Going the Distance (18 page)

I didn’t have an answer, so I just sat there and stayed quiet.

When he saw I wasn’t really convinced, he laughed. “Look, you can think whatever you want, but trust me when I say there are a ton of ’ballers out there who would kill for what you were born with. That doesn’t mean you should go and be a douche about it, but it does mean you should thank God every day for giving it to you.”

We pulled onto base, and I filed the information away somewhere in my brain to look at again later. I was just too tired to really think then.

When August began to dwindle away, it was becoming clear there was no way I could play that year. I was walking, which was awesome, but anything more than that, and I started panting like I was two Big Macs away from a heart attack. The coach assured me again that I had a place on the team, but I started to get depressed because it felt like I was falling behind.

Falling behind what, I couldn’t tell you. All I knew was I was in a race with some fantasy version of myself, and he hadn’t been in a car accident that almost killed him, so he was playing this year and I wasn’t. Of course, fake me wasn’t into guys either and actually liked his girlfriend, so he was ahead of me in more than a few ways.

Which reminds me, I guess I should mention what happened with Carol before we get too far ahead of ourselves.

Carol, of course, tried to visit me in the hospital, but at first they didn’t want anyone in my room wearing me out other than my dad. After that, Nate had practically moved into my hospital room, so I had talked to her a few times and assured her I was good and didn’t need anything. Which was true, but I guess as my girlfriend she wanted to do something. When I started PT, my time was either spent at therapy killing myself or at home resting up from killing myself, so I had even less time for her to come by and check on me.

Finally, one day her sister Susan knocked on my door. In her hand was my class ring.

I was lying on the couch and tried to get up when I saw her. She glanced at Nate and walked past him without saying anything. “So yeah, this is yours. I know you got in an accident, and I’m glad you’re okay now, but using that to ignore my sister is a shitty thing to do.”

“I didn’t—” I began to protest.

“Tommy told me about you,” she said, cutting me off, and I felt myself go pale. “When you came back and apologized to her, I thought you had changed, but obviously I was wrong,” she said, looking back at Nate again. “So here, and leave her alone from now on. