Page 17

Fighting Chance

Colt

M ay emerges from her shower with her hair twisted into a towel, and w earing an oversized peach T-shirt with the Riders’ skull-and-crossed-sticks logo on the front. She undoes the towel and pats her hair dry, and the entire while, I do my best to pretend I’m just super, super focused on the reels I’m scrolling through at the half-desk situated across from the window. Dumb little things capture my attention, though, like the way her biceps flex as she reaches for the back of her head, or the way her eyebrows furrow in concentration when she pulls at a stray knot in her hair. ‘You can go ahead,’ she hums, her eyes fixated on a random spot on the wall as she intently attacks her hair with the towel. She tosses it back, and it falls so long it’s almost to her waist, even in loose curls.

‘Yep. Yeah.’ I clear my throat awkwardly. Cool it, Colt . There’s no way I’m gonna be that guy that makes this more awkward than it needs to be.

My shower is a sobering, desensitizing kind of cold. It doesn’t completely rid my brain of thinking about May, with her wet hair and her bare legs, but it does enough to keep all those thoughts at bay. I usually just sleep in shorts, but I tug on a Woodchucks shirt to keep things civil. It’s a poor decision. The shocking cold wears off the second I step out into the room, and I realize it’s going to be way too warm in here to get to sleep like this.

May looks to be having no problem. Her naturally curly hair is piled into a messy knot on top of her head, and she’s swapped her contacts for a pair of tortoise-framed glasses that would look tacky on anyone but are ridiculously cute on her. She even has a book in her hands that she seems to be deeply engrossed in – Jane Austen’s Emma . It doesn’t take me long to imagine that she’s in my apartment in New Haven, in my room, and she smiles when I walk in, puts down the book, and …

Stupid. Stupid, stupid. You missed that shot a long time ago.

‘I’m going to finish the chapter,’ she murmurs without looking up. ‘I won’t keep you up, I promise.’

A warm tingling fills my chest as I shrug, pretending to be totally and utterly indifferent, skirting the bed to hit the desk, where I pop my laptop open and busy myself checking the class pages for my masters’ courses (like I have work to do, I’m already ahead by a week).

My phone vibrates, and I spare it a quick glance that turns into a much longer glance. It’s a text from Rod Wilson, complete with an attached social media post. THIS YOU??

Oh, God. I open the link. Someone in the stands at the home game the past weekend took a video … of the whole thing. The run onto the field, everything. Oklahoma lacrosse power couple , reads the caption, closed out with orange and white heart emojis. Tens of thousands of likes, inching towards hundreds of thousands. All the comments. It’s instantly overwhelming. I knew what starting for the Woodchucks, the most notorious lacrosse team in the country, would mean for me, and I knew what captaincy would mean, too – my personal life would no longer be my personal life, my private matters becoming public business. But this is different. This time, I’m bringing May with me, as my girlfriend ; a blatant lie, and it makes my chest clench.

I want that lie to be true, man. And the fact that the whole world gets to believe it is a truth, while I have to live my life knowing it isn’t, is a cruel thing.

‘What is it?’ May asks.

‘Look.’ I turn the screen her way, and she immediately winces.

‘I get it. I took a hit …’ Her eyes travel to the caption, the likes. ‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’ With an overly aggressive shove of my phone back onto the desk, behind my laptop, I shrug. ‘People will forget about it in a couple days, though. It’s how the internet works. Go ahead and finish your chapter.’

The time she takes to finish is the longest moment of my life. I force myself to fixate on the screen of my laptop, but my gaze has a mind of its own. It wanders to May’s strong arms, to her fingers turning the pages with special care, to the wrinkle in her brow that forms as her eyes dart from word to word. I literally have to kick myself. The second this charade is over, we’re back to arm’s length, plus or minus a day’s drive, away from one another.

‘Didn’t know you had glasses’ comes out of my dumb mouth the moment I see May put her book on the bedside table.

