Archer
The weight room was quiet. I’d expected that, of course, after showing up at four thirty in the morning to get my reps in. PT for my ACL for all those months last year meant I’d hardly ever been alone in the training rooms. There was always someone analyzing my movements, watching my reps, making me run in a pool, recording the way I walked and ran and jumped and squatted.
So many eyes on me, so many boxes that needed to be checked before I could return to the field. And now, with a knee that was fine, I had a team that gave me sidelong looks when I walked through the building with earbuds in at all times.
Angry music screamed into my ears when I did my work, while I lay on the table and let the team’s PT work on my body, and while I took reps with my quarterback coach alongside Carson.
Morning,I saw him mouth through the blaring music.
I nodded, leaning over to pick up a ball and toss it toward Mitch, our coach. They shared a look as Mitch caught my throws. We’d do this for a while, and as I threw, the repetitive motions soothing despite the constant knotting of my stomach, I felt my teammates’ eyes on me as they filtered in and out of the practice fields.
No one knew how to approach me. Some of the veteran players, the other captains, wore their disappointment more plainly, but the rookies tended to edge around me with distinctly nervous energy.
Mitch held up his hand, and I stopped, holding the ball on my hip while he jogged over. He motioned to my earbuds, and I let out a slow breath as I pulled them out.
“You want to work with your receivers?” he asked, tilting his head in their direction. Three of them were here, doing sprints with their trainers. One, the rookie, stopped at the end of his run and looked over, lifting his hand in an awkward wave.
“No.”
I put my earbuds back in, the screaming guitars drowning out all the thoughts in my head that I didn’t particularly want to dwell on.
Over and over, I threw the ball, and I’d do it as long as Mitch would stand there. The muscles in my arms knew how to do this better than anything else in my life. Anchor my fingers along the laces, feel the pebbled leather under my palm. I’d known this for the majority of my life, the one place I felt the most sure, where all the noise faded away and the feel of the ball in my hand kept me grounded.
Find a target. Pull my arm back.
Release.
Watch it sail through the air and go exactly where I wanted it to go. In the moments where it did, nothing felt better. Even if it wasn’t perfect, it didn’t matter as long as the catch was made and the game stayed in our control.
Since I was nine years old and threw my first touchdown pass in flag football, I’d always known what I was supposed to do. It was only as the years passed that everything else in my life complicated the one thing that was the simplest: holding a ball in my hands and throwing it where it was supposed to go.
Mitch tossed me another ball, even though his face was pinched with disapproval. I danced back, snapping my arm forward, and he caught it, then tossed it into a bin next to him instead of back towardme. His eyes were focused on someone past my shoulder, and he gave a slight shake of his head.
A warning.
I tipped my chin up and stared at the metal roof of the practice fields. Only one person would interrupt without fear, and I swiped a hand over my mouth before turning.
Coach King was standing a few feet behind me, arms crossed over his chest, watching with a steady expression. He was the youngest coach in the league, and following orders from someone only a few years older than me had taken some getting used to.
The guy had fucking ice in his veins, or that was what it seemed like. After a rough first season together—me pushing him, him pushing me—we’d reached a tentative peace.
Until this.
It wasn’t that he looked at me with distrust, more like I was a puzzle he was still trying to piece together, if I’d only stay still long enough for him to do so.
When he kept watching, I knew this was a battle I’d lose. With slow movements, I pulled the earbuds out and then stopped the music.
“Coach.”
He didn’t say a word. Just watched. The knot in my stomach grew, twisting around itself until I felt like I might choke on it, and I literally bit down on the tip of my tongue to keep from saying anything else.
I could only imagine what he was thinking.
That I was a fuckup.
A disappointment.
Benched for another season if I didn’t get my ass in line and live up to his standards. He didn’t expect perfection like my father, but he wanted the men on his team to show respect to each other. To work harder than we’ve ever worked as a team. To be good people in our lives off the football field as much as on.