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Four Months After the Wedding
“You what?” I ask.
It’s the Friday night of my first full week at training camp with all of my teammates, some of whom won’t make the fifty-three-man roster, and I’m exhausted. It’s possible I’m mishearing things.
“I stole the SIM card out of her phone, and she had to go into town. Nana needed help, and I was there.” She says the words again, and nope…I heard right the first time.
I draw in a deep breath. This isn’t my problem to figure out, yet I’m so tangled in it that it feels like it is. “Grace, this isn’t you. Revenge? Stooping to her level?”
She’s quiet on the other side of the line, and I can’t help the thought that the manipulations and lies were what spelled the end for Amelia and me in the first place.
“What were you thinking?” I ask, filling the silence between us.
“I was thinking I’m tired of getting played by Amelia. I was thinking I’m tired of losing to her. First you, next the vineyard.”
“You didn’t lose me to her,” I point out. “I married you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, because we were drunk and high on allergy medicine!” she protests. “Not because you’re in love with me and asked me to spend the rest of my life with you!”
She has a point…but I’ve also been thinking a lot about that over the last couple of weeks we’ve been apart, and I am in love with her. I do want to spend my life with her.
I just haven’t told her that yet.
And now that she’s stooping to the level of the person I broke up with in large part because of the way she lived her life, I’m not sure I can tell her that.
She’ll be here next weekend. It’s our first game, a preseason game where I’ll only play a few snaps, and it’ll be my first chance to pick my wife out of the crowd.
I blow out a breath. “What if I’m getting there?” I finally ask.
“Huh? Getting where?”
“To the point where I want to spend my life with you.”
“Oh,” she murmurs. “I, uh…”
“But I have to be honest with you, Grace,” I add, too tired to sugarcoat it. “I don’t want to be with someone who’s like Amelia. I ended things with her for a reason, and this is something she would do.”
“She intentionally hurts people, Spencer,” she says quietly. “This was just a silly prank.”
“That’s how it starts. What’s next? Look, I don’t really want to get into this with you. I need to go take a shower and get ready for tomorrow, but just…take a step back and look at what you’re doing. You’ll get the vineyard on your merits, not because she had to go into town for a phone emergency. I gotta go.”
“Okay. Goodnight.” The two words sound so sad, but before I can backtrack and apologize, she ends the call.
I head to the shower with thoughts of her heavy in my mind, but I force myself to wash them away and focus instead on the strategy meeting with the wide receiver coaches today.
The playbook is vastly different from what I was used to in Minnesota. The Storm focuses much more on man-to-man offense versus zone. I was used to finding an open spot in my zone and running to it to make a play, but now I have to memorize all these plays on top of different strategies for breaking away from the defender covering me to execute the play. Neither is easier or more difficult—it’s just a lot of change all at once to contend with on top of the typical physical aspects of training camp.
Coaches are constantly watching players to see where their strengths lie and how they’ll best serve the team in the upcoming season, so players are forced to leave it all out on the field. We push ourselves to our very limits, and I’m feeling every second of that tonight.
I text Grace in the morning before I head to the practice facility where our training camp is taking place.
Me: Sorry if I was cranky last night. Camp is intense. I hope you have a great day today.
Her response comes just after I park my car.
Grace: You were right. I don’t want to stoop to her level, and I needed your honesty. You have a great day too.
I can’t help but smile down at my phone as I appreciate the open communication we have. It’s what a marriage should have, and it’s another sign that I’m with the right person.
