Page 140 of Hell Bent
Sure, we’d had great sex that night, the kind that you remember every night afterwards, when you’re trying to go to sleep alone in that too-big bed, but that had almost made it worse. The way he’d held me, the way he’d touched me, the look in his eyes—there’d been something there I couldn’t interpret. Like he was hanging on tight because he knew hewasn’t going to be hanging on for long, was how it had felt. Or maybe that was me.
Win or lose, the football season would be over after today, and I could face the consequences of my actions. What I’d told Ben was true. I could get over this relationship, if that was what I had to do. If that felt like I’d be cutting off a limb—well, living fully meant hurting fully, too, right? Something that sounded a whole lot better when you were talking about it in the abstract.
Leaving Ned had made me feel plenty guilty. This thing, though? This was next-level.
The worst part was, I couldn’t tell how Sebastian was doing. I’d talked to him every night this past week, and he’d looked wolflike and intense, like always, but he’d said so little, and I couldn’ttell.
I said nothing about all that. I said instead, “We could go running, I guess.”
“That sounds good to me,” Annabelle said.
Ben said, “What? Running in the huge crowd of people on the sidewalk, waiting at all the stoplights? We’re inVegas.You don’t go running in Vegas!”
I said, “There’s a scenic area called Red Rocks about a half-hour’s drive out of town. Supposed to be beautiful. Desert landscape, lots of trails, big rocks. Uh … red rocks. As they say.”
“We don’t have a car,” Ben said. “Does anybody else have a car?” Nobody, it appeared, did.
“So we rent a car,” I said. “Oh, wait. The Super Bowl. Well, I’m sure we could find a car somewhere.”
“What if we break down or something, though?” Ben said. “Or step on a cactus when we’re distracted by looking at the beautiful rocks? I can just see saying, “Yeah, I missed the whole Super Bowl, because I got bitten by a rattlesnake. Bummer.”
Dyma said, “Excellent point. Also, we’ll want to leave for the stadium by twelve-thirty.”
“OK,” I said. “Uh … bowling?”
“Bowling’s good,” Dyma said.
“Kind of lame,” Ben said.
“Hey,” Dyma said, “it’s Vegas. There’ll be colored lights. There’ll be music. There’ll be fattening fast food. There’ll be Annabelle to beat all of us with her natural talent, since the NFL players aren’t here. There may possibly be my mom falling down or bouncing her bowling ball.”
“Sadly true,” Jennifer said.
“Bowling!” Owen’s second-oldest nephew said. “Yay!”
“But you have to get those bumpers on one of the lanes,” the oldest nephew told his mom. “So the little kids can play.”
“There you go, Mom,” Dyma said. “Bumpers. Right up your alley. See what I did there? There’s a place that opens at nine. Let’s go.”
Any jitters that were left after our bowling session, during which Jenniferdiduse the bumper lane and everybody laughed a whole lot, possibly hysterically, we got rid of at the New York, New York casino—I’d missed that one last night, because there was a fake New York skyline here, too—on the Big Apple roller coaster. There’s nothing like a two-hundred-foot drop to drive everything but your screams out of your mind. I may have been terrified, but at least I was distracted.
Until Sebastian made that opening kickoff and my chickens came home to roost.
I have to say, watching sports is more enjoyable when you don’t care so much.
Sebastian
I’d always been that quiet guy in the locker room. It hadstarted when I was eighteen, nothing but a lump of emotion and raw talent, trying so hard not to stick out, not to screw up, that I hadn’t focused nearly enough on doing anything positive. Not much had changed in the thirteen years since, either.
Except it apparently had, because today, I wasn’t sitting on the bench, keeping to myself, focusing on my own stillness. I was talking to some of the Special Teams players instead. Casually, the way Owen had talked to me. Young, fast, immensely talented, and bouncing off the wall with nerves, they were a whole lot like my eighteen-year-old self, just primed to go out there, try too hard, and make mistakes. I wasn’t sure if I helped, but at least I tried.
I checked in last with my holder and our punter, Josh Turnbull, who was in his rookie season. Every game in this postseason had been a first for him. For me, too, but I wasn’t twenty-three. My checking entailed me sitting beside him and asking, “How you doing?”
I got a shrug for my trouble, so I said, “You’re one hell of a punter. You don’t just have a leg, you have accuracy, and so do I. Our job is to put the Niners’ defense on the back foot, and we know how to do that. I was with them for almost two years, and I can tell you for sure that we can beat them. They’ve got a good QB, a great running back, and a couple of fast guys on defense, but we’ve got just about everything. We’re solid as rock, and we’ve earned this start.”
Turnbull nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and pulled on his socks. I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “We’ve got this, man. We’ve got it.”
“Devils,” he said, the ghost of a grin on his face.
