Fourth Down (6 page)

Leaning my head back against the couch
and closing my eyes, I tried to imagine what it would have been
like for him to be a few short months from being drafted and then
lose it all. It was like winning the lottery and having the ticket
blow away in the wind on your way to claim the prize. What a huge
let down.

The next thing I knew I was awakened
by the front door shutting. I glanced at the clock and saw it was
almost midnight. Feeling bad about falling asleep on the job, I
quickly gathered up my stuff and wrapped my scarf around my neck. I
slipped on my boots and put my bag over my shoulder just as Ford
walked in. He looked like hell, and all I wanted to do was give him
a hug. He didn’t seem like a hugger though, so I held back. His
gaze met mine across the room, and his eyes were tired.

“There’s some chili in the fridge and
cornbread on the counter, if you’re hungry,” I said quietly. He
nodded but didn’t say anything as he walked towards the stairs. I
watched as he walked and noticed the slight limp on his right
side.

When I got in my car I took one last
look at the house. Ford’s bedroom faced out to the front yard, and
I could see him through the window sitting on his bed with his head
in his hands. My heart ached for him, but I knew there was nothing
I could do to help him. I considered it a gift to have the time to
say goodbye to a loved one, but Ford obviously didn’t see it that
way.

*****

Back in my apartment, in my pajamas
with my hair braided over my shoulder, I plugged my phone in to the
charger. It had died earlier in the day, and I never remembered to
bring my charger with me anywhere. A couple of minutes later, when
it was charged enough to receive a signal, my phone beeped with a
voicemail. I was already in bed with the lights out, but I turned
on the lamp beside my bed and crossed the room to my phone. It was
probably just my mom or Brooke, the only two people who ever called
me, but I couldn’t go to sleep without making sure it wasn’t
something important.

The number of the missed call wasn’t
one I recognized, although it did look vaguely familiar. The voice
on the voicemail was the absolute last one I expected to hear.
Well, actually the second to last. Ford would be the
last.

“Hey, Poppy. It’s me, Aiden. Um…I know
we haven’t talked in a while, but can you call me when you get
this? It’s important. My number is 416-555-6389. Call me whenever
you get this, no matter how late.”

What the hell? It was an
understatement that we hadn’t talked in a while; it had been almost
two years. Two years since I had found out Aiden had been cheating
on me. Two years since I had given up on my naïve thought that a
long distance relationship could work.

What could he possibly want from me
after all this time? I couldn’t go to sleep now without finding
out, so I dialed his number half expecting to get his voicemail.
Instead he answered on the second ring.

“Hello?” His voice sounded strained
and unlike I remembered.

“Hi, Aiden. It’s Poppy.”

“Oh my God, Poppy. Thank you for
calling me back.”

“Uh…sure. Is everything okay? I was
surprised to hear from you.”

I could hear him sigh on the other end
of the line. “No, everything’s not okay.”

All sorts of awful scenarios started
running through my mind. Did something happen to one of his
parents? Did he want me back? Yuck, I hope not. Was he dying of
some rare and horrible illness?

“I’m about to flunk out of Cornell,
and I need your help. You’ve taken a philosophy class,
right?”

Seriously? I held the phone out to
look at it; then looked around the room for hidden cameras, because
surely this was some kind of prank.

“So, let me get this straight, Aiden.
You called me after not speaking for two years. The reason for us
not speaking is that you cheated on me. And you want to know if
I’ve taken a philosophy class?” Saying it out loud made it sound
even more ridiculous.

“You’re the smartest person I know,
Poppy. I need you to help me pass Philosophy,” he said in a voice
that had me picturing him pouting.

Was I dreaming? Had I actually fallen
asleep and this was some weird twisted dream? Unfotunately, no.
Glancing at the clock I saw it was nearing 1:00 am, and I had to
teach a yoga class in eight hours. Normally I only taught on the
weekends, but I was filling in for another instructor
tomorrow.

“Why don’t you ask someone there? Like
someone who is actually in the class? It’s not really practical for
me to tutor you from almost two hours away.”

“Well, see that’s the thing. I don’t
need tutoring…I need a paper. It can be on anything really. We
didn’t have to tell the professor what we were writing about, so
whatever you’ve written about would work.”

Now he was just giving me a headache.
“Whoa, hold on. You want me to give you a paper I wrote so you can
pass it off as your own? You want me to help you cheat?”

My voice was raising by the
second as I wondered how much of a pushover I must have been for
him to think he could call me after two years and ask me to help
him cheat so he didn’t flunk out of Cornell. That was
my
dream school,
dammit!

“I’m really in trouble here, Poppy. If
I don’t pass this class, I’m out. This semester was my last
chance.”

My aversion to confrontation prevented
me from telling him off like I should have, but I did have enough
sense to hang up on him and turn my phone off. I wanted to throw it
against the wall, but I couldn’t afford to replace it.

Getting back in bed, I fumed about
Aiden. Sure, I had helped him a lot with homework in high school.
He was my boyfriend. I felt like it was my duty. Maybe I had helped
him too much. Maybe I had helped him all the way to
Cornell.

I had been accepted too, but my mom
and Rick couldn’t afford what my scholarships didn’t cover. So, I
didn’t go. Aiden went on without me, but we stayed together and
tried a long distance relationship.

It wasn’t until Christmas break of
freshman year that I found out he had been cheating on me the
entire fall semester. Out of sight, out of mind I guess. It was
hard to get over, more for the humiliation factor than any actual
heartbreak over losing Aiden. Clearly he was an asshole. But I felt
like I should have known, or it was somehow my fault for falling
for his load of crap.

