Every once in a while, we take a break from playingMadden, and instead, choose any first player shooting game—and I’m notoriously bad at them.
“I’m just…better than you. Let me take a minute to soak that in.”
I try to find where Lex is at in this stupid game, but I’ve got nothing. I shoot some other guys and then throw a grenade for good measure.
“Heard anything about the combine yet?”
I sigh into my mic. “Not yet.”
“You know,” Lex says, “you can do whatever you want after school. You don’t have to be a big-time NFL player. Dreams change. We change.”
I see a glimmer of his guy with the night vision and take off after him. “Honestly,” I admit, maybe because I’m sidetracked with the game, “I’m not sure what I want anymore. It’s different playing ball without you guys. It’s been a weird season for me.”
“Well, your stats are still solid.”
“Yeah, it’s not that. I haven’t lost the fire for the game, but maybe the love for it. Or maybe I have to figure out how to love it without you guys around. God, don’t tell anyone how soft I’m being right now.”
Lex chuckles. “You were always softer than you let on. Plus, you’re talking to the most sensitive one out of all of us.”
He’s got a point there, which is probably why it’s so easy for me to open up to him.
“What was the transition from football to normal life like?”
“Weird,” he states matter-of-factly. “But in a way, I still get the same high like I did being out on the field. Now I just want the win for someone else.”
Coaching isn’t for me like it is for Lex. He took to it shortly after Coach T put us in charge of the powderpuff team. Then he wanted to get more and more involved until Coach was having him sit in on staff-only meetings.
When he and Kennedy broke up, I thought he might lose desire, but he didn’t. He just took it somewhere else.
“I wish I knew what I wanted. I think it’s bullshit they expect us to make life-altering decisions while we’re so young.”
Lex laughs, and then I hear the telltale whistle of a grenade right before the fake surroundings in front of me explode. “The only time when claiming youth is helpful.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve left with you guys.”
“You wanted a shot,” Lex recalls. “Do you still want that?”
I picture myself at the end of last season. Dejected. Lost. Watching Reid at the combine, and then again at the draft, seeing him get everything we ever wanted.
My guy manifests, and in the quiet, a knock sounds on my door. “One sec,” I tell Lex before checking the peephole. A small figure in a hood stands outside. I catch her profile, the cute, upturned nose, the resting bitch face. Yep, that’s my girl.
She’s here.
I stride to the bed and pick up the mic. “Gotta go, Lex. See ya.” I quit the game as the knock sounds again and toss the clothes on the floor into the closet before walking toward the door again.
After opening it, I lean against the jamb. Charley stands there in an oversized hoodie, the hood pulled close around her face.
I tug her hood off. “I really am your dirty little secret, aren’t I?”
Immediately, she runs her hand over her hair, trying to tame the flyaways. “I was cold. It’s chilly out.”
“If you’d asked, I would’ve picked you up.”
“I’m perfectly capable of walking to campus by myself. I do it every day.”
The corner of my mouth pulls up. “So, what’s up, Charley? It’s late…”
She lifts her brows. “Do you want me to go?”