Page 17 of Presley's Christmas Catch
I wouldn’t have picked up the phone for anyone after that loss, not even my mom or Tim. But something about talking to Presley appealed to me. Knowing she’ll tell me silly jokes and then be serious with her comfort and then tell me another silly joke to lighten the mood makes her the perfect person to talk to right now. So when the phone rings with a Facetime call as I take a LetsRide over to Lincoln’s for Thanksgiving dinner, and it’s Presley’s face on the caller ID, I press the green button.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” she says as soon as I pick up. She’s grinning, but the hesitancy in her eyes proves she didn’t think I was going to answer. I smile at the thought of her taking a chance.
“If you’re here to tell me that you finished book ten this afternoon, our friendship is over,” I tease.
Her shoulders jump with a quick laugh. “Maybe if I hadn’t been at a football game, doing my job.”
I grimace and think about the hit the Rays quarterback took early in the fourth. They were winning by three touchdowns by that point, so he didn’t come back in. Didn’t stop speculation that he was seriously hurt.
She waves her hand, confirming my theory. “He’s totally fine. Just being cautious. He’ll have a nasty bruise on his thigh tomorrow, but no worse for wear.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Wait,” she says, leaning closer to the phone, her big brown eyes filling up the screen. “What are you wearing?”
Honestly, what I’m wearing is my best effort at cheerfulness today. I brought it to LA knowing we were probably going to lose to the Rays and I’d be eating dinner with a bunch of Rays players. I don’t want their pity; I want to enjoy their company. So I’m showing up in a funny Christmas sweater with a picture of Rudolph in a football helmet, his antlers sticking inexplicably out of holes in the side.
I pull my phone away so she can get a good look, and she beams at me. “That’s so good. Are there lights on his antlers?” she asks, leaning in again. “Like real lights?”
I press a button on the bottom of the shirt and they blink.
“Seriously. That’s so awesome. I don’t think I could top that.”
“Just a second,” I say to her as the LetsRide pulls up in front of Layla and Lincoln’s house. I pay my driver and walk up the sidewalk, hovering midway so I can talk to Presley before going in.
She takes a deep breath. “Hey. Howareyou?” she asks, her tone softer now that she knows I’m alone. My sweater is forgotten in her concern for me.
I clench my jaw. “Feeling dumb.” I knew she’d ask something like this. I knew I’d want to tell her, that I’d feel safe telling her. I think it’s so easy to confide in her partly because of the distance between us and partly because our friendship revolves around a book series seventy-five percent of the time. Every confidence is safe.
“You were right.”
“I shouldn’t have said it out loud. Especially not in the press room.” I run a hand through my hair and then pace a few steps back down the sidewalk. There’s going to be a call from someonesoon. The coach, the GM, my agent. I can feel it. Everything is tight in my chest. I haven’t let my mouth run like that for years. I’ve kept my emotions under a lid, only ranting to people I trust, like Mom, Tim, and now Presley. And I can’t say what it was about this game in particular that made me snap. Maybe it was nothing about this game. Maybe it’s the fact that we’ve only won two games out of eleven so far this season, and no one seems to want to fix whatcanbe fixed. So Thompson’s throwing interceptions? He gets about three seconds, max, on passing plays to make something happen. He’s as desperate as me. I’m doing my best to protect him, but I can’t say the same for the rest of the line. And our receivers? Our all-star, Harris, acts like if Thompson doesn’t throw him a dime on every pass, that if he has to step one toe out of his route, Thompson is the whole problem.
“Nobody’s perfect,” Presley says.
“Especially not me.”
“‘Falling into darkness does not define you. It’s rising back up. Every scar tells a story, not of weakness, but of your strength to rise again.’”
Emotion catches in my throat. I swallow it down and force lightness to my reaction. “Do you have a TOK quote for every situation?”
She laughs, sounding forced. “There are fifteen books. Bound to be something that applies to pretty much everything. And…” She presses her lips together and holds up a small, hardbound notebook with a floral scene on the front. “It turns out my aunt liked TOK more than I realized. I think she read all of them, and she wrote down the quotes she liked in this notebook. I found it a few weeks ago.” She clears her throat. “The box she left me?” she reminds me. We talked about it in our first phone conversation.
“This was in there the whole time. I thought it was going to be motivational quotes or something—well, I mean they are. Ididn’t realize they were going to be from TOK. Like they were just for me.” Her voice is watery by the time she finishes. She shrugs, like this isn’t a big deal.
“Or for me.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her, trying to lighten the mood.
“But really, Brock. You expressed frustration that everyone on the team was feeling. Did you see Thompson next to you? He nodded when you said that part about how nothing is going to change in Denver until the all-stars start acting like it.” Her expression is eager, wanting me to believe her that everything will be all right.
And something in my chest does loosen at the fact that she watched the press conference, that she noted how Thompson reacted so she could report some solidarity from the team for me. Pretty soon everyone will have seen the clip—another blow up from Brock Hunter? Guaranteed social media clicks. Especially since it’s been a while.
“Thanks, Pres.”
She holds up a paperback. “Also, I’m within fifty pages of finishing ten, sucker. Gonna happen tonight before my pie coma takes over.”
I snort, and my shoulders fall down, tension draining. It’s not a surprise that Presley can do this. Her quirky cheerfulness, the way she teases me without shame—she’s been what I need during another tough season. “Enjoy this victory. It won’t last.”
She raises her eyebrows. “I can keep my book with me at the facility, reading between patients. Until I see a picture of you at practice with a book to read in between plays, I’m not worried.”
