All Played Out (Rusk University #3) (27 page)

Everyone else has kept up a steady stream of chatter, but the two of us have been quiet. I heard Dallas mention something about this being the first game Stella has attended in a while. According to Stella, it’s only been like a month and a half, which doesn’t sound like that big of a deal to me, but everyone else seems to think it’s significant.

“I’m brainstorming possible combinations of the letters on those shirtless guys that are really extraordinarily drunk considering how early in the day it is.”

She smiles. “What do you have so far?”

“Well, this group here and that one over there could combine to spell ‘scrotum.’ But I feel confident that’s not their intended message.”

Stella chokes on her soda. “Oh God, I hope it is.”

I think about how much of a kick Torres would get out of this, and my heart rattles.

“More realistically, though, they’re spelling something to do with the school. Rusk. Those letters match up. There’s not a
Y
that I can see, so I don’t think it says ‘university.’ There’s an
F
and two
O
s, so I’m betting ‘football’ is part of it. But that still leaves some letters unaccounted for.”

“Wildcat,” Stella provides. “The team mascot, I think the rest spells ‘wildcat.’ ”

I scan the letters again, and she’s right. I nod. “Mystery solved.”

Then I go back to chewing my hot dog. And chewing and chewing because I don’t know what to say. I should be working on that whole friendship thing. That’s the one thing that might be salvageable from this whole list disaster. Everything else might have backfired, but I know now that I can’t let myself go back to being lonely. I can’t work that way, and it was foolish to think that I could.

“I’m nervous,” I tell Stella. “About seeing this game.”

“Don’t be. Football isn’t as complicated as it seems. You’ll get it in no time.”

I shake my head. “It’s not that. I was sort of, briefly, dating Torres.”

She coughs and thumps her hand against her chest a few times as if she’s choking. “You were? Seriously? How did I miss that?”

I shrug.

“Damn,” she continues. “I’m off my game. Usually, I’m the first person to know that kind of stuff.”

“Well, there’s not much to know anymore. We got in a big fight, and it’s over. Really, it was doomed before it ever started because . . . well, it just was.”

Because me and emotions don’t mix.

Because I was just a stand-in.

Because we’re too different. Way,
way,
too different.

She says, “I know a thing or two about being doomed before it starts.”

“It’s awful, isn’t it?”

She glances over her shoulder, almost like she’s checking to make sure her friends are still busy in conversation. Satisfied, she turns back to me and says, “It’s like . . . you have plans, ideas for how something is going to unfold. And you’re patient, you don’t try to rush things because you know they’ll happen when they’re supposed to happen. But then what happens is something altogether different. And it doesn’t just affect your old plans, it obliterates them.
It
makes the choice for you. And you’re left feeling stupid that you ever even considered those old options, that you ever got your hopes up.”

Stella and I are both short, roughly the same height, actually, but she seems so small next to me. My first instinct is to attribute that sense to her emotions . . . except she’s not really showing any. Her hands don’t shake as she continues eating. Her expression is neither wrought with feeling nor purposely blank. Her eyelashes are long, but she’s not blinking like she’s fighting off tears. She seems normal.
Fine
.

But she got her hopes up for something
.

And I know how that feels. I spent all that time wondering whether
I
was capable of a relationship. Whether
I
had it in me. I was stupid to not be prepared for it to be him that got in the way.

I never would have done that in an experiment, let a factor like that go unconsidered.

“I don’t think you were stupid,” I tell Stella. She stiffens beside me, and I keep going. “I don’t really buy into that word. There are only wrong answers and right ones. Stupidity and intelligence, those are attributes we add to make ourselves feel better. Making a stupid decision doesn’t make you stupid. Just as making a smart decision doesn’t necessarily make someone smart. Our bad choices don’t make us stupid, they just make us wrong. About that one thing. Not about everything.”

“I want to believe that. That one choice, one
thing,
doesn’t define you. But everything is just like fucking dominoes, and they keep falling, one after the other, and I can never get ahead of it. So as much as I want to believe what you say,
I can’t
.”