May just raises an eyebrow. ‘Chalk that one up to all the shit you didn’t notice when it was right in front of you in high school. I used to wear them all the time.’

Well, damn you, Colt. I curse the fact that Jordan’s trivia session couldn’t have covered this very critical detail.

With a silent nod, I rise from my chair with a little stretch. ‘I think I’m gonna head to bed.’

‘Me, too,’ says May. She swallows hard enough that I notice, the first indication of some kind of nerves on her part, gesturing vaguely to the other side of the bed. ‘Wall’s sturdy. I’ll stay on my side if you stay on yours.’

‘Yep.’ I put myself down on the left side, May on the right, and let out a heavy exhale as I lean back against the pillows. ‘Night.’

‘Night,’ she echoes and flips the switch on the lamp. We’re plunged into that immediate black-out-curtain hotel darkness, and it becomes very, very obvious when there’s nothing to see that there is definitely a palpable tension between us. I can hear May’s breathing as she rolls over to face away from me, sheets crinkling around her, a slight tug on the comforter alerting me to her need for a little more warmth. I surrender it gladly, turning away on my side.

I’m on the verge of sleep faster than I’m prepared for, my eyes lulling shut, at least until I sniff to keep a sneeze at bay, and the smell of May’s peach shampoo is the first fragrance in the air. I suddenly remember something Sav told me once when we were still in Prosperity, way back when she was in middle school. ‘People like you and May Velasco can never be just friends , idiot.’

I figured I’d try to fix it when I first got to Boston. But all I felt was this deep, stifling sensation of being uprooted, of missing a limb. I needed May. I’d picked up my phone, drafted a text message, missing home – missing her – more than anything else.

May. I know I messed it up, how I left, but I can’t do this without you. I guess that’s what I was so scared to tell you. You’ve been by my side for years, on the field and off it. I don’t think I can stop now. I need you.

And then I saw the last text I’d sent her. That lame shit about ‘Been great playing with you’ and ‘Mom’s garden’. Those strawberries I left her with.

I thought about Sav’s stupid advice again. Thought about the fact that I’d left things this way, and how I’d been expecting her to just text me back like we were still totally cool. Like I hadn’t up and left without so much as a word to her. Just that text.

Instead of fighting the fear, I gave in. I had played chicken for years.

Now, in the dark, with nothing to look at, nothing to distract myself, it all rushes back to me in an enormous wave. I don’t know what gets into me, or why I let it get into me, but by the time the first fateful words are out, it’s too late.

‘Hey, May?’

She grumbles groggily into her pillow before turning to the wall between us with a muffled, ‘Hmm?’

My voice is floaty, quieter than I’ve known possible, like I’m listening to myself talk from out of body when I say, ‘I really fucked up. Fucked a ton of stuff up.’

The crackle of the slightly shitty air conditioning is perfectly clear. I don’t dare breathe for fear of the noise it’ll make. The cat’s finally out of the bag.

From May’s side, sheets rustle, and then, a barely audible hum. Is it shock? Is she shocked? I can’t completely make out the sound. Part of me hopes she doesn’t totally hear me, but I keep going.

‘I never said anything, you know. When I had the chance back then. Sometimes I wonder what things would be like if I had said something. If maybe we wouldn’t be pretending right now.

‘And I came back, and it’s just … It’s so messed up, and I feel like I keep making it messed up. I … May, I wanna make it right by you. You deserve that. You’re owed that. I’m so, so fucking sorry.’

I wait, I wait in hope that maybe she’ll say something, maybe she’ll say what I want her to say. Maybe this is my do-over, this dumpster fire of a confession in a mediocre college hotel room in Albuquerque. But all I hear is her breathing, steady, quiet, even. No words.

I tell myself she’s probably fallen asleep. She probably didn’t hear any of that stuff at the end. And if she did, she’d have been too sleepy to remember it. She might think it’s a dream. Maybe.

I roll back over to face the wall to my left.

I don’t fall asleep for another two hours.