Page 1 of Only Between Us

Chapter1Brooks

“I ever tell you how much I hate you?”

With a sinister-as-hell smile curling the corners of his mouth, Parker drops the five-pound plate he’d been in the process of adding to my squat.

He picks up a ten and feeds it onto the bar instead. Adds one more to the other end while I stand here like a chump, unable to do a thing about it because the bar’s already loaded with another too-many-fucking-pounds across my shoulders.

“Despise.” I grind my teeth as he assumes his position behind me, arms outstretched to spot me. “Have I ever told you how much I despise you?”

“Multiple times a day.” My best friend seems to pride himself on it. He smirks real hard at my reflection in the wall of mirrors in front of us. “Squat the damn bar, Brooks. We’ve got to be out on the field for drills in thirty.”

From an alternate universe somewhere out there, a very different Brooks Attwood shakes his head at my sweaty form in abject disgust.

Look at you. You call yourself a big-shot NFL starting wide receiver?

I do not, in fact, call myself that. Nor has anyone else since a miserable spring day, two years ago.

Alternate Brooks, who’s currently nine years into his pro football career, could squat this bar no problem. He’d scored three touchdowns in the second half of his last Super Bowl game to bring his team as close as they’d come to a championship in over two decades.

Unlike me, that Brooks didn’t leave that game limp and unconscious on a stretcher, six minutes and eleven seconds after his last touchdown. He didn’t spend months recovering from a crippling concussion, thinking he’d never make it out of a dark room again let alone survive another tackle from men twice his width. And he didn’t retire from the league while at the very top of his game.

The lucky bastard’s probably sitting pretty on some beach during his off season. Maybe with a wife and a kid on the way.

He’s certainly not here.

In the gym at the University of Oakwood Bay, deserted but for me and Parker as the school year winds down.

“Two more reps and then thirty seconds of rest.” In the mirror, I find Parker frowning at my form. He taps my left thigh as I lower into a squat, and I adjust the bend in my knee.

I lucked out, having two physical therapists-slash-trainers for best friends. Parker and our friend Summer have been whipping my body into athletic submission since January, when I quit my only season as wide receiver coach for the UOB Huskies football team to focus on an unlikely comeback to the NFL. They’ve been helping me build enough endurance to sprint the length of a football field as fast as I did when I played, without vomiting violently on the sideline. Reminding my feet what it’s like to twinkle-toe through a course of intricately laid orange cones without wiping out and breaking my neck. And building enough strength not to crumble under the weight of the godforsaken bar currently perched on my back.

It’s a long shot, no doubt about it. A player pushing thirty,attempting to come back to the league as a free agent, after a bad concussion and two-year retirement? It’s unheard of.

Laughable, depending on which sports pundit you ask. Since the day my agent leaked the news that I’ve been working on a comeback, you’d be hard-pressed to find a media outlet that hasn’t run at least one segment a day about it. Either talking up my audacity or mocking my delusion. And all of them chalking it up to my being yet another athlete who can’t bear to let the game go. To see the end of his glory days.

I’ll take those assumptions any day, if it means they never catch wind of the humiliating truth: that my obsession with this comeback is fueled by neither audacity nor delusion, but by the cold sweats waking me up in the middle of the night. The tossing and turning until I give up on sleep and drag my ass out of the house for a long, exhausting run, bringing along my poor German shepherd simply for the sake of his company.

I squat the final two reps, sweat absolutely pouring down my temples, and rack the bar. Parker hands me the towel I’d slung on the black workout bench in front of us.

“Your knee keeps turning inward on the descent. Does it feel tight?”

I run the towel over my face. “It’s been locking up on and off since yesterday’s drills.”

Parker swears under his breath. “You’re supposed to tell me these things. How do you expect me to help when you’re out here pretending everything’s fine?”

“Everythingisfine. That knee just squatted my body weight on a bar.”

Parker’s eyes close. He sucks in a long breath as though willing away all his problems in life. Which, I suspect, mainly consist of me at the moment.

He points at the workout bench. “Sit down.”

“The knee’s fine. Let’s keep going.”

“Sit the fuck down, Brooks.”

I sigh like he’smybiggest problem and drop onto the bench, leg extended. Parker crouches and gets to work digging his thumbs into the muscles around the joint. I think making it hurt on purpose, just to prove a point.

The doors at the opposite end of the facility bounce open, smashing into the walls, and we look around to find Summer striding into the otherwise empty space. She’s been in the adjoining athletic rehabilitation center with a client all morning, and I wonder whether the session went to shit, considering the look of murder on her face.