Page 4

Homecoming

Colt

I think JJ’s going to cry. I’m not sure if I’m just imagining the glassiness in his big blue eyes, but it definitely looks like he’s fighting back tears. He clamps a hand down on my shoulder and gives it a shake. ‘You could stay, y’know.’

Rod sighs, reaching over to deal JJ’s hair an affectionate ruffle. ‘I get it, Colt. But we’re still sad to see you go. You’re gonna miss that crazy street lacrosse game they make us do in March.’

‘You can’t leave!’ JJ tries again. ‘If you’re not back before pre-season, Stephen will have to come back.’

‘Stephen won’t come back,’ I assure him with a laugh. Stephen, the man in question, got kicked off the team last season, getting caught doing whippets in the janitor’s closet. He definitely won’t be coming back.

My teammates’ words bundle themselves into a big rock that settles in the pit of my stomach. The guilt of leaving my guys behind – even if it’s just for the off-season – is second to nothing I’ve felt in my life. Especially when you realize you’ve made an unserious frat boy reach the verge of tears.

Connor presses a big woodchuck plushie into my arms. ‘Take him.’ With a sombre look, he nods. ‘Remember who you are, Coltie.’

It would be just another one of Connor’s goofy childish gestures of affection (in his winding, chaotic way) if it weren’t for the fact that that sentiment cuts deeper than he intends.

‘But what if I’m not back for—’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Rod smiles his dad smile, the one that makes you feel like he’s just made you a part of the family. It’s a special talent, the mature schtick of his, considering he’s not too much older than the rest of us. ‘You’re always gonna be one of us. Don’t let JJ gaslight you. CJ and JJ will live to ride another day.’

JJ, all forlorn and dramatic, just pouts. I know I should feel bad, but his little kid expression is exceptionally entertaining.

Rod claps my shoulder. ‘ You put in the work, man. Don’t forget that.’

I feel a sudden rush of gratitude for the dude. Maybe I led the team, but Rod was always – is going to be – the backbone. If I do have to sit out another season, and Coach has to choose a new captain, I personally couldn’t think of anyone better for the job.

‘Oh captain, my captain.’ Drew strikes a salute my way. ‘Take care of that knee, alright?’

‘You know I will.’ The mention of my knee immediately laces the air with tension, at least for me. It’s not on Drew – I should be past it all by now. The surgery, the brace, the exemptions, being off the field since it happened. I should be getting ready for next season, but instead, I feel like I’m still picking up the pieces.

I needed somewhere – anywhere – to lay low and figure things out, and the first place my mind went was OKC, where the coaches know me well, and I could pick up a legitimate gig without it looking like I’m just trying to disappear.

And where, maybe, I’d see May again.

Honestly, I should probably be facing this head on, not running and hiding at home. Though it’s been so long I’m not sure that I can even call it home any more.

We huddle the same way we had at playoffs that night, one more time. It’s a quieter moment; the kind of moment we don’t have a lot of in a sport as rowdy as lacrosse. It’s the kind of moment that hammers the gravity of what I’m doing into my brain, thudding away at a stubborn, bent nail. You’re always told that when you pick up the crosse, you make a promise to the sport: never walk away. And although I’m not walking away, it still feels like I’m breaking that promise.

Arriving home, the first thing I notice about Oklahoma is how worn everyone’s boots are.

They started to become a trend during my senior year of high school in Boston, when our whole family moved there for my mom’s year-long visiting professorship. The girls would wear shiny white cowboy boots with their dresses, and guys paired Stetsons with their plaid. At that point, I’d already stopped considering myself Oklahoman. What’d it matter, I thought, that scuff-free snip-toes now made multiple appearances each year at ‘Western-out’ high school football games, carried over to the college bars, worn from frat formals to Halloween and everything in between?

I forgot how boots looked here – how, according to my dad, they were supposed to look. My eyes jump from shoe to shoe in the airport, leather that looks like you could bend it back on itself toe to sole, dull, creased, specks of dirt. The reddest of red flags that New England spoiled the hell out of me is the internal aversion that fills my body when I see worn boots. I hate the feeling immediately.

I pick up my truck, delivered in one piece, from the parking lot, and begin the drive to my family house. I pass through sprawling Oklahoma City proper first, before taking the exit off the highway to home: Prosperity, Oklahoma.

A lot of people questioned my decision when I first moved to Boston. Everyone in Boston wanted to get out of Boston, and everyone in Oklahoma wanted to get out of Oklahoma. It took me nearly blowing my knee out to realize I wasn’t totally sure which category I fitted into: I didn’t know where I wanted to be any more. All that I knew for certain was that it would be a minute before I could go back to playing pro lacrosse.

