The stands are completely packed with fans dressed in Puma blue and white, the lights are on, and the guys are out on the field, ready to start. Coach O’Toole is standing next to a middle-aged guy in a blue-and-gold jacket. UCLA Bruins is written on the back. Walter Paddock. I remember him from my visit to the school.
The energy of the place pushes into me. Yes. This is exactly where I need to be.
“Thanks, Dave,” I say, clapping him on the back. He raises his eyebrows in a good luck—you’re going to need it look and runs out onto the pitch.
Fuck luck. I don’t need luck. This is soccer. I’m good at this.
Just don’t think about her.
I approach the sidelines. “Coach,” I say, trying desperately to clear my head. I secure my hair back in a rubber band and pull my socks up over my shin guards. “I’m sorry I’m late. I had a…family emergency.”
Coach looks like he would love nothing more than to punch my lights out. But he knows how important this game is to me—he’s got to know I wouldn’t have been this late unless something major went down. You know, like finding out your dead girlfriend was a lying, selfish, cruel bitch.
Goddammit, Meg.
Don’t. Think. About. It.
“Ryden, this is Walter Paddock, the head recruiter for the UCLA men’s soccer team,” Coach says simply, letting his eyes do the real talking. Even if I kill it tonight, I’ll be lucky to see any more game time the rest of the season.
I shake Walter’s hand. “Mr. Paddock, of course, I remember. Nice to see you again, sir. Thank you so much for coming all this way. My team is waiting for me, but I’d love to speak with you more after the game.”
Walter nods enthusiastically. “Looking forward to it. And I’m looking forward to seeing more of what you can do out there in front of the goal. If your stats and game film are any indication, I’m in for quite a show tonight.”
“Thank you, sir.” I pull my gloves on and run out to rousing cheers.
“Wooooo! Go, Ryden! Number One forever!” Shoshanna shouts, waving her pom-poms and shaking her ass.
The ref flips the coin, and the Hornets win the toss. They choose their side, I head off to the goal, and the Pumas kick off. While the action is happening at the other end of the field, I let my attention drift toward the stands. Alan and Aimee are sitting toward the top of the bleachers, off to the left, huddled together under a blanket. Mom and I guess that’s Declan—he looks like he belongs on the cover of one of Joni’s romance novels with his dark hair, short beard, and leather jacket—are sitting along the halfway line down front. They’re sitting as close to each other as Alan and Aimee, smiling like there’s no place they’d rather be and no one they’d rather be with. Everyone’s all coupled up and blissed out. Don’t get comfortable, I want to shout at them. It doesn’t last forever.
And then there’s Hope. She’s bundled in her hat and puffy jacket and propped up in Mom’s lap, bouncing up and down as Mom jiggles her legs. Declan makes a stupid face at her, and she laughs and reaches out toward him, trying to grab his beard. She looks happy.
Out of nowhere, even though I look at Hope every day, it’s like I’m seeing her for the first time.
Her face is almost perfectly round, except for a tiny little chin jutting out. She’s got dimples on either side of her mouth, and the way her little eyebrows arch reminds me of the way my eyebrows look in my baby pictures—long before I got my scar.
Her hair is still like Meg’s—dark and wild—but really, her face has changed so much in the months since she was born. She doesn’t look as much like Meg anymore. She looks like me. The baby girl version of me.
Holy shit. It doesn’t matter that Hope hasn’t said “Daddy” yet—I’m a dad already. It’s happening, with or without my permission and even though I don’t have a single clue how to do it right. That kid is going to grow up and go to school and get into trouble and break bones and have her heart broken, and I’m going to be there for all of it.
Suddenly, the entire world is like an hourglass that’s been flipped over, the sand running back through the narrow hole in the opposite direction as before.
It’s not about what I did to Meg anymore. The journal made sure of that. It’s about what she did to me.
She blamed me—not for her pregnancy, but for her cancer. By writing about it in her journal and leaving it where she knew someone would find it, she made sure I would feel that guilt forever. Even though I didn’t even know who she was when she was diagnosed.
And because she blamed me, she felt I was hers to do whatever she wanted with. So she used me as an unwilling means to her own selfish end. She left me sad and alone and with a baby. She never thought what my life would be like once the baby was born and she was gone. She knew she would be gone, and she didn’t even do me the courtesy of talking about it. She only thought about herself and how to fill her remaining calendar squares.
I didn’t take her life away from her.
She took mine.
The ball whizzes past my head and into the net. I feel it and hear it, but I don’t see it because I’m still watching Hope.