I look around and see an older gentleman lying flowers down on a newly covered grave.
“I’m going to be better if not for myself, then for you. For Macy.” I roll my neck and some of the tension releases. It feels good to get this all out. “She might be pregnant, man.” I shake my head in disbelief. “Shitty timing but isn’t everything in life anymore?”
“Macy’s that perfect ball that lands right in my hands leading me to score the touchdown. She’s my touchdown. I’ve spent so much time treating her like a defensive lineman trying to side step her and run my play.” It’s so easy comparing Macy to football for Steven, he’d understand exactly what I was saying. “She’s been trying to tackle me every day. Trying to slow me down or change my course but I know her moves even before she does. I beat her every time.” I shrug knowing that’s a lie. More like beat myself.
I reach for a leaf on the ground and hold it up in the air and let the wind take it away. “I should be treating her like she’s the game ball that Coach gives me after the game. I was so caught up in myself that I barely paid her any attention. And she still wants me, like nothing has ever changed when everything has.”
I pick up another leaf and let the wind take it away again. “She told me she thinks she is pregnant and you want to know what I said?” I shake my head. “I asked if it was mine. I was a fucking tool and I didn’t care. I lost my ride to school, to football, Macy told me she might be pregnant and you want to know what I was worried about? When was I going to get high again?” I laugh bitterly at myself. “What an asshole I am.”
The freezing winter winds pick up and the clouds are turning grey. I stand and brush my jeans off. I take the jersey that I brought for Steven and lay it over the tombstone. It’s a Ducks jersey with Steven’s last name Griffin and his number, now mine, on it. “This is yours, man. Not a day goes by when I’m on that field that I’m not playing for you.”
I stand there just staring at it before walking away. I don’t feel like going back to my parent’s house so I wander around town and end up where I always do.
Canby High School’s football field.
Going over to the bleachers I find Cash sitting there staring at the field. I should turn around and leave but I don’t. I need to do this too. It’s another step in the right direction.
I climb the stairs and sit a few rows behind Cash. I wait for him to tell me to leave and if he did, I’d leave. It gets darker outside and a few snowflakes start to fall.
“I’m sorry.” There I’ve said it. I don’t feel any better about it but it’s out there hanging in the air between us. The hardest two fucking words to say and it’s taken three years to utter the simplest phrase that means so much.
Cash doesn’t respond or even acknowledge that he heard me. Okay, I deserve this. He turns his body and looks up at me. “I want you to tell me why? Why did you fuck my girl when you had your own?”
I hang my head, “I didn’t fuck her.”
“Did you want to?” he raises an eyebrow. “Don’t bullshit me either. Tell me the fucking truth.”
“Honestly…at that moment, yes. I did.” He asked for the truth.
“What else did you do with her?”
“We made out freshman year while we were studying. We were sober and wanted to see if there were any feelings there. There weren’t.” I wait for him to say something, anything, but he doesn’t. So I ask, because it’s only fair, “Did you sleep with Macy?”
He shakes his head, “No. I never touched Macy like that. Never even thought about it.”
“So you didn’t do anything?”
He smirks, cocky asshole. “I bit her fucking neck once trying to prove to her that there was nothing between us.”
I wait to see if he blinks, it’s his tell. When he blinks he’s lying. It never comes.
Kicking my feet up on the bench in front of me I stretch out. I think we’re done but we’re not, probably not even close.
“You had no right to call Madison a whore.” That wasn’t what I was expecting him to say but now I know he’s talked to Macy and I’m not surprised she told him that.
“You’re right. I’m sorry for that too.” And I am and I’ll apologize to Madison at some point too.
“Why couldn’t you see that it wasn’t just you hurting?”
“I’m sorry that I don’t want to feel. Forgive me for being selfish.” Landon says bitterly. “What I can’t understand is that people can’t see that I’m not doing this for them. I don’t do it to feel this way. I do it to not feel.”