Page 51 of Out of Bounds
Fuck. I’m strung out for Tommy, and the team for losing him. And it’s another reminder that I could be done any day now. I’m close to retirement even without an injury, and I don’t know what’s waiting for me. Since the day I first put on a boot, I’ve thought about being a footballer, making the high school team, then the college team, and the pros. I wanted it for myself, for my mom and my sister.
I put everything else on hold.
Tommy will be comforted by his family – his wife and kids. He’ll probably coach, eventually. Me, I have a weekly podcast and not much else to fall back on.
Now, I’m standing in this corridor feeling sorry for myself over things I don’t have when all I should be focused on is Tommy and how in hell he’s handling his heartbreak.
It’s been a crappy day and my head is spinning as I pull through my gate and park at home. I pick up my phone, keys and bag in a trance.
Then I open the door to my lounge and I’m greeted by the sound of warmth. The belly chuckle of an eleven-month-old child. The cheers of his beautiful mama, and the applauding of his nanny.
Nelson drops down to his butt and I have a feeling before Annie spots me that…
“He’s taken his first step! Can you show Tanner? Can you show him what a big boy you are?”
I go to them on the rug in the lounge and sit on the floor, my day set aside. I try to watch Nelson, waiting for him to do it again, but my attention is drawn to the sheer delight on Annie’s face. The widest smile, the faintest flush of her cheeks.
Any other day, I’d be coming home to an empty but very clean and tidy house. My lounge currently looks as if King Kong charged through it.
I don’t care at all. The noise, the distraction, even the mess, it’s all welcome.
Annie looks at me and her smile softens to something gentler. “I wouldn’t have seen his first step if I wasn’t staying here,” she tells me. “I’d have been making my way back to the ranch from school.”
She rises to her knees and leans across to me, pressing her lips to my cheek. “Thank you.”
For entirely different reasons to when I was sitting in Coach’s office earlier, everything in my torso feels like it just got plugged into gravity.
I won’t say it, I shouldn’t even think it, but coming home to Annie and Nelson, even Betty, is…nice.Real nice. When I hold her against me, my arm around her waist that fits neat as a button, I breathe in her hair and think about what I absolutely can’t want. A promise is a promise, even if all the other reasons aren’t enough. Annie’s staying here to get over the latest in her relationship with Auston, her baby’sdad.
Aaron makes us fish and steamed veg for dinner. Remarkably, it gets a tick in the box from Nelson, too, which Aaron looks almost bashful about.
We eat as a five around the dining table, overlooking the pool, and it’s a raucous dinner of shouting, squished veggie sticks, “no, don’t do that, Nelson”s, spilled water, and animated chatter.
My head should be absolutely battered. So often my Thursday evenings during season are Aaron and me, sometimes a team guy or two who don’t have their own chefs and can’t be bothered to cook for themselves.
It’s unexpected that this kind of noise in my house, made louder by the echoes in the vast space, is refreshing. Aaron is a great guy but it’s nice to not be talking sports, nutrition and fitness twenty-four seven. This feels like…family.
I haven’t let my mind go to whether I want kids, how many, who with. Sitting here, though, it’s clear that I do. That I want multiple kids and I want them while I’m still young enough to run around playing with them and clearing up mess from the floor after every meal.
It’s a lot, sure. Annie never stops, never rests. But she does it all with a smile on her face. She loves this. She’s all about family and my heart breaks for her that Auston ruined what I imagine her ideal looks like. Her, Auston and Nelson, maybe a few more kids, out on the ranch with the horses she loves, playing ball in the yard, baking pie, Annie going out to work as a sports psychologist or doing something for herself, too.
How could Auston give all this up? He could have had a great girl, a beautiful family of kids who look exactly like their mama. Colton, Sas and Sonny, too. The extended family of a team and in-laws. He’s a fucking idiot.
I don’t appreciate I’m staring at Annie until she pauses in conversation and looks right back at me. “Are you okay? Is this all too much?”
One side of my mouth curves up in disbelief as I shake my head once. “No, it’s exactly what I needed today.”
The glint in her brown eyes is why I want to keep making her happy. Even if she’s not mine to make happy.
As she gets back to talking to Betty about her trip to the park with Nelson, I feel Aaron scrutinizing me. I choose to ignore it.
22
PACE – MID-OCTOBER
Friend Zone
I offer to read Nelson to sleep to let Annie start work on her project. He’s getting as comfortable around me as I am around him.
