Had it been a great game?
We’d won. It had been a close game. I supposed those two facts alone meant it was a great game.
But hadIplayed a great game?
I wasn’t sure I knew the answer. I was tallying it all up in my head, the good versus the bad, and just when the scale would tip one way, I’d recall something that slid it back the other.
Five catches.
Seventy-two yards.
One touchdown.
On paper, that looked good. Hell, most receivers in this league would take a stat line like that and call it a solid day.
But paper didn’t show everything.
Paper didn’t show the slant in the second quarter where I’d had a full step on the corner and hesitated just long enough for him to close the window. Our quarterback, Geno Alberson, had still squeezed the ball in there, but it could’ve been twenty yards instead of eight if I’d trusted the route and exploded out of the break.
Paper didn’t show the third down late in the third quarter when the safety rolled over the top and I’d cut my route half a yard shallow. Geno had looked for me exactly where I should’ve been.
Half a yard.
That was the difference between a conversion and a punt.
And I’d had a drop. It wasn’t a brutal one that made the worst of the week highlight reels by any means, but the ball had touchedbothof my hands, and somehow I’d let it fall.
The touchdown held the scale down the most for the good side of things. It had been a clean route — a double move that left the corner biting hard enough that I almost felt bad for the guy as I broke toward the pylon. Geno dropped it right over my shoulder and I’d pulled it in effortlessly.
But one touchdown didn’t mean shit if the rest of your tape looked sloppy.
I adjusted the strap of my duffle on my shoulder as I walked, jaw tight.
Great game, Lock.
Maybe.
But was it great enough to earn me a second contract?
Great didn’t guarantee I’d still have a locker in this building two years from now. Great didn’t mean my family never had to worry again — thatI’dnever have to worry again.
I needed excellent. I needed astounding. I neededperfect.
Something inside me squirmed under that pressure, not because it wasn’t used to the weight, but because it was trying to gently remind me that I put too much on myself. That’s what my therapist had said —you don’t have to be responsible for all of it.
But that therapist didn’t have to watch my dad pull at his hair under the low light of our kitchen as he tried to figure out how to make ends meet. That therapist didn’t know the sound of my mother’s cries. And he sure as shit didn’t know what it was like to love my sister the way I did, to want to give her the best of everything and be willing to stop at nothing to do just that or die trying.
I still hadn’t decided if I believed Coach about that wholegreat gamestatement as I shuffled out of the locker room. I had my headphones around my neck, volleying between leaving them there or putting them on my ears so I could just plow right through the area where fans would be waiting for autographs.
In the end, I left them be. Those fans were the reason I got to do what I loved. They were what kept us going when the odds were stacked against us. A signature and photo were the least I could do to repay them.
The area leading to the barricade was a strange kind of energy. I could hear the cheers from the fans waiting outside, could hear them calling out the name of my teammates as soon as they passed by me with a jut of their chin and descended into the madness. I took a deep breath in the reprieve of that shelter, ready to put on a smile and channel the energy of thatgreat gameCoach said I’d had.
Before I could take a step, a flash of neon green and navy popped up in front of me, rhinestones catching the light from above.
“Great game, Boss.”
There were those words again, except this time they didn’t vault me straight into a thought spiral like they had when Coach said them. Maybe it was because they were softer, more of a tease than an actual assessment.