The two of us sit in silence as we finish our food.

And maybe Stella is right. There’s a reason the social sciences exist, because people are unpredictable. They’re not like math and physics and biology. They’re different, separate. You can’t depend on people to be consistent or rational. So much of what I’m learning in school deals with medicine’s attempt to remove humans from the equation as much as possible to prevent human error.

Maybe that’s where I went wrong, trying to approach life the way I approach science.

In science, every action might have an equal and opposite reaction, but not in life. Life is unbalanced. Life is complicated. A little lie can cause a lot of pain. A big event like an important game or losing your virginity can have an enormous impact or it can turn out to not mean that much in the end.

“There’s no predicting it,” I say aloud. “How one thing can affect your life. There’s no way to know until it’s too late.”

“Life’s a bitch like that.”

I tap my water bottle against her Dr Pepper can, and for the rest of the tailgate party, Stella becomes my partner in silence. She doesn’t push me to talk, and I don’t push her, and when we head for the stands, I’m relieved to be seated by her.

And when the players exit from the locker room, and my eyes pinpoint Torres in his uniform, she bumps her shoulder into mine. “You okay?”

I shake my head, then nod, then shake my head again. “I don’t know.” I’d thought coming to a football game would give me some kind of closure. I’d get to see him again to ease the ache in my chest, but I’d also see how different our worlds are. That realization was supposed to help me let him go.

Instead, I watch him stretching and my own heartbeat sounds suspiciously like
Love him, love him, love him,
in my ears. This isn’t going to give me closure. It’s just going to give him more power over me.

Torres is my catalyst. He set my life spinning, and there’s only one way to counteract that kind of momentum.

Friction.

I’ve got to fight back. Resist the urge to miss him, to seek him out. I’ve got to resist. I stand up as the band starts playing next to the student section, and at first no one hears me over the music, so I have to say it again, louder. “I can’t be here!”

I can’t sit up in these stands, watching him risk his own health for a game that could never be more important than his future. There are two things I know for certain about Mateo Torres:

1. He has a type (my type, apparently).

2. He will always put football first. He did it with his ex, and now he’s doing it again with his health.

And there’s one thing I know about me:

1. I don’t dwell on setbacks. I move forward. Always, always forward.

Stella stands, and hooks her fingers around my elbow. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

“Wait. You’re leaving?” Dylan asks. “But you’re the one who wanted to come.”

I shrug. “Sometimes you make the wrong decision. And that’s okay, as long as you don’t keep making them.”

“Stella?” Dallas asks. There’s a bigger question in those two syllables, but whatever it is, it passes just between the two friends. Then Dallas nods even though Stella hasn’t said a word, and the two of us begin inching past all the people in our row.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say.

Chapter 26

Mateo

M
y mind tries to wander to the empty bed I woke up in this morning, but I don’t let it. There’s nothing good down that path. Standing in the locker room, I focus instead on the fact that today is my third day without symptoms.

I did the right thing. There’s no reason I should miss this game. I’m fine.

Physically, at least.

My head is a little blank. A little numb. But that’s not the concussion. That’s Nell.

I keep waiting for it to feel like Lina, like my life has just detonated. But no, Nell isn’t the type to leave shrapnel, well, not unless you count the final words she said to me Tuesday night when I dropped her off at home.

I get that you loved her. But any kind of love where you have to prove yourself to be worthy is the wrong kind. And you’re better off without her.

No, Nell didn’t leave me with any wounds. Instead, she healed them. Losing her was the final thing I needed to heal all the damage Lina did to me. Nell fixed me, which is kind of what I’d been hoping she’d do all along. Only this was better. This wasn’t just blotting out memories, it was putting them into context. It was taking away their power.

Because what I had with Lina? That wasn’t love. It was infatuation.

