“It is,” Kimberly says, matching my frustration. “It fucking is. You had so many dreams, and you were going to get them.”
Her words catch me off guard, hitting their mark. I wince as a phantom pain radiates unexpectedly across my shoulder. I see the hulking lineman barreling right at me. The number 9 on his jersey as his hands wrap around my throwing arm, flinging me to the ground. Then… the sickening crunch of my bones and the tearing apart of my ligaments as his body slams into mine. Game-winning throws and college scholarships and a blue-and-yellow jersey with my name on the back. All of those things right at my fingertips. Gone with one play.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly, like she’s seeing it too. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to have it all disappear, to have the scouts stop coming, the scholarships dry up—”
I clench my jaw and focus on the rain. Is she trying to hurt me more? “Why are we talking about this? It has nothing to do with you and me—”
“Kyle. Stop. Listen.” Her voice is firm and instantly silences me. “I loved you.”
My insides turn to solid ice. Loved. Past tense.
Fuck.
“But when you couldn’t play ball anymore, you changed. You became… I don’t know,” she says, searching for the word. “Scared. You were scared to take chances, scared to try anything else. And I became your enabler. Your crutch. You always had to have me there.”
She has to be kidding me.
That’s what she thinks of me? Seriously? That I’m scared and pathetic? That I can’t do anything on my own?
Has she been with me all these months out of pity?
“I’m sorry you felt so burdened by me,” I say, forcing myself to look back over at her as my hand instinctively reaches for my shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to miss a few parties. I’m sorry Janna and Carly went to the Bahamas while you felt obligated to sit by my bed and feed me soup because I couldn’t lift my arm. But that’s not on me. You could have walked away at any time—”
“Could I? Would you have let me?” she asks me, shaking her head. “Seeing each other every day at school, same classes, same routines, but not together? Every time we broke up, we never even made it a day.” Would I have let her? What does that mean? We always got back together because we wanted to. Now… she’s saying this?
“So, what? You just… pretended?”
“I didn’t pretend. I just hung in there because I…”
Her voice trails off, but I already know exactly what she was going to say.
“Because you knew we wouldn’t be going to the same college,” I say, feeling like I’m going to be sick. “You’d be rid of me.”
“No,” she says, closing her eyes as she fights to get the words out. “I’m not trying to be rid of you. But—I do want to know what it’s like to turn around and not see you there.” Her voice cracks, but her spine straightens. She means this. She really means it. Her eyes hold mine, steady and sure. “I want to be me, just me, without you.”
The words throw me off-balance, but I hold her gaze. We stare at each other, the rain still falling in sheets against the roof of my car. How long has she felt this way? How long has she not loved me?
“Kyle, come on,” she continues, her voice soft. “Think about it. Don’t you want to know who you are without me?”
I stare out at the headlights flickering in the storm. Without her?
We’re Kimberly and Kyle. She’s part of me, so I can’t be me without her.
Her hand slides into mine, and her fingers gently tug against my skin as she tries to get me to look at her.
I can’t bring myself to do it, though. I look at the steering wheel and the windshield wipers and the rearview mirror, before my eyes finally focus on the tiny disco ball.
I feel it in my bones that this is my last chance to make her see. To show her that my future wasn’t just about football.
It was about us.
“I know who I am with you, Kim,” I say as I reach into my jacket. I have to show her the charms, everything we have. The empty links will remind her of what is to come. “Before you make up your mind, please, just think about everything we’ve—”
The disco ball lights up, the tiny mirrors shooting photons of light around the car.
Then, impact.
My body is thrown forward. I feel the burn of my seat belt as it clenches around my chest, so tight it pushes the air right out of my lungs.
Everything registers slowly but in unison.
The car spinning.
The blare of a truck horn.
Headlights showering light across the windshield as we careen into an oncoming truck, a solid wall of metal that races toward us.
Time stops just long enough for me to look at Kimberly, her cheeks dotted with little freckles of refracted light, her eyes wide with horror. She opens her mouth to scream, but all I hear is twisting, shrieking metal.
Then darkness.
2
It hurts to breathe.
Everything is bright and out of focus, voices and faces coming in bursts of color and sound. I want to close my eyes, to sleep. But I’m in some sort of constant motion.
“Severe head trauma.”
“Depressed cranial fracture.”
White ceiling tiles blur. Machines beep. Gloved hands touch me.
“Kyle? Kyle. Look at me.”
I zero in on the voice and see it’s coming from a woman. Her red hair is tied into a rushed, messy ponytail, strands falling around a pair of intent blue eyes that quickly come into focus.
“Good. That’s good. I’m Dr. Benefield. I’m a neurosurgeon,” her mouth says, and I focus on the movement of her lips to try to grasp on to what she’s talking about. “I’m going to take care of you, okay?”
There’s a halo of light around her head, blazing, the red of her hair on fire. I stare at it as another voice calls out.
“Fractured femur and intrascapular lacerations…”
“Talks a lot, doesn’t he?” she says, giving me a quick, confident wink.