This day was just getting worse, so I
willed myself to sleep so I could start fresh tomorrow. I did fall
asleep fairly quickly from sheer exhaustion, but when I awoke in
the morning I could remember tossing and turning a lot in the
night.

I brewed one cup of coffee and drank
it while I got ready for my day. Yoga class was at 9:00 for an
hour, and then I had a small break before I had to be at class at
11:30. Then my shift at Maggie’s at 2:00, assuming I wasn’t
actually fired. Ford was madder than hell yesterday, but my
relationship with Maggie was strong. I didn’t think she would allow
him to fire me. Not that it would be any less awkward working at
his house when it was clear he despised me. Oh, well. Grabbing my
bag I locked up my apartment and trudged down the steps on the side
of the garage.

I had to turn the ignition three times
before my car started up. Dear God, please let my car not die yet.
Finally it started, and I drove myself to the community center to
get this day started. Hopefully it would be a better day than
yesterday.

It couldn’t get much worse.

Chapter Four

Ford

I knew I was in trouble when I walked
into the kitchen to mix up a protein shake before hitting the gym,
and my mom was already awake and waiting for me at the kitchen
table. She had already made my shake and pushed it across the
table, motioning for me to join her. The look in her eyes let me
know I was about to get an earful.

Yesterday when I found out that my mom
had preplanned her funeral, finalized her will and made
arrangements to put the house up for sale, all with Poppy’s help, I
may have overreacted. But, fuck! Why didn’t anyone tell me what was
going on? I know I’m not the easiest person to talk to, but I
deserved to know about this shit. And to be the one to help my mom,
even if it did kill me to do it.

“Ford, you’re my son, and I love you.
But I have never been as disappointed in you as I have been the
last few weeks. The way you have treated Poppy is disgraceful. She
is a lovely young woman, and she is just doing her job. In fact,
she’s doing more than her job by helping me out with things I know
I can’t count on you for.”

Ouch. To hear that I’m a
disappointment and she can’t count on me really stung, but she
didn’t stop there.

“You need to realize how your words
and actions can affect other people. For the last three years I
have let you wallow in your grief and self pity, but it’s time to
stop. Life is going on around you, Ford, and you’re missing
it.”

“What life, Ma? I work, and I work
some more. That’s all there is for me here,” I grumbled.

“Not
your
life. The lives of the people
who care about you, and that you’re supposed to care about in
return. You’ve done a wonderful job taking care of me, but I won’t
be around much longer. You need to start paying attention to what
and who else is out there.”

I frowned at her, not at all following
where she was going with this, other than to remind me she was
dying.

“Did you know that Leah had a
miscarriage last year before she got pregnant with Maddy?” She
asked me.

“No,” I replied. Why hadn’t Josh, or
Leah herself, mentioned it? I would have wanted to know that two of
my closest friends were going through that. Granted I would have no
idea what to do in a situation like that, but I would have expected
to hear about it.

“Did you know that Grady’s father had
a cancer scare last spring? Everything turned out fine, but did you
know that?”

“No.”

“Do you know what Grady and Lindsay
really went through several years ago?”

“I knew that one,” I said. Although it
wasn’t Grady who told me. It was Lindsay, and she was drunk at the
time.

“How do you know all this stuff about
my friends?” I asked my mom.

She raised her eyebrows and pointed
her finger in my face. “The question should be why you didn’t know
about these things. Your friends are too afraid to burden you with
anything upsetting, because you are so wrapped up in your own
pitiful world. Is that the kind of person you want to be,
Ford?”

No, that wasn’t who I wanted to be. It
was true I had been down for a long time, but I didn’t want Josh
and Grady to think they couldn’t rely on me. They had been my best
friends forever, and they would have my back in a
second.

“Ford, the fact is that I am dying. I
have accepted it, and I need you to do the same. You don’t have to
be happy about it, but I need your support in these last few
months. Poppy drove me to the funeral home so you won’t be burdened
by planning my funeral. Poppy drove me to the lawyer’s office so
there won’t be any legal red tape with the house or my belongings.
And she drove me to meet with Lana so you can easily put the house
on the market if you choose to. Don’t you see, honey? I’m doing all
this to make my passing easier on you.”

I had felt a lot of emotions in my
life, but shame hadn’t been one of them until now. I was ashamed at
what a shitty friend I had been. I was ashamed that I had been so
wrapped up in my own stupid life that I didn’t see my friends were
going through their own rough times. Most of all I was ashamed that
my mom was having to go through this alone, because I was too
stubborn to accept the inevitable.

“I’m sorry, Ma,” I began, but she
placed her hand on my arm and stopped me.

“I know, Ford. You don’t need to
apologize to me. But you do need to apologize to your friends, and
you’re going to start with Poppy.”

I opened my mouth to say that Poppy
wasn’t my friend, but she interrupted me again.

“She is teaching yoga at the community
center this morning. Her class starts at 9:00, so you can go before
then.”

“Fine,” I said, standing up and
putting my hat on.

“And don’t you come back here until
she has accepted your apology,” my mom lectured. I rolled my eyes
and grabbed my keys.

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to be better, Ma.
You can count on me for whatever you need, okay?”

“Okay.”

I hugged her hard, the thought that I
wouldn’t be able to hug her for much longer beginning to sink
in.

It was just a little after 8:00 so I
had some time before I needed to be at the community center to talk
to Poppy. I could go to the gym like I had originally planned, but
instead I turned my truck in the direction of the boat shop.
Grady’s father, Mitch, owned a boat repair shop down on the lake,
and both Grady and Josh had worked there since high school. Josh
primarily did repair work, but Grady had recently branched out into
customization. He had completed work for his first famous client,
some hotshot actor, at the end of the summer and was now in high
demand.