Page 3 of Offsides
Dani puts on her coat and gives me a wan smile over her shoulder as I grab my jacket before we head for the door. We walk in silence, Dani following my unspoken directions to where I parked. Good thing I only paid for an hour at the meter. I open the car door for her, and she gives me a funny look before shrugging and climbing into her seat.
I guess it is kind of a funny thing to do, something you do for a date or your girlfriend, and Dani is neither of those things. She’s just a friend.
Always just a friend.
I always thought it was douchey when guys would bitch about being friendzoned. I still do, really. But I also kinda get it, because I’ve been in the friend zone with Dani from day one. I don’t know if she’s ever even thought of me as more than just a friend. Like late at night when she’s lying awake and can’t sleep, just thought briefly about what it might be like if we got together? Or when she’s maybe had just a tad too much to drink? Not that she drinks often or very much when she does. She’s strict about her calorie intake and alcohol is just empty calories. Plus, it can interfere with your workouts. But every once in a while, she’ll loosen up and have a drink.
“How much did you drink tonight?” I ask quietly once I’m in the car. She rolls her eyes like I’m ridiculous for asking, and I can’t help laughing. “What?” I protest as I turn on the car and hit the buttons for the seat warmers. “Look at you! You’re all dressed up like I’ve never seen before. Did you let Autumn curl your hair on top of the clothes and makeup? And then I find you belting out a breakup song at karaoke night.” I shake my head in mock dismay. “Who evenareyou right now? The only possible answer is that Autumn forced a bunch of liquor down your throat.”
Dani cracks up. She doubles over laughing, wiping her eyes again when she sits up, though tears of mirth this time at least. “Thanks, Eli. I needed that.”
A small smile curves my lips as I pull into the street and start heading to my place. I may not be everything for her, but at least I can be this.
CHAPTER TWO
Dani
My emotions bubble just beneath the surface. I’m doing my best to keep them under control, but something about the karaoke seems to have rubbed me raw, scraped down my outer layers so that the surface is far too easy to break through.
I’d picked “So What” by P!nk, because the song was supposed to make me feel powerful. Strong. Like I’m not actually devastated by the way Luke broke my heart.
And it’s ridiculous. On some level, I realize that. We’d broken up, like we always do, and he got together with someone else.
It’s just that while we’ve broken up multiple times before, he always got back together withme.
We only ever broke up because while he left Bradford, Montana to go to the University of Michigan, I came to Washington to attend Marycliff University. He always said maintaining a long-distance relationship was just too difficult. Eventually, anyway.
We’d get back together when we were both home from school. He’d promise me we’d stay together each time. And within a couple of weeks he’d call and ask to take a break again.
I always assumed it was because he wanted to get laid. And I can’t really blame him. Sometimes I wanted that too, so it’s not like I was a nun while we were on a break either. But those were always no strings hookups. I was never looking for another relationship or really even open to the possibility. And I definitely never brought a guy home with me for Christmas and paraded him around town right under his nose.
Maybe I should.
I glance at Eli out of the corner of my eye, his profile lit by the blue glow of the dashboard lights. I could ask him to pretend to be my boyfriend. To come home with me on the next break. Maybe spring break? That’s a whole week. And over two months to figure out a game plan before then.
I could bring him home and show him off to everyone, especially Luke. Let him know that I’ve moved on too. And with a Division I football player, no less, who’s been tapped to be one of the captains next year. Much more impressive than a weightlifter with a tendency to choke at the most important parts of the competition. Sure, his team is one of the best collegiate weightlifting teams in the country. Doesn’t mean he’s anchoring it, though.
And Eli has always encouraged my lifting. Luke liked to play the superiority card, talking about how he’d go to the Olympics one day, and since I wasonlyinto powerlifting, I’d never be able to do that. And I was never serious enough about it for his liking.
Just enjoying myself and competing because my dad pushed me to and I couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse not to was never good enough for him. Because if you’re going to do something, you have to be the best and to be the best you have to compete and blah blah blah.
Honestly, he was a lot like my dad that way. My dad pushing me to compete is the only reason I ever did it. It’s not like it was a school sport or anything. I first started lifting because my dad suggested I sign up for strength training for a PE credit and hinted he’d be really proud of me for doing it. And since making my dad proud was one of my main goals growing up, I did it immediately. Once I finished the semester of strength training at school, he signed us up at the local gym and hired me a coach. Dad thought it would be a fun “bonding” activity for us. We could train together and travel together to competitions and all that.
While I loved getting my dad’s attention, I hated the competition part.
I like picking up heavy things and putting them down again. I like watching the amount of weight on the bar increase. And I like the feeling of power I get from knowing I’m strong enough to do pretty much anything. But I hated the strict dieting and the process of making weight for each competition. And I hated how pushy and mean Dad got, especially as time went on, no matter how hard I tried to make him happy.
And here I am realizing that so many of my choices have been more about making my dad happy than anything else.
Hewanted me to sign up for strength training.Hewanted me to compete when I expressed an interest in powerlifting, even though I wasn’t really that excited about the competition.
Luke was similar in a lot of ways, now that I think about it. The content of his complaints and nudges were different though. According to him, powerlifting was the inferior strength sport because it lacked the prestige of competing at the Olympics. Which, considering I’ve never actually cared about competing, didn’t really hold much weight with me. But that never stopped Luke from making comments comparing and contrasting powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting at every opportunity, debating bar placement on back squats with me whether I wanted to engage or not.
But with both Luke and my dad, it’s always this sideways kind of bullying, where if you call them out on it directly, they act affronted and offended and injured because they were just making observations and statements of fact. And while maybe from someone else that would be true, from them it’s always done with the intention of getting me to do what they want.
And to be honest, it works often enough that it keeps them doing it.
Well, not anymore. At least not with Luke. And since I’m several hours away from my dad, that reduces his ability to interfere with my life too.
