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In fact, it only gets worse. Every. Single. Time.
It’s to the point where I can hardly sleep and forget to eat. I’m choking down protein shakes just to keep enough carbs in my body to keep it moving. It’s no wonder I got so trashed off the beer. I can’t remember eating anything yesterday, and who knows when I ate before that?
I close my eyes, taking deep breaths to keep from puking this vanilla shit all over the cab of my Tahoe.
It’s just after two in the afternoon, and there’s but a single car in the practice facility’s parking lot, most people not set to headback to campus until later this evening since we don’t report for official practice and classes until tomorrow.
That’s when the others will be back, tomorrow morning. The plan was to head back to the beach houses this afternoon when Noah had to catch his quick flight back to the team’s headquarters. Then tomorrow morning, we’d get up and make the drive early.
I was supposed to have one more day with my little guy.
One more day with her.
My jaw clenches, and I shove the door open, stepping out into the frigid morning air, tugging my hoodie up.
I couldn’t face her this morning. Couldn’t face any of them, and since Little D was asleep in the same room as his mama, I didn’t get to say goodbye.
The thought has my pulse pounding in my ears.
What if that’s the story of my life? A constant goodbye.
Quick visits that are over before they start, like a distant uncle or, worse, family friend.
I’m not just a fucking friend.
I’m more.
You thought you were more.
“Fuck,” I curse, quickening my pace and focusing on the echo of my own footsteps in an attempt to drown out my thoughts, but it’s to no avail.
There may as well be a megaphone pressed to my ears, screaming out all the ways I’ve fucked up, but thefucked-uppart about it?
I have no idea what those things are. There has to be more than I realize, right? For her to pull away after everything. For the ache that enters her eyes when she pretends not to watch me with Deaton. There was always that sliver of inner pain there. It’s the same tangled expression that would enter my father’s eyes when he’d watch me and my sister do something he and hissister did as kids before she passed, but inner pain or not, Payton never pushed.
In fact, she did the opposite. She kept me close, called first, and hung up last.
She’d run to me and jump into my arms when I’d sneak a short visit I didn’t tell the others about. Now she hears me coming and off she goes, a sudden appointment or event or urge for a coffee she can’t make herself.
But why?
What happened?
Where did I fuck up, because I must have, right?
Or maybe she can see through me and knows I’m not as confident as I like to make people think. That I do feel fear and I do have insecurities.
It just so happens my biggest one might be the very reason things have veered so far off course I’m running circles around my damn self.
Maybe I’m not enough, or maybe I’m simply not needed.
Why would I be?
What do I truly have to offer her?
I’m not even fucking there. I’m stuck three hours away for the next two years, and that’s if I go to the draft after my junior season. And if I do get drafted, I’ll be off to who the fuck knows where after that, but the odds say it will be farther. Somewhere I can’t hop in my truck for a quick visit.
The best I’ll be able to do is see their faces over video, but who’s to say I’ll even be given that?
