“Why don’t you work on some footwork drills first?” Peyton suggests. She’s right though. I hand her a whistle and get on the line, facing her. She blows into the whistle. I grapevine. She blows. I sprint. She blows. I shuffle. I use the hash marks for a makeshift ladder, twisting and turning my hips to make my feet move faster. For an hour we do this until I’m exhausted.
“Are you done blowing that whistle?” I ask, drinking down my bottle of water.
Peyton shrugs. “It was fun watching you sweat.”
I nod and wink at her. “Right, back to the machine.” This time my footwork is cleaner, but still not enough.
&
nbsp; “You’re overthinking. It’s tap: one, two three. Look: four, five, six. Throw: seven, eight, nine.”
I count off as she advised and find a decent rhythm. Balls are starting to hit their targets and my feet aren’t crumbling beneath me. When the bucket is empty I tell her it’s time to start walking.
Peyton sighs heavily, but stands, turns around and grips her handlebar almost effortlessly. I stay behind her in the event she starts to fall, but realize after ten yards she’s doing really well.
“Has Xander said when you’ll no longer need the walker?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. I can use a cane, sometimes. It’s mostly when I’m walking from my room to the bathroom. Quinn bought me this because he thought he was being funny, but I actually like it because it affords me the ability to leave the house, although I’m not much for hanging out in public lately.”
“Me neither.”
“No? I thought for sure with the town getting ready for your wedding, you’d be loving every minute of it.”
I step in front of her, halting her progression down the field. “What if I tell you I don’t want to get married?”
“Then don’t,” she says as if calling off the wedding would be the easiest thing to do.
“Give me a reason, Peyton.”
She shakes her head slowly. “I can’t. I won’t. She’s pregnant. She wins.”
“Was it a competition? Am I missing something?”
Peyton sighs and shifts so she can sit down. “It wasn’t for me because I was waiting. I thought, someday you’ll see me and realize… well, I don’t know what because the morning after prom I was set to tell you how I felt, but yeah you took me to the cliffs and the last thing I wanted to hear was how you thought being with me was a mistake, so I went on about school even though I was so afraid to start and to be alone. I had this grand plan in my mind, which went swirling down the drain.
“Then you met Dessie. She wasn’t your first girlfriend, but I had a feeling that anything I had hoped for was gone and I accepted it. I’m young, and you’re playing professional football. The chips were stacked against us. But Dessie…”
I get down on my knees so we’re eye level. “What is it, Peyton?”
She looks off into the distance and shakes her head. My fingers touch the softness of her face, pulling her chin toward me. “Tell me,” I plead.
“She doesn’t like me and never has, which wouldn’t be a concern, but she gloats. She sends me messages. They’re not kind. I should’ve blocked her number, but I never did.”
“What kind of messages?”
“Trivial stuff, Noah. Pictures of you guys together, with you sleeping next to each other. Stupid comments about my age. How I’d never have you. After a tough game, she’d send me a picture of you and her together. I knew about your engagement because she told me. Like I said, I should’ve blocked her, but I didn’t. The messages were sporadic, at best.”
I stand up and step away from Peyton, running my hand through my hair. I never gave Dessie Peyton’s number, which means she went through my phone to get it.
“Peyton, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
She shrugs and offers me a thin-lipped smile. “I think I’m ready to go home.”
I nod and head toward the fifty-yard line and start cleaning up. When I look down the field, Peyton is trying to pick up as many footballs as she can. I watch her as if she’s some type of enigma. Everything within me is screaming to pick Peyton, but I can’t leave my child. I can’t stomach the idea of my son or daughter going from house to house on weekends and holidays, living off some schedule, instead of being a kid who gets to enjoy life. I know others do it and do so successfully, but I don’t see Dessie and I being amicable.
What I do see is Peyton, the woman I’m in love with, stepping aside. What does that say about me? She’s the one that’ll make me happy and I’m letting her go – right into the hands of another man. I’m not stupid. Kyle Zimmerman is waiting in the wings for her. He’d be a fool not to.
After the equipment is all put away, I load Peyton back into the truck. The drive back to her house is done in silence. Anything I have to say is going to sound stupid. I screwed up. I should’ve been more selfish when she was eighteen, maybe then things would be different.