Page 75 of Main Event

I pause. The cicadas hum above us, loud enough to fill the spaces between words.

“Then I met you,” I say. “And you kept showing me something I didn’t have a name for. You’d have the worst day imaginable, and the next morning you’d get up and help somebody else survive theirs. You’d be hurt, lied about, threatened, and exhausted, and somehow you’d still notice who else needed a hand. Not because it made you look strong. Because you couldn’t leave them there.”

She looks down at her hands. I keep going because if I stop now, I might not get it all out.

“I spent years thinking resilience meant absorbing damage and staying on my feet. You taught me that resilience is getting back up for someone other than yourself. It’s building a door because you know what it felt like when nobody opened one for you. It’s telling the truth even when people have spent years teaching you that truth is dangerous.”

Her throat moves.

“You changed what strength means to me,” I say. “You changed what home means. You changed what I’m fighting for. Before you, every fight was about proving something. To Mack. To my father. To myself. Now I don’t want to prove I can win. I want to build something worth coming back to once the winning is done.”

Andi’s eyes lift to mine. “What does that look like?” she asks quietly.

I look at the lake. “I don’t know all of it yet.”

“That’s allowed.”

“I know some pieces.”

“Tell me.”

I take a breath. “A place where nobody has to be impressive all the time. Kids who need somewhere to learn to stand without being taught to swing first. A gym, maybe. Not a flashy one. Not one built for cameras. One where a kid can walk in angry and leave tired enough to tell the truth.”

Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t look away.

“And a lake,” I add.

“A lake?”

“I can do a lake.”

Her mouth trembles into a smile. “You can do a lake?”

“I’m serious.”

“I know. That’s why I’m smiling.”

I reach for her hand. “I can do a lake, Andi. Maybe not this one. Maybe not now. But someday. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere clear. Somewhere that feels like this.”

She looks toward the water. For a while, she doesn’t speak. When she does, her voice is softer than I expect.

“When I was little, before my parents died, I used to imagine living near water. I don’t even know where the idea came from. We weren’t lake people or boat people. But I had a picture in my head of a small house with trees around it and water close enough that I could hear it at night.” She pulls her towel tighter around herself. “After they died, I stopped picturing houses. Houses became places other people decided whether I could stay.”

I close my hand around hers.

“I never told anyone that,” she says. “It felt ridiculous to want something that quiet when I couldn’t even keep a bedroom.”

“It’s not ridiculous.”

“I know that now.” She looks at me. “I think you helped me know that.”

I go still.

She turns more fully toward me, towel slipping from one shoulder, her face open in a way that does something devastating to my chest.

“I spent so much of my life believing people stayed only until loving me became inconvenient. Until the paperwork got complicated. Until the truth got ugly. Until the cost rose higher than they thought I was worth.” She takes a breath. “You have never once made me feel as if loving me was inconvenient.”

I can’t speak right away. She looks down at our joined hands.