Page 105 of Best Year Ever
After a couple of days, using all of my compartmentalization skills, I force myself to function again. Also, it’s Wednesday, which means it’s time to get back to the team facility. Time to do my job.
And with the couple of days off, as much hurt as I am navigating about Rori, Idofeel renewed energy this morning for theupcoming season. Our next preseason game is Saturday, and it’s go-time.
My sadness over Rori forcibly pushed aside, I make my way into the facility. The guys milling around look at me and give warm greetings. The excitement and hype for the new season is palpable, spelled out on their faces.
When I bump into Johnson later in between obligations, he checks on me, and I try to stay stoic about it all.
“You okay?” he says to me quietly when we finally manage to catch each other alone.
“Hanging on,” I say, holding up my hands. “What can I even do? She made her choice. And I need to show up for the guys.”
He nods and puts his hand on my shoulder briefly. “I’m here if you want to talk.”
I appreciate his gesture, but I don’t have the capacity to open up about Rori while at work yet. So I steer us back to football topics, like I’m hoping will happen inside my mind too.
Helpfully, the days of preparation fly by.
On Friday, we travel to Atlanta for the preseason game as a team on a mission.
While the starters didn’t play in the initial preseason game, we do for the second game, so it’s my first time helping to guide the defensive formations on the field. If it didn’t feel so right, I would be nervous, but I love it. Every moment from pee wee football to Alabama led me to this exact point in my career.
After the first defensive sequence, the starters are pulled, and we watch as the rest of the guys take care of business, winning 37-18. Preseason games don’t mean anything, but they can absolutely impact morale. The win consolidates the optimism many of us are feeling.
“This is our year,” Johnson says loudly in the locker room to everyone after our head coach gives a congratulatory speech. “One-Two-Three…”
“WAVES,” we all say in unison before gathering our gear and heading back to the bus, which will deliver us to our plane.
Sitting on the plane as we head back to Florida, I suddenly have a flash of longing to text Rori and tell her about the game. I stare at her name in my phone, with the empty feeling from our lack of contact rearing up again. My reply “OK” from ten days ago is the last thing in our text chain.
I shake my head and swipe away from her name.
We have one last preseason game left on the schedule before the real games start after Labor Day. I play only a quarter in the third game, but it’s enough to feel confident about where I stand in my prep. In the meantime, everything is clicking for the team, as we win 30-6.
I typically have Tuesdays off once games start, the usual schedule for pro football. I spend this one doing housework and errands that will be impossible to accomplish once the real season begins. The guys make fun of me for doing my own shopping, but I started doing it in my teens when our family fell apart and our parents would forget the basics. I find it cathartic now.
After I get home, I take Grover down to our community park and throw a stick for him until he is completely spent. In the August Florida sun, the heat doesn’t give, so we both meander home and drink a bunch of water.
“Good boy,” I say to Grover as he laps up the water in his bowl.
I’ve been a ‘good boy,’ too, arguably boring. My heart’s still slowly coming back together, the key word being slowly. So I’ve just been heading home to keep mending when not on football duties.
True to her words, Grace doesn’t let me ever feel alone, eating dinner with me almost every night I’m not on the road.
“How was practice?” she typically asks as I come through the door. Food made, her textbooks out on the couch, where she usually works while waiting for my arrival.
Today, since I’m already home for my day off, I make dinner, but she still pops over to join me. She also finally ventures into more sensitive questions.
“It’s been a couple of weeks, so don’t hate me for asking. How are you doing with everything about Rori?”
I sit back in my chair. Yeah, I can talk about this now with Grace.
“I think I need more time to release the hope that she may still be in my life. You know? I still haven’t wrapped my head around it. That it’s over. That I can’t talk to her.”
Grace puts her hand over mine. “It’s a lot to process. The first woman who really meant something to you. Give yourself time.”
“I don’t even know if I’m angry, which seems weird. Just hurt. Hurt that she wouldn’t try to find a way to make it work,” I explain.
“Sure,” Grace says, otherwise staying quiet, probably to give me the space to keep talking.
