Page 95 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
I wonder if Beckett knows that story.
Dad turns to me. “Do you know how the hymn ends?”
I shake my head.
“‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.’” He smiles as though that should tell me everything I need to know. His eyes catch mine and he keeps going. “It’s a reminder that there is nothing in this life I can do to earn God’s love—that all those things that charm me most, that bolster my pride and put my ego in the forefront of my life, are meaningless compared to the love God has for us. A love undeserved. Given selflessly with the knowledge it can never be repaid.”
I look again, reading the verse over in my head.
“It’s a reminder that the things I was clinging to—the career, the identity, Coach Hart—those were the vain things. Easier than the hard thing.”
“And what was the hard thing?”
He smiles, lifting a hand to brush over my hair. “This. This was the harder thing. But the only thing that really matters.”
Seventeen
Everly
Listen, I’m not delusional. I know when to take a hint. But Beckett’s words have been replaying on a loop in my head ever since leaving my dad’s house yesterday, and I’m starting to wonder if I got it wrong.
Should have stuck to the stands. That’s pretty clear, right?
She’s nothing. Even clearer.
Nope, I got it right.
And he hasn’t called. So there’s that.
But his letters, people. His letters tell a different story.
I’m sitting at my kitchen table with coffee and an actual bagel—with cream cheese, a meal containing a dairy product and a grain, which would make Julia weep with pride—and I’m thinking about languages.
The languages we speak without meaning to. My father’s language of provision. My mother’s language of protection. My language of presence.
Blue-inked letters are spread across the counter, each one a Rosetta Stone on the language of Beckett Benson. My fingers run over the words again.
Interviewers always ask what drives me, and I always say the game. But between you and me, I’m not sure I know how to exist without something to prove.
That came in the third letter, sandwiched between his frustrations over feeling like a pariah on his team. His disappointment that not one of the men he’d played alongside for years came to his defense when someone spread false information about him—the doping scandal, glossed over in vague terms.
Something to prove. His words that night in the mall told me what he was trying to prove.
I needed to be the best. Not good. Not competitive. The best…If I wasn’t the best, all of that was wasted.
I pick up another letter. Letter four.
Everything I’ve ever wanted has had a justification attached—it’s for the team, it’s for my mother, it’s for the name on the back of the jersey. Wanting something just because I want it feels like stealing. Do you ever feel that way?
It’s Beckett in the hall—by the fountain, dusty and covered in cobwebs. All because he stayed to help a teammate in over his head. Not for himself. Not to clear his name. But because he believes everyone deserves a second chance.
And this, from the first letter. The very first:
You once wrote ‘I’ve spent my whole life being what everyone else needed. I don’t even know what I want for myself.’ That’s the line that kept me reading, because I swear you wrote it just for me. I’m not even sure I’m allowed to want anything. I just need to be grateful for what I have and keep on earning it every day, right? Do you believe that’s how God works?
I don’t know. I do think that God’s bigger than that. That He has a plan. And if that’s the truth, then we don’t have to earn it, because it’s already set, right? I almost said as much that day in the elevator.
“Maybe this is all part of God’s plan. Maybe He thought to Himself today, Hey, this guy needs someone to talk to. Let’s just lock these two in an elevator.”
