“It was good,” I admit. “Just not good enough to wash down the very bitter pill I was still trying to swallow.”
The pill of leaving a world-class club that had been home to the height of my career. Leaving behind a town that had become familiar, an adoring—well, in times gone by, adoring—fan base, supposed friends, a lover, a whole life.
Oliver glances my way, then back to the road. “Was that just a genuine—albeit highly metaphorical—sentiment out of your mouth, Mr. Hayes? Did you just communicate your…feelings?”
I point with my breve cup at the speakers and tell him, “It’s Leslie Odom Jr.’s fault,” before taking a sip of my drink. “Show me someone who can listen to Aaron Burr reflecting on indiscriminate suffering, the inevitability of death, the point of existence, and not even inadvertently say something genuine.”
He cracks a smile.
I sip my coffee, watching him when I shouldn’t. Just like last time, watching sunlight paint his face, burnishing his beard, the tips of his lashes, flashing off his wide grin. “Bergman.”
“Hmm?”
“Tell me what The fucking Double G stands for.”
“Oh, that. The Gorgeous Grump,” he says breezily.
I nearly spit out my drink.
His smile widens. “As Bhavna says, just like you, the Gorgeous Grump is rich, dark, and bittersweet. Classic breve, half-and-half with espresso, and a splash of dark-chocolate syrup added.”
My stomach somersaults. “You’re fucking with me.”
“I most certainly am not,” he says, eyes on the road. “And don’t get any ideas. I didn’t come up with that drink, Bhavna did.”
Oliver might think I didn’t notice, but I did. He said Bhavna came up with the drink but not who decided on its name. I don’t indulge myself in wondering, hoping he’s responsible for that.
Instead, I indulge in my breve. In its warmth. Its rich semi-sweetness. Like most things in life—a small, fleeting pleasure.
After our drive to the facility, my visit with our physical trainers is not encouraging. They know what not to say, because I’ve told them I already know what they’d tell me. They still say it, though, with worried expressions and careful hands.
I’m playing on borrowed time.
I don’t need them or the specialists I see to tell me. I feel it. I feel the consequences of pushing my body brutally for over half of my life. And I know that every time I lace up and go back on the pitch, I’m tempting fate, that I’m one wrong turn or fifty-fifty ball away from it all being over.
I just refuse to think on that. I refuse to accept that the end of what has been the only good thing in my life draws closer.
Every athlete I know has struggled with the end of their careers. It’s only natural. We live and breathe the sport, perfect our bodies for it, devote our time, our healthiest, most energetic years, the so-called “prime of our life” to the game, and then one day, whether because of chronic pain or injury or the understandable wish to avoid any more of either, it has to come to an end. And then there’s this yawning expanse ahead, decades and decades—hopefully, at least—of life stretched before us that we’re suddenly supposed to know what to do with, now that the thing that’s shaped our lives since we were adolescents, often even younger, is gone.
It’s hard enough for those with family, friends, a relationship, children, hobbies. I have hardly any of those. A man who literally saved my life by sticking a soccer ball at my feet and believing in me is dead. A slew of friends and a former long-term lover back in England who I pissed off when I signed with the Galaxy because I wouldn’t listen to them and stay in England and retire when they thought I should. Maudlin poetry lining my shelves. Black-and-white photos lining my walls, taken places I only ever visited alone. The poker guys, with their half-hearted bickering and karaoke obsession. My next-door neighbor, co-captain, and irritating thorn in my backside…
Oliver.
I watch him from behind dark sunglasses, standing on the sidelines, even though I should be seated and elevating my sore knee. Problem is, I’m a prideful motherfucker, and I’m not sitting on the sidelines, and since Dan and Maria doctored me up, being in my body has been dialed down from nearly intolerable agony to familiar, exhausting pain.
