Page 28

All Tied Up

May

‘ T here’s no way. We can’t concede. It’s the final game.’

Maddie leans forward, a fist pressed to her desk, firm punctuation after each word. We rarely do team meetings formally like this but, after the storm, we’ve had something come up that arguably required a greater deal of discussion.

Coach Dillon looks pained. ‘Maddie, I understand that. But the school—’

‘The school can think whatever they want,’ puts in Jordan with a passionate wave of her hand. ‘They’re just trying to save money. Sure, our stadium’s still a little way away from being ready to host. But look at men’s soccer. They’re not telling that team to “take it down a notch”, are they? So why us?’

We all know why.

‘Roper Rivalry is more than a game,’ I add matter-of-factly. As captain, the girls look up to me, and as much as a part of me wants to sit down and admit defeat after everything – everything my father’s family built – is now in pieces, we need to stay in this fight. ‘It’s probably our biggest battle of the year. And besides, we have a shot at the championship, I believe it. This is redemption. I don’t see us sitting here and taking the punches while the guys get to do what they like.’

Around the circle of desks, the girls nod, murmurs of agreement tossed about. ‘We’ll do whatever it takes to get there,’ Brianna promises.

‘We only have a week.’ Coach’s tone is warning, but I catch a hint of pride in her eyes. ‘Will you girls really be able to pull this together? No one’s making you hit the stadium and start repairing it yourself …’

She trails off as she looks around at the smirks on all our faces. The Roper Rivalry between Oklahoma City and San Antonio is the stuff of legends.

‘It’s time to close this season out right,’ says Jordan with a raised eyebrow. ‘According to the tables, if we beat San Antonio, one of the final two playoff spots is ours.’

She exchanges a grin with me, and I egg her on with a spirited, ‘And we certainly want that, don’t we?’

The girls whoop; slaps of desks all around. Storms can screw a lot of things up for us, but this season isn’t one of them. We’ve been there, and we’re not willing to repeat it.

Mrs Bradley sighs in exasperation when Colt holds up two more ugly ties. He looks as tired as she does. Both of them are justified. The options are hideous. They look like they came straight out of a 1990s movie, all weird shades of beige with accents in bright reds and greens, dated patterns, the works.

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I didn’t realize I’d need ties here, Ma!’ Colt defends himself.

Fortunately, I’m just a bystander. I sit by with my bowl of eight p.m. cereal and watch the entire thing go down. I got lucky with my Rivalry outfit; I keep my formal wear with my dad’s sister – Tía Juana – down in Tulsa, and she sent the pantsuit up yesterday. Colt, on the other hand, seems to have left all his ties back in New Haven, which leaves his dad’s old relics, allegedly from Mr Bradley’s time as a medical resident back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

‘May. May, come on,’ the idiot implores me. I sigh extra hard over my bowl of chocolate puffs. I’d ask how we’re keeping our parents from finding out this couple thing is a lie, but I think it’s working its charm fairly naturally. Even with all four of them under the same roof, they seem to be taking our constant bickering as a sign of affection. Which is dumb.

He takes my hands. Another fairly natural thing. The physical touch between us, something neither of us was prepared for at first, has also become strangely automatic since we talked, out on the porch. I wonder if Colt overthinks it as much as I do. ‘May. What are you wearing?’ he grills me.

‘Same thing every year,’ I tell him with a shrug. ‘Something you would know. If you had been here. Every year.’

‘She got you there!’ Mrs Bradley hoots from behind us, where she shoves all the ties into a box gleefully, never to be seen again. ‘Why don’t you ask your sister?’

‘Ohhhh, no.’ Colt looks like he’s ready to throw up. ‘Savannah would laugh at me until her face turned blue from losing oxygen.’

‘Are you scared?’ I tease him, and gosh, the little tormented wrench of his face is actually kind of satisfying. ‘Of your sister?’

‘She’s kind of … like you … about the whole “leaving home” thing.’

Serves you right! I’d like to cackle. ‘And she could get you a tie?’

‘She’s in fashion design,’ he mumbles. ‘She could make me one to match you. If she didn’t hate my guts.’

I don’t know if he thinks I think he’s low effort, or something, but quickly he says, ‘I’ll fight Sav to make sure we match, though. Because Pop’s ties …’

I snort. ‘If you show up in one of those atrocities, with respect to your poppa, we might have to kick you off the team.’

‘That bad?’

‘Worse.’ I look to Mrs Bradley for confirmation. She nods, adding a little wince for emphasis. ‘Looks like you’re gonna have to head into the hornet’s nest.’

Colt shivers. Watching a five-ten man who’s got an ego the size of a small house get all terrified of his little sister is wonderful. ‘I’ll talk to her once I’m done outside.’