And I hate that it took losing Nell to see just how different things are with her. I know I still need to talk to her. It isn’t fair the way I left things. I don’t want her to think that Lina was the only reason I was with her, that she was only a replacement. Because she fucking wasn’t. She was something new. Something better. I’d known that from the night she’d given me her virginity. I spent years trying to forget what it was like to be with Lina, and no other girl had ever been able to do anything but blur the memories.

Nell obliterated them.

But not because of any similarity to my ex, just because there isn’t room enough in my head and my heart for old hurts and new hopes, and I’m so fucking gone for Nell that she takes up every damn inch.

She’s on constant repeat in my head, cycling through every single second of our time together. I can close my eyes and recall just how fast my heart was beating the first time we kissed, the sounds she made that night in my truck, the way her sheets smelled waking up the morning after she gave herself to me.

No, Nell didn’t leave me with scars.

She left me
empty
.

She took with her my ability to laugh, the ease with which I can make a joke, the joy that comes from making that perfect catch. She took my ability to pretend that I’m okay, that I’ve got it all together. She took it all.

And there’s no fixing that kind of thing. I can’t blot over it with distractions or remake it with someone else. I’ve got to get it back. Pure and simple.

I’ve got to get
her
back.

As soon as the game is over tonight, I’ll find her. I don’t know yet what I’ll say. We both said things in that fight that we probably shouldn’t have. But I know that what we have is worth salvaging. I don’t know how I’ll get her to give me a second chance, because God knows, she’s smart enough to say no.

But I’ll do it. I have to.

T
HE NORMAL RUSH
of adrenaline and anxiety I feel before a game is gone. I reach for it, but I can’t get it back. Not even when the team starts yelling and psyching one another up in the locker room. Not even when I don my pads and uniform. Not even when Coach gives a particularly good speech about rising above our underdog status. Win this game and we’re 9–2. We’d almost be guaranteed a bowl game. Win another, and we could even get picked for one of the big ones.

But I can’t quite see the future stretching out in front of me like I could a few weeks ago. There’s a wall, and I know I won’t get past it until things are right with Nell.

She’s part of my future.

That’s why I can’t picture it.

Coach Cole stops me before I head out onto the field and asks, “You ready?”

I nod as much as my helmet and pads will let me. “Yes, sir.”

“Listen, if we get the coin flip and receive first, I’m putting you out to receive.”

“Sir?” I ask, confused.

“Gregory has some kind of stomach bug. He’s out. So I need someone fast who can replace him on the kickoff. I need a playmaker. Think you can handle that?”

“Yes, sir,” I answer immediately, but inside I’m saying no.

Well, not me precisely, but it’s Nell’s voice in my head.

Coach heads for the tunnel that leads out onto the field, and I follow him, but the dark corridor is too much like the one where I’d lost everything earlier this week, and I find myself gasping for breath.

Returning a kickoff is one of the most dangerous plays in football, so much so that there’s been talk of removing it from the game altogether. When the kick returner catches the ball, they’re usually in the end zone. The defense is coming full speed from the other side of the field. The returner can take a knee, and his team will automatically start at the twenty-five-yard line. But the good returners can gain more than twenty-five if they’re quick, can find the holes, and break through tackles. But with players coming at full speed, and all that extra field to gather momentum, kick returners take some of the hardest hits in football.

I tell myself that maybe we won’t win the coin flip, maybe I won’t have to worry about it.
Yet
.

But we do. The setting sun glints off the flipping coin, and McClain says, “We’ll receive.”

Then I tell myself maybe it won’t come to my side of the field. Maybe the kick will end up outside my territory, and someone else will return the ball.

And then I’m taking the field. My cleats sink into the grass, and the thud of my heart echoes all the way up into my head and fills my helmet until I can’t hear the crowd, can’t hear anything.

I see the opposing team begin to move, watch the kick of the ball, track the high arc of it with my eyes. It’s coming right for me. And I watch the ball spin end over end, and as it begins its descent toward me, I hear my fight with Nell on fast-forward.