Page 75 of Off Court Fix

The thought is more painful than the moment my Achilles tendon snapped. It’s a deep, raw, bone-aching pain.

Crosby turns my cheek gently so I face him. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry you understand how hard it is to barely be second choice.”

I shake my head into his palm. “I’m sorry you don’t understand how much he probably wanted to make you and your mom theonlychoice.”

Lowering his gaze, Crosby sighs.

“The day he died... I haven’t had a drink since then. I haven’t popped a Tylenol, Advil, not one single over-the-counter pain killer. And this?” I lift my ankle. “The pain was excruciating. I think I almost blacked out. When I sit and try to remember that day after it happened, I only remember one thing.Beggingthe surgeon not to give me anything for the pain after I woke up.That’show much I believe it’s not a choice, Crosby. I live with the pain knowing I could feel better while being terrified of waking a beast I know lives in my DNA.”

And that beast—it’s addiction. And it’s taking Mason from me again. I don’t see him bright-eyed in my mind, I see him strung out. I see him hurting, and I see meleavinghim to hurt because I was tired of it being all about him my whole life and never about me.

Tears sting my eyes, and my heart begins to splinter out of my chest because what my brother needed wasmore, but more of a different thing. More love and compassion. More texts sent, calls made, more pride, and less shame. More celebrating every sober day. I wish I could’ve given Mason so much more of what he needed and not what he wanted.

I start to sob.

Crosby tugs me into his lap and drags his lips through my hair. “You don’t deserve this pain—none of it.”

Neither did Mason. And I would go ahead and make a bet in Hunter’s gambling ring that, chances are, neither did Crosby’s father.

But I can’t get the words out apart from “I’m sorry.” And I am. I’m sorry for me, for Crosby, for his mother, for anyone who knows how hurtful and complicated it can be to grieve someone who is right in front of you.

I should leap free from Crosby’s embrace given his confession, given his hardline. But I don’t. Because like his embrace carries my highs, it also must carry my lows. Both things make me excited for tomorrow’s secrets and terrified of the possibility of the truth being exposed. It’s something I wish I could forget, but I obsess over more than I want to admit. I sink into it, let his warm breath at my ear and his touch penetrate my body, flow into my bloodstream and breed a high inside me.

And when my head drops to his shoulder, I wonder if this is how Mason felt at some point, if he ever was sober enough to realize just how ironic it is the thing you want more than anything today might be what brings destruction tomorrow.

But then Crosby turns, and I look up at his hazel eyes that match the tones of his tortoise-shell glasses, and that uptick in my heart rate? It slows, to something peaceful, healthy. And then I wonder if the difference for me is that I don’t just want Crosby. Maybe I really need him too.

* * *

It’s a little after nine when I wake in Crosby’s bed, my legs tangled in a light blue sheet. We slept quickly last night, Crosby insisting it was too late for me to drive home, even though part of me wanted a little space to process.

Crosby lies on his side, his hair tussled against the pillow. I gently scoot, the hand he had pressed against my stomach falling to the mattress as I get out of bed and slip on my jean shorts I had abandoned for comfort.

I walk out to the living room in search of my shoes. Even though it’s Sunday—the only off day Crosby and I share—the stress of last night’s stream of confessions has me eager for nothing more than some time alone to sit with my thoughts.

But then I see a photo on the bookshelf that makes me think maybe time with Crosby is what I need to process this, to accept his past. But not secretive time at one of our homes or strolling along any secluded beach we can find before crowds swarm in the afternoon.

I want time with Crosby out in the open—real life, real problems.

Returning to the bedroom, I climb back into the bed, pressing on his shoulder until he blinks his eyes open, staring at me curiously.

Looking down at the frame in my hand, I can’t help but smile at the young boy—with sandy-brown hair, sunburn panting his cheeks, both hands gripping the pole supporting a horse on a carousel. But really, I can’t stop looking at the woman whose hands hold his small shoulders, the only thing matching the size of the smile on her face maybe is the love in her eyes.

I hand him the frame. “I want to meet your mother.”

* * *

“I should go in first,” Crosby tells me. “See what kind of day she’s having.”

I nod, pushing aside my hair, finally dry from the shower I took before we drove across Long Island to the North Fork. “Of course.” I lean against the wall across from Crosby’s mother’s room.

The corridor is quiet, light flooding from both ends of the hallway, but to my right, away from the entrance, come all sorts of noises—light music, conversation, voices of different octaves, some firm, some soft, high, and low.

I bounce, keeping my eyes down as Crosby knocks. The receptionist had seemed surprised when we arrived, though not by me. It made me wonder when Crosby had last visited his mother.

“We didn’t expect to see you,” she told Crosby, who rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably.

The aid who led us to her room had said it was a normal day. I have no idea what normal means when you have no sense of who you are, where you are, or what you are supposed to be doing. But I didn’t ask Crosby to take me here so I could understand what life might be like for his mother—that’s more than I ever could possibly understand. I came to see who he is as a son, so I could better understand Crosby as a man.

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