And, if I had to spend time elsewhere, Prosperity, college town to the nines, wasn’t a bad choice. This would’ve been my home school in another universe. It’s expansive, flat, with a brick sign at the orange-flower-adorned entrance proclaiming that I’ve entered the University of Oklahoma City, Organized 1864, named for the major city fifteen minutes away in classic American college fashion. The age of the school is evident in the older Gothic campus buildings I pass on my way to the residential area. Swarms of students flood out of lecture halls as classes let out, some wearing those boots that look like they’ve seen enough stables to last a lifetime.

I weave through narrow downtown streets lined with college apartments and parallel-parked sedans to find the Bradley house. It’s not quite what I’m used to back in New Haven, but it’ll do the job. It’s the kind of building I’d miss if I blinked: antiquated, brownstone, three floors, surrounded by overgrown trees, with a screened front porch. Ma’s favourite talking point about the house is that it was apparently built during Prohibition, and the basement used to be a hole-in-the-wall speakeasy. My sister’s favourite talking point about the house is that the speakeasy must have had terrible business, because said basement smells like shit. But what can I say? It has that small-downtown charm.

I park the truck in the gravelly driveway and clamber out, unloading various bags as I go.

‘That’s all you got?’

I peek up from my mass of luggage with a chuckle. ‘Hey, Pop.’

My dad, arms akimbo in the Southern stance of keen observation, cracks a smile. ‘Has to be less than half of what Sav had.’

‘How does one person own all that stuff?’ I huff as I lug a particularly large bag to the side, and my dad saunters down the drive to help me out. ‘Makes me glad I missed move-in.’

‘She wasn’t so glad.’ Pop raises an eyebrow. ‘Don’t know that any of us were. We wouldn’t have let it fly if you weren’t, what’d you call it …’

‘On the road,’ I finish for my dad as he rolls his eyes with a smile and brings me in for a huge hug. He’s where I get my height. Ma is so short that she once baked a cake for the state fair whose top she couldn’t even reach.

‘On the road,’ echoes Pop. His eyes cut towards the lacrosse sticks poking out of one of my duffels, and then to the long pieces of kinesiology tape still gripping my knee, just visible below my football shorts. I think for a moment he’s going to ask about that, the injury, the last time we saw each other, but instead, he takes a totally different route. ‘House looks just about how you remember?’

‘Oh … well, couldn’t tell you.’ I chuckle half-heartedly. I’d love to say it’s exactly how I remembered, but the memories are like strands of thread I struggle to weave together. ‘What, last time I was here was junior year, right?’

‘Junior year of high school.’ Pop smacks his lips, gazing up at the roof of the house. And here it comes . ‘Everyone else came back, Ceej, I just struggled to understand what kept you up there. Oklahoma’s perfectly nice, isn’t it?’

‘I dunno.’ I shoulder the bag with the crosses and try my best to hide the exasperated sigh that threatens to leave my body. ‘It’s nice, but you guys missed it more than I did. It was kinda obvious, to be honest. Still is.’

It was true. Going away to Boston for Ma’s visiting professorship in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Boston itself was a rough adjustment for my small-town family. They hadn’t planned on staying at all. They rented our house out to a couple of college kids for the year, full well knowing we would all be back.

Except after Ma’s year in Boston, when the family moved right back to Oklahoma and reclaimed their beloved house, I stayed behind. Somewhere in the grungy chaos that was New England, I’d found my home for the next four years at U-Boston. I stayed the summer for lacrosse camp, picked up for UB’s Division One team, and I didn’t look back. I was the only one in my family who didn’t come to hate Boston in some capacity.

Savannah, my sister, was a different story – the University of Oklahoma City was basically her dream since day one. My parents were beyond ecstatic that she’d decided to stay, and, I think, a little relieved.

Now Pop, stubborn as he is, pretends he doesn’t hear a word I say. Instead, he moves on to the next excruciating topic. ‘You know who plays for OKC now?’

I can smell it in the air before he says it. I don’t need him to say it. My cheeks threaten to go red before I can control the reaction. The fucking traitors are already warming up. ‘Where’s Ma at? Sav?’ I ask in hopes that it’ll stop him from going off on this tangent before he’s even started.

Too late. Pop answers my question in two snappy sentences before moving on to his favourite topic. ‘Ma’s in lecture. Sav’s also in lecture. Listen, Colt. Have you been watching her?’

I’ve seen every stat, every match, every highlight, every brilliant play and every not-so-brilliant play. I watched last year happen like it was a semi-truck steamrollering a car in slow motion. And she’s all I’ve been thinking about since I took my dive on the field in August. She’s all I’ve been thinking about since the idea to run home struck me. What I’ll do when I see her again, what I’ll say to her after all this time.

So yeah. No shit, I’ve been watching her.

I say, ‘I guess.’