I’m a fucking disaster.
I haul myself up off the couch to answer the door. My body feels like it weighs a million pounds, and the only thing propelling me to the door is the thought that maybe it’s Julie on the other side. I throw open the door, ready to wrap myself around her and beg her to never leave again, a fucked-up thought since I was the one who asked her to leave in the first place, but I can’t be logical right now.
But it’s not her.
“We heard you’re wallowing.”
Jeremy strolls into my house, followed by Ben and Jordan, each of them holding a six-pack of beer and what looks like a take-out bag, and they head straight back to the kitchen. I follow them, wondering for a second how they knew to come here and then it hits me.Julie. She somehow knew I didn’t actually want to be alone, so she made sure I wasn’t. My love for her cuts through the misery like a knife.
“She sent you, didn’t she?”
Ben sets his beer and bag on the counter and hugs me. An actual two-armed hug that immediately lowers my blood pressure and has me taking what feels like my first deep breath since I left the stadium earlier today.
“She did. Well, she actually called him.” He gestures to Jeremy, who is busy unpacking what looks like a hundred different take-out containers. “She thought maybe it would help to talk to someone who knows what it’s like to leave the game because of an injury. He called us because he thought you could use some extra friends.”
“And we brought food because I’m assuming you haven’t eaten all day,” Jordan says, while opening all my cabinetslooking for plates. “We didn’t know what you would want so we brought everything. There’s Chinese, burgers, and Mexican. There’s beer too, obviously, but you’re not allowed to drink until you eat. I deal with enough puke in my day job. I don’t want to deal with yours.”
I stand there, a little bewildered at the three men making themselves at home in my kitchen. I’m an extrovert. I love people. But aside from the times my family has been in town, I think this is the most people who have ever been in my house at one time since I moved in nine years ago. That, combined with my current angsty state, has me frozen in place, not sure what to do.
“Come sit with me.” Jeremy’s voice is gentle, and he presses a bottle of water into my hand before pushing me towards the same sunroom couch I’ve made my home on today. I sit down and take a long sip of the water, realizing that it’s the first thing I’ve had to drink all day. I’m a mess.
“I won’t even ask if you want to talk about it because of course you don’t, but you’re going to, okay?”
“How do you know I don’t want to talk about it?”
“Do you?”
“Well, no, not exactly.” I sigh, coherent enough to know that what I want and what’s best for me probably aren’t the same thing. “But I think talking about it will help.”
“It will, even if it feels like you’re slicing yourself open and pulling your guts out.”
I give Jeremy a deadpan look. “Thank you so much for that delightful visual.”
He shrugs, taking a sip of the beer he brought in with him. “I’ve been where you are. I know how it feels.” His delivery is matter of fact, but I can hear the emotion trembling beneath his words. It should probably depress me that he is more than a decadeout from his abrupt retirement and is still emotional about it, but for some weird reason it makes me feel better. Like the careers we loved mattered enough to still be mourning their loss in some way.
“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what happens next. I left the stadium before I could talk to anyone, and I haven’t answered my phone.”
“It’s February. You don’t need to know what happens next yet.”
“I kind of do though. If I can’t play, they’re going to need a quarterback, and that will change their draft considerations. And the combine is coming up, so if they need a quarterback that’s going to change who they’re watching, and I should tell them so they can plan what to do. If I have to leave, I want to leave the team in the best place I can and to do that I have to know what to do so I can tell them so they can decide what to do and…” I break off, my chest heaving and my heart pounding as I try to take in air after spilling out all those words in one giant rush.
Jeremy puts a hand on my back and waits for me to catch my breath. I scrub over my face with shaking hands.
“I’m a mess, Jeremy,” I admit. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Right now, what you should do is eat.” Jordan walks into the sunroom and puts a plate down in front of me. Ben follows with an armload of beers, which he hands out to everyone except for me.
“Eat,” he orders. “Then you can drink.”
I look down at the plate Jordan delivered and laugh for the first time all day. “Why tacos and french fries?”
“Chinese food and even burgers can be eaten cold,” Jordan explains. “But tortillas get soggy and french fries are terrible cold and even worse when you reheat them, so we’re starting with those.”
“Don’t argue with him,” Ben advises. “Jordan takes food very seriously.”
“Listen asshole, I’m saving you from having to decide between cold fries and reheated fries, and both of those are gross fries.”
While they bicker, I pick up a taco and take a bite because it turns out I’m starving. I chew, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to eat a taco again without thinking of Julie and eating tacos with her in every city between Pittsburgh and Boulder, and her hysterical laughter when I took her to see the sixteen foot taco in Casey, Illinois. While I think about her, something hits the side of my face and falls to the floor.
