, heckling him for losing to the new guy, I’m sure, but Noah only shakes his head, walking over to where the receiver coaches have gathered.
It’s late August now, more than a month since the one-year anniversary—such a ridiculous expression—of Deaton’s death, and I’m feeling a little more like myself again. The weeks leading to that day were unexpected, the months before that even more so.
But what a beautiful mess it was.
I shake off the thought.
After Deaton died, I was stuck in a state of disarray. Confused and unable to get past the shock of it all. For the longest time, I didn’t quite feel real. A few months after his death, I found I wasn’t crying every single day anymore, and the days I realized this, I’d cry out of guilt.
Who did I think I was, walking around and having lunch with my friends, taking breathers on the beach while he was lying cold in a coffin?
A sharp pain flickers through me, and I wince.
It’s such a strange thing, to lose someone, and as sad as it is, I’m kind of seasoned in it as if it’s a sport I willingly participate in. Technically speaking, I lost my dad when he divorced my mom, which led to losing my brother. I lost my friends when my mother began to meddle in my life, and I lost my free will at the same time. I lost my senior year when I got pregnant, and then I lost Deaton.
Every one of those instances, I mourned in one way or another. I knew I had to take it a day at a time, and I did. Slowly, things got better. I could think of him and smile or laugh, missing him without complete misery.