‘Outside? Are you digging up my plants?’ Mrs Bradley tuts, dropping the box of ties and stalking our way. ‘Colton James Bradley. Get your hands off my begonias.’

‘My hands were never on them!’ he insists, face going pink. ‘I’m just … pulling weeds.’

‘Pulling weeds,’ announces Mrs Bradley. She looks about as unconvinced as I am. ‘Right, then.’

Colt takes his leave all awkwardly, darting out through the sliding back door like his tail’s on fire. The second he’s out of earshot, his mother and I burst out laughing at the same exact time.

‘He doesn’t know how to pull weeds for his life!’ She chortles. ‘And those ties ! My god!’

‘I wouldn’t let him out of the tunnel!’ I howl, making her laugh even harder.

‘Oh, May.’ Mrs Bradley lets out one last chuckle before smiling contentedly my way, pushing a stray piece of her greying brown hair back into her ponytail. She has a youthful face, and I can tell she’s given Colt much of it – the steely eyes, the dimples. ‘You are so good for him, though, you know? He struggled a lot last year. It’s good to see him back on his feet. Literally and figuratively.’

I swallow hard. Well. Like every conversation I have with anyone close to Colt, this seems to have taken a turn. Maybe I shouldn’t pry, but I think about how patiently he’d just sat and listened when I talked about what happened in Pontiac. The image of my photo taped to the inside of Colt’s locker comes back to my mind, clear as day. The direction our conversation had started to tentatively creep in, out of the lines I’d drawn for myself before we started this thing and into territory that more than broke fake relationship play number four: no deep life conversations. Who knows how long that photo had been on there? Since he got drafted? That meant that maybe I was wrong, and maybe he had remembered me in his stupid, no-contact way.

And maybe I’d also never reached out. I hadn’t texted or called or anything either, but I remembered him just as well. Clearly my head and my heart remembered him. Because even all these years after he left, I was still talking to him with the kind of candour I could never muster with anyone else. I had never told anyone else about how I felt after junior year, not even Jordan, not completely. Did that mean he’d been more than a friend? What the hell was he now?

In the moment, though, I snap back to reality and repeat Mrs Bradley’s words in my mind until they make sense. He struggled a lot last year. ‘Struggled?’

Mrs Bradley sighs, taking a seat on the couch in the living room. She waves me over and I oblige, sitting down beside her. ‘We were in Boston about a year when I had my visiting professorship. Up and moved everything that summer. My husband even found a position as a guest physician at the School of Medicine so he could be there with me. Colt, though, he wanted more from that place. So he applied, got in, and before we knew it, University of Boston. We could scarcely believe it. He struck it big on the UB lax team – Division One. That had done more than enough for his chances to go pro. And then, three years later, the draft came. The offer was literally instantaneous. He was the third pick. New Haven. Suddenly, our son was all over the sports channels, all over social media, an overnight phenomenon, and that was when I knew that boy had given up the Oklahoma in him to become a New Englander. Everyone else loved him so much all at once, but I was in your boat.’ She smiles sadly. ‘I just hoped he still remembered us. Home.’

‘Mrs Bradley …’ She took the words right out of my mouth, honestly. I remember feeling deceived. Lied to. I had my own problems, but Colt parading around as if this town, these people, hadn’t cultivated his talent, made my skin crawl.

‘Then the injury happened.’ She presses her hands to her knees. ‘It was a long few months. After the complications and all. As quickly as he’d wanted to be in Boston back in high school, he wanted nothing more than to come home now. I wasn’t sure what had got into him, but I knew it was more than the bad knee. Except …’ With a forlorn laugh, she shakes her head, almost guiltily. ‘I was glad . I felt awful for it, but I was glad he finally wanted to be back. Is that so wrong?’

Maybe not, I want to say. I thought I was pissed he’d come back, and yet there were moments I was, as twisted as it was, grateful he was here. Grateful he’d helped us pick up the pieces of our house after the storm. Grateful he’d taped up my wrist for me. Was I grateful that he’d looked up at the crowd and kissed me, right in front of the whole town? That, I’m still working on figuring out. I think.

‘When he left the way he did,’ I finally say, ‘I wanted him to come back for a couple weeks afterward. I oscillated between this weird sense of longing and this red-hot anger. And then I accepted it. That was the way it would be. So when he did come back, I didn’t expect to feel … the same way as you, I guess.’

Sure. This relationship is founded on a lie. I’m not really Colt’s girlfriend. I’ve played nice as well as I could. But as Mrs Bradley and I sit side by side and just talk about how much we miss Colt Bradley, the real Colt Bradley, I don’t need to tell any lies.