Page 52 of End Game

“Eh, maybe,” she says, and I can’t help the flutter in my stomach at the concession that maybe, possibly…

“C’mon,” I say, pulling on a hoodie. “It’s time for breakfast.”

Mack lays the blankets on the couch and picks up her backpack and jacket. Together the three of us make our way out of the house and through Athlete’s Village towards the ASC. At midmorning, the dining hall is decently populated. There is a table full of freshmen football players at the back of the room. I nod to them as we pass by. A few of the guys look surprised to see me with two pretty girls, especially this early in the day and with Diana clearly in my shirt.

Wes is already sitting at our usual table at the back of the room, two tables over from the freshmen. He looks up from his book with surprise written on his face.

“Good morning,” Mack chirps, much too happily.

He grunts, and she slides into the seat across from him as Diana takes the seat beside her.

I still can’t believe we get to do this, that we can hang out basically whenever we want, schedules permitting. Our friendship has always been from a distance, coordinated through visits and summer camp and a lot of late night phone calls because of the time difference. It was worth staying up late to talk to her.

Diana has settled in well with my friend group, too. She gets along with Sam and Mack, who’s recently started hanging out with us, and she and Mason have seemed to really click. She has no difficulty keeping up with the guys. She’s charmed Tucker and Amir, and she flirts with Greg, who isn’t shy about flirting back. I don’t think anything is happening there. She’s never shown any interest in any football players before, not at USC and not in high school. Even when my high school’s quarterback would flirt with her at the parties after our games, she never paid him any attention.

I don’t know what kind of guys she’s interested in. She’s never posted pictures with any guys on social media. She goes out—she’s called me before or after a date, wanting to talk everything over, and sometimes she’s texted me from the bed of some dude who disappointed her—but she doesn’t date, not really. As far as I know, she’s never had a boyfriend. As far as I know, she’s never wanted one.

If nothing ever happens between us, if we stay friends for the rest of our lives… I won’t be happy, exactly, but I can be content. If she decides she wants to go out with someone else… that’s going to sting. I don’t like that she was texting some dude last night. Not because I’m being possessive over her. More because it stings that I’m right in front of her and she doesn’t see me.

At the same time, I don’t want to sacrifice the amazing friendship we’ve had for the last fourteen years over something fleeting. I don’t want a fling: I want to be with her, to love her and honor her for the rest of our lives… which I realize is a strange reaction to a woman I’m not dating. Diana and I are friends, first and foremost, and I won’t do anything to jeopardize that.

When I was in high school, Diana introduced me to the torture that is pilates class. It’s a low impact fitness class that blends the stretching of yoga with high repetition counts and core stabilization. It’s great. I love it. It’s a brilliant way to recover after a tough football game when I’m not ready to lift hundreds of pounds of weights or grind my joints into dust doing cardio.

Mason is a fan of pilates, too, and because of her influence, Tucker, Amir, and Wes started going to class on Sunday afternoons, too. Before long, we recruited Greg and Miles to join our fun, and now our group of six guys will huff and puff and sweat our way through the hour of intense core work.

Diana is on the way to the airport for her game against West Virginia, otherwise she would probably be with us. She’s a big fan of both yoga and pilates classes as a low-impact workout in between heavy lifting sessions and on the field drills. I can’t do hot yoga, though—I don’t want to do anything in hundred degree heat, much less exercise. There’s a reason I picked a school in New England instead of going to Texas or Arizona to play football.

Okay, so there are lots of reasons. I’m from here. I didn’t want to go far. And I wanted a decent accounting program. After all, that’s why I’m here: to get an education. Football comes second to that—according to my parents, at least.

Flat on my back, my legs in the tabletop position, I breathe and let the instructor flow through the variations of core exercises. It doesn’t matter how many weights I lift, how much core strength I have, or how often I do this: every time is hard, like I’ve never done this before.

Wes and Amir are on my left, Greg and Tucker on my right. Miles is on the other side of them, with Sam and two of her teammates. Slowly but surely, we have indoctrinated every one of our friends into our cult of attending pilates class every Sunday.

But Diana’s not here. She should be here.

She’s where she’s supposed to be, with her team on their way to a soccer game. It’s not fair of me to wish she were here with me instead. My football career isn’t more important than her soccer career. It’s because of football and soccer that we’re here, that we have the privilege of competing for our teams and our school.

It’s nice to spend some time with the guys. Miles has Sam now, and Tucker and Mason are attached at the hip. We had a lot of fun during the summer, the six of us thrown into our house for the second year in a row while we battled out two a day practices and summer training.

Mason stayed on campus, training with the track team, so she’s been around a good deal lately. Sam went home to Mississippi for the break. Now that she’s back, now that school is in session again, we’re back to the Saturday night routine of fraternity parties and sorority events after football games. Mason’s track parties are legendary, too—I’ve snuck into a few of those over the last year, and let’s just say, those kids know how to party.

Sundays, though, are reserved for the guys. We start with recovery brunch, get massages or help with stretching from the team staff, and meet up for pilates class at four every week. After class, we’ll grab dinner and then head back to the house to watch a movie. Since Wes would rather stay home, it’s our little way of enjoying the time with our core group. We might crack open a few beers, or something stronger if the movie calls for it, and then we spend a few hours on the couch hanging out and maybe playing a few video games.

This year is our final year together. More than half of us are graduating this spring; Amir and Greg still have another year of eligibility left, so they might stick around for one more season… and maybe a few semesters, depending on the progress they make in their degrees. Greg is probably headed to the NFL, following in his father’s footsteps. Amir has talked briefly about going back to Wisconsin, but the more he talks about grad school, the more it seems like that’s the last thing he wants to do.

I’m not afraid of going to graduate school, of getting an MBA or whatever degree my father decides is necessary. What I want—a break between now and then—may or may not be feasible. It’s not a hardship to agree to work for his company; it’s what I’ve been groomed to do my entire life.

Diana has said a few times she might want to do grad school, but she’s nowhere close to applying and pursuing it. Wherever she decides to live after graduation, I’ll do everything I can to ensure we can stay together as much as possible. We can rent an apartment in whatever part of town she wants. I’ll make the commute work.

Hell, if she wants to move back to Amherst, I’m sure there’s a way I can manage to work partially remote and commute the rest of the time. As much as my parents don’t like Diana, they understand familial piety. Her dad is sick. She wants to be close to him. That’s something to celebrate.

No matter what happens, I want to be with her. Wherever she is, I’ll find a way to make it happen—for my sake, as well as hers.

Chapter 17

Diana

Johanna is pissed that I’m hanging out with Emma and the rest of the defense instead of kowtowing at her feet. I can see it on her face, in the set of her jaw and the way she crosses her arms over her chest and can’t look at me. Somehow I can’t bring myself to care. I know that she’s going to make my life difficult in a myriad of ways, but right now, it all feels like a little too much drama.