Oliver stands beside Santi, talking with his hands, laughing when Santi makes a face, clearly telling some joke. The whistle blows, and like well-trained athletes, they split off, immediately in game mode. I watch Oliver fly across the field, envy coiling through me.
It’s so easy to latch on: my jealousy of his whole, young body, my resentment that I have to spend the final chapter of my career enduring his presence as such a stark contrast to mine, salt in the wound of my reality. That’s what I’ve clung to since I signed, and it burns through me, sharp and hot, as I watch him spin with the ball, rainbow it cheekily, then barrel toward the goal. With one flawless fake, then cut, he nails it into the net, Amobi rolling after diving and missing the ball entirely.
Rico whistles softly.
Jas shakes their head. “He just keeps getting better.”
“Mhmm,” Coach says, smiling into the sun, eyes hidden behind her sunglasses. “And he’s just getting started.”
It hits me like a punch to the gut, that reminder. I grit my teeth, watching him, waiting for the full power of my hatred for everything he has that I don’t anymore, for everything ahead of him that’s already behind me, to barrel through my system like it has so often since I met him.
But...it doesn’t. And what I feel is so much worse. Sadness. Unbearable sadness.
Coach cuts her gaze my way, as if surprised I haven’t mouthed off or said something tart. She arches her eyebrow. “You all right over there?”
I shrug, swallowing against the lump in my throat. “Fine.”
Avoiding her, I watch Oliver, his easy smile, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners as he tugs his hair back, shifting his weight onto his back leg while Andre talks to him. My gut knots. Hot, feverish something scorches my insides, burrows in my chest.
I tear my gaze away from him, focus on the rest of the field, analyzing their ball movement, critiquing how fucking sloppy the midfield is without me.
Coach turns a little more fully to examine me. “What’d Maria and Dan say?”
“Nothing. Because they know what’s good for them.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then, “Hayes, I need you to be straight with me.”
“I’ll be fine to play our next game,” I promise her.
She sighs. “That’s not all I’m concerned about. I care about you. You know that.”
I feel my disobedient gaze slide toward Oliver again, remembering how perfect he felt—the warm, wet, pleasure of his mouth, his soft sighs and gasps, the glorious feel of his body against mine, hot in my hand.
The fucking irony, that the man who’s been the constant source of my misery, whose life is becoming everything mine soon will no longer be, who’s been such a bitter reminder of the painful truth that I can never get back those years that await him, is the one person who’s given me the closest to respite from my misery in so long.
“Hayes,” Coach presses.
I cross my arms tight over my chest, a shield against my aching heart, telling myself as much as her, “I’m fine.”
19
OLIVER
Playlist: “September Fields,” Frazey Ford
There are some choices I’ll forever regret, choices I’d give anything to take back and do differently… Some of them involve pranks I took too far. Harsh words said in the heat of the moment. But the one that outstrips them all, at least right now, is eating my feelings in the form of a half-pound wedge of triple cream brie.
I just got so frustrated with Gavin. It’s been three weeks since the kitchen make-out and the next morning when he shut me down, demanding we leave it behind us, and the worst part is, I shouldn’t even be mad. He’s kept his promise—been civil, respectful on the field, in the locker room. On our carpool rides home, he’s mostly quiet, but he’ll make a dry quip here and there.
He’s kept his promise, I’ve kept mine. No more pranks or innuendo or big dick jokes, and I’m angry and horny and frustrated, and I can’t even put my finger on exactly why, when we’re doing exactly what we should: ignoring our attraction, treating each other decently, and kicking ass in preseason.
So when I got home after practice today, I ate my feelings and went way too hard on the cheese. And now my stomach’s cramping, rumbling ominously. A fine sheen of sweat beads my temples.
I’m going to be violently ill soon. And it’s the world’s worst timing.
“Uncle Ollie, pay attention.” My niece, Linnea, sits on the couch behind me, her legs slung over my shoulders, while I’m sprawled on the floor, my back slumped against the couch.
Clutching my stomach.