Page 33

Chapter 33

You're Robyn to Me

Isaiah

Spring. Senior Year.

E nding my collegiate rugby career on a win should have my spirits soaring. Instead, thoughts of Robyn consume me. In one week, I’m graduating college and moving five time zones away to play in the Premier League for the London Hornets, and this may be the very last time I see her.

Everyone has been congratulating me since I found out a month ago, but it still hasn't sunk in yet that I’ll be playing professional rugby. Me. Someone wants to pay me to play the sport I live and breathe, in a land where rugby is adored as much as soccer and cricket.

How is this my life?

And how is it that the day I found out I was going to be a professional rugby player and move across an ocean, Robyn Cassidy became single? That is some Shakespearean bullshit.

She still has another year left in school, but she’s working to make the USA Valor women’s team. She’s been attending training camps wherever she can and making herself known, really making a name for herself.

There’s no way I could ask her to be mine now. It’s too late. Though both centered on rugby, our lives are going in different directions. Maybe we were only meant to be friends. Maybe the sound of her laughter will someday fade away and her smile, once a burning obsession in my mind, will be long forgotten. Maybe.

“Don’t look so glum,” she says, pushing my shoulder. Her hit catches me off guard and I fall over into a bush. “Oh no!” she giggles, and as she tries to catch me, she falls too. It’s late and we’ve left the social, like we always seem to do when we’re together, to find a quieter place to talk.

Awards were given out tonight for senior players, and the team sprang for having the social at a local bar instead of a rank house. It was as classy as college club rugby can be, which is to say, barely.

“Look, a park!” Robyn cheers, pointing behind the dimly lit parking lot of the bar. She grabs my hand and pulls me. “Let’s go!” Why we’re both running is beyond me, but I don’t question it. She lets out a harumph when she lays on the ground and I take my spot next to her.

“This is nice,” she sighs. Framed by streetlights and shadowed trees, the night sky embodies the possibilities ahead of me, but my heart aches despite it. Then there’s a small hand that finds mine, and that same strained heart sputters. “I’m going to miss you,” she whispers.

I squeeze her hand and swallow. “I’m going to miss you too, Robyn. A lot.”

Her head turns to me. “Why is it you never call me by my nickname?”

“Birdie?”

“Yeah,” she frowns. “Everyone in the rugby community does. Everyone in my family does. I don’t think you ever have.”

The moon illuminates her lovely features and I wish I could touch her the way light does, even just a second. I wish that I could keep her hand in mine forever.

I tell her the truth. “Because you were never like everyone else. You’re Birdie to them, but you’ve always been Robyn to me.”

“Oh,” is all she says. And maybe the old me would have tried to back track or add some kind of qualifier to make sure she knew I only meant it as a friend, but I don’t now. I let the meaning sink in and her realization dawns.

Together we turn our faces back to the night sky and lay there quietly, sounds of the thumping bass from the nearby bar and the occasional car passing by filling the void. She doesn’t let go of my hand.

“Zay?”

“Yeah?

“Can we make a marriage pact?”

“What?”

She turns her face back to mine and repeats herself. “Can we make a marriage pact? If we’re both single by the time we’re thirty-five… well, when I’m thirty-five and you’re thirty-six, we get married,” she smiles. “Even if we haven’t spoken in years, we find each other again and get married.”

Suddenly, my mind plays like a rugby match and the uprights of my life come into view as an enormous gap appears. Only a fool wouldn’t take this opportunity. I’m not the fastest, but I’m taking this breakaway and barreling for the try line. It’s a long run, but victory will taste so sweet.

Newfound hope rebuilds my outlook on life and I vow right then and there to stay single until Robyn Cassidy is walking down the aisle to me.

“It’s a plan, Robyn.”