Page 49 of Fighting Spirit

“Ainsley!” a voice booms down the corridor, warped as it echoes off the walls until I can hardly make out the word. Both of our heads whip to find the source, a player in a Beaufort uniform walking toward us. “Dude! What are you doing? We’ve been waiting for you!”

Rowan jolts a step back, plastering himself against the opposite wall. The movement feels like a shard of ice in my chest. I try to brush it off, to tell myself that this isn’t what I think it is, that it’s the rejection-sensitive-dysphoria that comes part and parcel with my ADHD, turning this small action and morphing it into this sense of abandonment. I know all that, but knowing it doesn’t make it feel any better.

“I’m coming!” Rowan calls back, taking off at a jog and intercepting the guy before he can get down this end.

“Who’s that?” the guy says, trying to peer around him. Rowan’s body shifts slightly, but enough to cut off his line of sight to where I’m sitting. Who is this guy that Rowan doesn’t want him to see me? I have to bite the inside of my cheek as an ugly sensation wells up in my chest.

“Nobody.” His tone is firm.

The two of them head out of sight, and I try not to let it hurt too much that he doesn’t look back.

Chapter Twenty-One

ROWAN

It should probably worry me that I feel more adrenaline getting dumped into my system from seeing my dad’s caller ID flash up, than I do from seeing a linebacker bear down on me in front of twenty thousand people. I debate letting it go to voicemail. I could make up some reason why I can’t talk right now, but that’ll only make things worse. The longer I leave him to stew, the worse things’ll be when we do talk and eventually, Mom will get involved. I don’t want her to have to deal with that.

I answer, my stomach hollowing out in anticipation, but he's halfway through a sentence before I can get a word in. “Do you want your peewee trophy from the game in Ohio?”

“What?” I’m totally lost here.

“The one with the green base, your first MVP!” He sounds half excited, half exasperated, like he doesn’t understand why we’re not on the same page.

“From when I was seven?”

“I can bring it next time I come visit!” He says ‘next time’ as if he’s ever made a trip to Beaufort that wasn’t him driving to the stadium, watching the game, and heading straight home to text me his feedback from the couch. I’m not sure he even knows where I live.

“I don’t need it. What are you even doing with it?”

“Your mother’s having me go through the garage. She wants to put her car in here when it snows so I gotta clean out.”

“About time,” I mutter. The garage has been a shrine to football ever since I was a child. Now, almost every open spot space is taken up by something sports-related. All my old gear, my trophies, my game balls lined up beside his like he’s curating a roadside museum.

“I’ll keep this one here, but we gotta make some cuts.”

“You can get rid of whatever you need to.”

“I’m gonna switch to video.” There’s some fumbling, and then his face appears, a slight frown between his brows that I’m sure matches mine. I look too much like him to be comfortable.

He flips the camera around and I can see open boxes scattered everywhere, the debris of my childhood mixed with his truncated career. My chest tightens as I take it all in.

“What about this one?” He points to a small statuette I got at the state championship back in middle school.

“Lose it.” It was a great day; I loved every second, but I don’t need the trophy. I have all the pictures my mom took if I want to look back on them. A smile creeps out as I remember the one she got printed for the living room. My dad’s clutching my helmeted head and pulling me against his chest for a tight hug. It was the best feeling in the world, finally making him proud.

“You sure? This one’s important.”

“You can keep it if you want, but I thought we were making cuts.”

He huffs out something like agreement.

“And this?” He points to another. The cycle repeats, him pointing out relics from the past and me telling him he doesn’t need to keep them for me. With every item I’m casting out, I can see the line of his jaw getting tighter and the tension growing in his shoulders.

When he finally snaps, I’m almost relieved; at least I don’t have to wait for it anymore.

“You can’t throw all this stuff away, Ro. This is your life!”

“It’s just stuff, Dad.”

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