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I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. More than that, I couldn’t believe that he seemed to believe the story he was telling me. “Are you fucking kidding me? Who told you that, your father? What…” I stopped myself before asking what was wrong with him. Maybe that was too much like kicking him while he was down. Instead, I said, “What kind of stats did last year’s top kicker have?”
He shook his head. “You can’t compare stats between me and him. We didn’t play in the same division.”
“Okay, what stats did the last kicker recruited out of this division have?”
He knocked my hand away, which was fine because I hadn’t realized I was still holding his chin. “That’s not the same.”
I barked out an incredulous laugh. “Why not?”
Bett’s hand moved to my leg, his pointer finger tracing a soft line over my kneecap while he considered his response.
When he didn’t answer, I asked a different question.
“Do you want to go pro?”
“It’s a fool’s errand,” he said, sounding like an old man.
“Those don’t even sound like your words,” I said with a laugh.
“It’s true, though. Plenty of kickers’ salaries are at the league minimum.”
I couldn’t hold back the sarcasm. “Jesus, how can they even afford to eat? That’s like, what? A million bucks?”
Bett yanked a chest hair until I yelped and grabbed his hand away.
“Be serious,” he said. “If I go to law school, my starting salary at a big firm in Atlanta would be a quarter million with zero risk of a life-altering injury.”
“Mm. Corporate law. How… thrilling.”
He was quiet for a few moments, but I could hear the wheels turning in his head. Finally, he spoke, but in a much smaller voice. “I don’t really care about the money. I don’t see myself at a big firm. I want to go into public interest litigation—which is a fancy word for social justice law. And it doesn’t pay.”
I scoffed. Was he for real? Or was he so used to media-friendly sound bites, he was spouting them out of habit. “You? Social justice? Right.”
He lifted his head and glared at me. “What’s your fucking problem? What’s wrong with social justice?”
I pushed him off me so I could sit up and pull my knees to my chest, yanking up the sheet the way he’d done earlier. I glared at him over my folded arms. “Is it just that you want to fuck with everything Grace has ever wanted? Is that it?”
“Grace?” His eyes widened and then nearly bugged out. “What does your sister have to do with anything?”
I waved a hand between us and started to move out of the bed. “Never mind. Go to sleep, McNeely. It’s late.”
He didn’t say anything as I moved to my side of the room and gathered my clothes, pulling my boxer briefs back on before turning out the lights and sliding between my own too-cool sheets.
Awkward silence filled the room. His breathing wasn’t regular, and he wasn’t moving. No rustling bedding or the sound of him shifting his position in the bed now that I wasn’t taking up most of the space.
After several long moments, I started to feel guilty. I wanted to say something, anything, just to find out what he was thinking. But I didn’t want to care.
I hated that I felt this way. Bett McNeely didn’t fucking matter to me. He couldn’t.
My sister was thriving in her program, and I was doing what was necessary to pay for it. She was fine. It was fine. And if Bett actually wanted to pursue law, him benefitting from the fellowship wasn’t as much of a waste as I’d imagined.
I couldn’t help but think back to the night he’d gotten the fellowship. At the time, I’d thought he was putting it on—always the golden boy with the aw-shucks demeanor—but what if…
What if his smile hadn’t been smug but… happy?
What if he actually wanted to pursue social justice law? Was that so crazy? His father probably thought it was. Guys like the senator were power brokers, and the power was where the money was: in corporate law.
For the first time since spotting the book on his shelf about affording law school, I wondered if it was for real. If Bett truly needed to worry about how to pay for law school.
