Page 58 of End Game

Barrett

I’m used to being on the road. This is nothing new. When I first got to college, the sheer amount of travel required was surprising, even though it shouldn’t have been. On average, we travel a larger distance than we did back in high school. Now, we drive or fly the day before the game, so we have time to rest and get settled in before the preparations begin for the game itself. Roughly one in every two games is on the road: sometimes it’s three at home in a row, and sometimes it’s every other game traveling. We don’t get to pick the schedule; we have to accept what’s given to us, or we don’t have to play on the team anymore.

There’s a familiarity to away games. Typically, I room with Tucker, who is probably my best friend on campus after Diana. Now that he’s dating Mason, he’s only slightly more annoying; now he’s constantly talking to her instead of constantly absorbed in his phone and her social media profiles, and if he’s not talking to her, he’s talking to me about her. I get it. She’s the love of his life. He’s over the moon that they’re back together. I don’t need to hear about it every day, at home and away.

I wonder what Diana is up to. She got back to campus this morning from her away game at Amherst College. Her parents came to the game and took her and some friends out to dinner. Not Johanna and her minions—other girls, ones I haven’t really met yet. I’m glad she’s settling in and making friends. I’m glad she gets to spend time with her family.

Between my flight to Philadelphia and her road trip home, we’ve been missing each other all day. She gets carsick if she’s looking at screens in the car, so she isn’t a fan of texting or reading while she’s on the bus. Most of the time, she tries to catch a nap or hang out with her teammates on the trips to and from games. It’s one of the few times we get to bond with one another, when we’re trapped in a tin can for hours on end.

Tucker is in his bed, texting with Mason. Normally they have an hour long phone call where they talk sweet nothings into one another’s ears, but tonight her brother is in town for a game against the New England football team on Sunday, so they both have reasons to stick to keeping it PG-13.

He’s not a bad roommate, all things considered. We live together and share a bathroom on a day to day basis, so we’re familiar with one another’s daily habits. He likes a freezing cold shower in the morning and then a long, steaming hot shower about an hour before bed. He likes to keep the room at a cool seventy degrees when we’re sleeping, which I’m all aboard for. He doesn’t snore too loudly. He doesn’t masturbate while I’m in our shared hotel room. All in all, not a bad guy to share a room with. I’ve certainly had worse roommates over the years.

My phone vibrates with a text, and Tucker shoots me a smirk.

“Little lady checking up on you?”

Ha. I wish.

Instead it’s my brother. He’s in town for a wedding. Do I have any time to meet up?

Dougie is a former college athlete, so he knows I don’t have a lot of free time during road trips. He also respects that I take football seriously, even more seriously than he treated hockey, and I have commitments. Still… my brother and I barely ever see each other. We’re not really friends, not yet. Maybe in a few years we can be, when we’re equals and both working in our family’s forensic accounting firm.

As I’m about to reply yes, I can meet for breakfast, a video chat from Diana pops up on my screen. I don’t care that it’s rude to take a phone call with someone else in the room. I accept the call.

“Hey.” I sit up in bed and tuck my hand behind my head. It’s a good angle for me. It makes my biceps look huge. I’m all for it.

In the next bed over, Tucker snorts.

“Hey.” My best friend grins at me, her eyes crinkling. “Long time no see.”

We’ve been missing each other all week. In theory, I get to go home and see her again. In reality, I get home on Sunday afternoon and she leaves on Tuesday for another away game, this time against Montana, so she won’t be back until Friday. Then Saturday, I have another game, which is technically an away game, but since it’s against Boston College, there’s no real travel involved. Hell, my parents live closer to Boston College than they do to Newton.

Not like they’re going to show up. My parents haven’t been to one of my college football games. They went to a single game in high school, one, and that was only because it was my senior homecoming and I was getting an award. I doubt they’re going to come to homecoming this year. They’ve never come to Parents’ Weekend. Somehow I don’t think they’re going to come to Senior Night, either.

My freshman year, Dougie came to Parents’ Weekend, even though he obviously isn’t my parent. We went to the pub and he bought me dinner, then he sat me down to tell me he was proud of me, but he probably wouldn’t make it to too many more of my games. Back then, it was competing with his hockey schedule; later, he was too busy at Brown to make the trip into the city any more than absolutely necessary. Okay, so maybe he isn’t as much of an asshole as I like to pretend.

I get it. My parents aren’t exactly great to be around. He has to put himself first. That means not kowtowing to my parents’ intense demands and absurd expectations. If he hadn’t been so serious about hockey, I never would have pursued football. It’s because he led the way that I felt confident enough to follow in his footsteps… at least, in my own way.

“Miss you,” I admit now to Diana, who smiles wistfully.

“We’ll figure it out one of these days,” she says.

I sigh. There’s a lot I hope we can figure out.

“Dougie texted me. He’s in town,” I blurt.

Her eyes go wide. “Are you going to see him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should. Absolutely. Do it,” she insists.

“Easy there, cujo.”

Diana laughs. “Your brother is cool.”

“He’s a dick.”