Page 84 of Saving Barrette

Seattle, Washington

Draft Day

“Steelers, Steelers!” Joey chants, parading around the house wearing her Steelers gear. Shirt, socks, hat, all of it she’s sporting. I just hope the Steelers select Terrell in the draft or his fiancée is going to be pretty pissed off.

Our house is swarming with people. Cameras. Reporters. Family. Friends. They’re all here for the day. Draft day. The exact moment in my, and Terrell’s, football career that defines how our lives play out. I thought maybe I’d want to be in New York and see all this live, but it didn’t feel right. Being here with family, in our own environment, that felt right.

Nerves? That’s funny. They don’t even begin to describe the gamut of emotions surging through me. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.

I breathe in. I breathe out. Nothing helps. I’m left with the same nagging feeling that today will change everything.

My life now? It’s nothing like I thought it would be two years ago. Two years can change a lot about a person. It can changeeverything. I don’t even know that guy I was two years ago sitting on the beach in the Bahamas with Barrette. The one fearing what the future would hold and afraid of change. I remember wanting to stay like that forever. I didn’t want to leave that beach because everything was perfect for once.

That’s not to say it’s not perfect now, but I feared leaving, not knowing what change would happen. And our lives did change. Rather quickly. I went from being a college junior who’d just won the Heisman Trophy, engaged, to a soon-to-be dad. All within a month of leaving. Turns out the Bahamas offered a little more than we’d planned for. A baby. I was teasing when I said I’d put a baby in her but apparently I wasn’t. Nine months later, Crew Warren Lawson was born. And he’s the best fucking thing in the world. We never planned on having a kid in college, but you know, sometimes life just works out that way and you roll with it.

I’d never known the love a parent truly had until I held him in my arms. Do you want to hear something even crazier than me falling insanely in love with my son?

The day he was born, Roman was released from jail. While I had mixed feelings about it, I felt like it was a blessing I had the distraction because, in my head, I had visions of showing up at the jail and putting a bullet in his head. Now, I clearly wasn’t that irrational, but I guess you never know. I like to think my mom was watching out for me on that one. She was because instead of focusing on the past that day, Barrette and I were together, sharing the experience of bringing our son into the world. He gave us the strength to see that it didn’t matter what happened, we could push forward. Yeah, it still fucking sucked that the judge was an ignorant bastard, but the outcome remained the same. We had to find the strength to accept that because the justice system failed us—and many others—it didn’t mean that we had to stop living.

“Are you nervous?” Barrette asks, sitting next to me on the couch at my dad’s house.

Nervous? Ha. I sigh, flipping my phone around in my hand. “No, not really. Terrified is more like it.”

She laughs and rests her head on my shoulder. Crew pushes her head away. “No.”

“I thought when I had a baby, he’d love me. This one just tells me no.”

I kiss her temple. “I love you enough for the entire world.”

Livia stands in front of me, fussing over Crew in my arms, constantly offering him toys he doesn’t know what to do with. He’s thirteen months old and Livia thinks they should be playmates by now. She holds up her hands, smiling around the pacifier in her mouth she refuses to get rid of. “Why he not play with me?”

“No,” he says, clinging to the football in his hand and glaring at her. He doesn’t say anything but pushes her away with his hand. He’s not exactly the nicest kid. He’s actually kind of moody. Joey says he’s an asshole baby. Terrell thinks he’s amazing. Barrette and I, we think he’s the best baby in the world, but yes, an asshole most days. My dad likes to tease me that I was that way too, but I refuse to see it.

“He’s shy,” I tell Livia when she starts pouting, already making excuses for my kid being a dick.

She rolls her eyes and walks over to my dad where he looks probably as nervous as me. He winks at me and I give him a nod.

“Daddy?” Crew says, pointing to the television we’re sitting in front of.

My heart swells at his word. He says three words. Daddy, no and ball. Barrette’s not pleased by it. “Yeah, buddy. That’s me.”

His attention remains on the television above the fireplace. I can’t look at the TV and the predictions they’re talking about. It only makes it worse for me.

Barrette notices my distraction and reaches for Crew in my arms when he starts crying over Livia taking his football from him. I let her take him because yeah, I am nervous. My career, our future, it lies in the hands of others today. Today I’ll get the call from a GM and asked the words “How do you feel about playing for our team?”

And I’ll answer with “I feel great.”

That’s the answer my agent tells me to say, but in reality, I don’t know how I feel about playing in the NFL. It changes a lot about our lives. For the past three years, we’ve been living in Seattle together with Joey and Terrell. We graduated last year, just five months after Crew was born. Since then I played in the All-Star League and entered draft eligibility in January along with Terrell. In February, on a rare snowy day in Seattle, I married Barrette Ann Blake.

I couldn’t afford a fancy wedding, not like the one I wanted to give her. When you’re in college, it’s just not happening. Believe it or not, Barrette’s parents actually paid for the entire thing and then refused to attend when we didn’t want to serve tofu. They’re still really fucking weird and haven’t met their grandson yet, so I’ll let you be the judge of their integrity there.

Since then, Barrette’s been interning in Bellevue at a sexual assault victim’s clinic and working toward her masters in psychology. What would today mean if I ended up on the other side of the country from my son and wife? For a long time, I thought about getting a job instead of football. I had my degree, but I knew if I didn’t go for it, I’d always wonder. With Barrette’s support, that’s what’s brought us to today.

When the draft officially begins, Terrell and I are much the same—our house teeming with people and the two of us on edge. After today, our lives will be completely different and this guy who’s held me up and pushed me to be the best football player and human being, I hate that we’re more than likely playing for different teams next year. He’s pretty much a sure bet for Pittsburgh, and they’re not in the market for a quarterback this year.

“Relax, man. It’s good,” Terrell says, bobbing his head to the beat of the music playing in his earbuds, an attempt to drown out the noise in the house. “We’re solid.”

“I’m trying to.” And I am, but I’m pacing, tension rolling through me.

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