Page 116 of Just Say Yes

I couldn’t wait to talk to her––tell her I was in love with her and hope like hell she felt the same way.

I pulled up MJ’s number, my thumb hovering over the screen. A quick text was all I needed. Something simple to feel like she wasn’t so far away.

Hey. How’s book club? Did they grill you about me again?

I set the phone down and waited.

Nothing. Not even the dots that showed she was typing.

She always answered. Even when it was a short, sarcastic reply, she always answered. The silence felt wrong—like a crack forming in something I hadn’t even realized I was holding together.

It wasn’t like her. My gut twisted as I picked the phone back up, staring at the screen like I could will her reply into existence.

She was probably busy, I told myself. Or tired. Or maybe I was overthinking it.

The thought left a bitter taste in my mouth. I locked the phone and tossed it onto the bed, dragging a hand through my hair.

I paced the room, the carpet soft under my bare feet, but the tension didn’t ease. Not even a hot shower had shaken the feeling that something wasn’t right.

I sat down again, my phone still stubbornly quiet. Even as I tried to tell myself not to read into it, the unanswered text sat heavy in the back of my mind.

What the hell was I doing, anyway?

I’d spent years building my life around one thing—rugby. Focus. Discipline. Always moving forward. And now here I was, sitting in a hotel room, letting my head spin over one unanswered text like I didn’t know better.

But even as I told myself to let it go, the quiet buzz of unanswered questions stayed with me.

The silence hit me harder than I expected. I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over her name like just seeing it could give me some kind of answer. I thought about how I would tell her—about the call-up, about everything—but no version of the words felt right.

How do you tell someone you got the second chance of a lifetime and you don’t even want to go?

That conversation was one that needed to happen face to face.

Unable to sit still, I grabbed my running shoes and hit the pavement. The night air was crisp against my skin, the rhythmic thud of my feet against the asphalt grounding me.

The cool air hit my lungs like a challenge, painful and unrelenting. My feet pounded against the pavement, each step a heartbeat, each breath a question I didn’t have an answer to.

The city lights blurred as I ran, their glow too bright, too harsh. My chest burned, my legs ached, but nothing could outrun the thoughts chasing me down.

MJ was there in every step, every breath, every thump of my heart.

I replayed Coach’s words in my mind, the ones he’d said months ago when I’d started on the exhibition squad: “You don’t get second chances in this game, Logan. You’ve got to decide what you want and go after it, full throttle.”

I had agreed at the time, nodding like I understood.

This was rugby. This was everything.

Rugby had always been the answer. The thing that gave my life purpose, that kept me moving forward when everything else felt like it was standing still. But now, with MJ in the picture, the edges of that certainty were morphing into something else entirely.

If rugby wasn’t everything ... what was left of me?

I picked up my pace, my lungs burning, my legs screaming for relief.

By the time I made it back to my hotel, my chest was heaving, sweat dripping down my back. I dropped onto the small bench by the front entrance, the glow of the parking lot lights cutting through the dark as I stared at my phone, heavy in my hand.

MJ’s number was still pulled up on the screen.

I stared at her name, my thumb hovering over the call button.

---