Quarterback's Secret Baby(87)

She hesitated for a second before answering. "Sure..."

"This is great, Tasha, you're going to love this. For a long time it's seemed like you could barely stand me. Well, maybe not that but it was like your feelings for me were fleeting or fickle. Remember high school? Remember how perfect that was? I mean, before that prom night disaster and you, even though you said you believed me, acting like even talking to me was repulsive?"

I was working up to full rant mode and would have continued if she hadn't cut me off there.

"That's not what happened, Kaden."

"Isn't it? What happened, then?"

"What happened was I realized how much you mattered to me! How much it hurt to lose you - even to think I'd lost you! You said a few minutes ago that you know vulnerability isn't my thing but I'm not sure you do know that. I'm not sure you ever understood that!"

She was yelling by that point and I could hear the emotion in her voice. We stayed where we were, listening to each other's breathing and I couldn't stop myself. It wasn't even funny, but laughter started to bubble out of me - just a little at first but a torrent soon enough, until I was clutching my stomach and wiping my eyes. Tasha didn't even look angry, she just looked bemused.

"What are you laughing about?" She asked when I paused to take a breath and I tried to answer, between bouts of more laughter.

"Tasha... we're so... stupid! All this time I... I thought you hated me!" I stopped for a second, trying and failing to get a grip on myself. "I thought you hated me! I thought I was just your dumb jock plaything. But now it turns out you... you loved me this whole time? We loved each... other... this whole time?! Ha ha ha, we're so fucking stupid!"

It took a long time to stop laughing. An embarrassing amount. Every time I thought it was finished I'd start again. But Tasha waited. She leaned against her car and waited and I couldn't tell from her expression what she was feeling. More than five minutes later, when my laughing fit seemed to have ended, she asked me a question.

"You love me? You loved me this whole time?"

It was my turn to mumble and look away. But I told her the truth. "Yeah, idiot. Of course I do. Didn't you know? I even told you, Tasha."

"Back in high school, maybe."

"And since then, every time I saw you, you acted like I was an annoyance. You talk about your own vulnerability but what about mine? What about the fact that most human beings probably aren't going to be making declarations of love to people who don't even seem to like them very much? Honestly, Tasha, I don't feel like it was ever a secret, not on my side. If you've really had strong feelings for me this whole time, damn, why didn't you ever give me some sign? A hint? Why? I don't understand you at all."

"Because what would it have mattered?" She asked plaintively. "You were leaving, Kaden. Even in high school, everyone knew you were leaving. And not leaving like other people do, moving to Carbonville twenty miles away but leaving in a bigger way, a more profound way. Not just a different place but a different life. I've been on guard with you from the very beginning because of that, because I knew that no matter what, no matter how I felt or you felt, you were going away."

I waited while Tasha's words sank in and as a feeling of regret began to creep over me. I'd known it, hadn't I? That she was troubled by the fact of my eventual NFL career? But I obviously wasn't aware of just how much it bothered her.

I leaned back against the car parked beside hers and put my head in my hands. "Jesus, I really am an idiot, Tasha. It's so weird, I understand what you're saying but it's like it never really sank in for me. I never really understood how much it affected you. Even after you told me everything about your dad! I'm so sorry. Really, I'm so-"

"Don't," she said, holding up her hand. "I don't need you to berate yourself, Kaden. I'm stupid, too, we both are - you were right about that. We were young. Hell, we're still young. Even now as we're standing here, talking, it's like I can feel the memories rearranging themselves in my head, applying the new narrative."

"New narrative?"

"Yeah," she replied, suddenly bashful. "The new narrative. The one where it wasn't just me who loved you the whole time but you who, um, who-"

I reached out and cupped Tasha's face in my hands, looking into her eyes, holding her gaze so she couldn't turn away. "Who loved you the whole time," I finished her sentence. "Because, and look at me when I say this, because I have never meant anything in my life more than I mean this - I did love you the whole time. And I still love you now, here."

I watched Tasha's eyes brighten, a smile start at one corner of her mouth and then immediately melt away.