Page 268 of Across His Line

“Probably doesn’t help,” I say.

She doesn’t say anything.

“Nobody drafts you because you’re nice,” I say. “But they don’t want guys who take majors in March, either. Berwyn says they already wrote temper in my file.” I think about it. “He’s probably right.”

She’s quiet for a while. Her thumb moves on my chest.

“Do you have to go anywhere?” she says. “For them. Like, to meet them?”

“Not yet.”

“When?”

So I tell her. The way Berwyn told me in his office in January. I don’t know all of it. Nobody does. But I know how it’s supposed to go.

Right now it’s just this. Guys in buildings. Film. Teams calling Berwyn, asking what I’m like. In May, if I’m high enough on the list, I get a letter that says come to the combine, which is a week at the end of May, start of June, in some hotel ballroom where you go in a room and twenty guys from one team ask you questions, and then you go in another room and twenty guys from another team ask you the same questions, and then they make you ride a bike until you throw up. Then June, the draft. If somebody takes me, there’s a development camp a couple weeks after, a week or so, with their prospects.

“And then you go,” she says.

“No.”

She lifts her head.

“Being drafted isn’t signing,” I say. “They just own my rights. That’s it. If they want me to sign and I want to sign, I sign, and I go play somewhere for them. If they don’t, or I don’t, I come back here. Lots of guys get drafted and come back. Some guys play here three more years.”

She’s quiet.

“So you don’t actually know if you’re leaving,” she says.

“No.”

She doesn’t say anything for a second. I feel it, though. Her hand on my chest goes still, just for a beat, and then starts moving again.

I turn my head on the pillow and look at her. In the dark, I can only see half her face.

She told me on the quad last Thursday that she’s not coming back here. I haven’t asked her where she’s going instead, or how she’s doing it. I just know it made me want more of her.

“Nobody knows yet,” I say.

She nods against the pillow.

She puts her head back down on my shoulder. After a while, her breathing slows down.

I lie awake for a long time with her hand on my chest.

My phone goes off at six-fifteen.

It’s on her nightstand, face down. It buzzes four times in a row and then keeps going. She groans into my shoulder and pulls the comforter over her head.

I pick it up.

The group chat. The one with the three of us.

Barnes: Worth it.

Kennebeck: No.

Barnes: A little worth it.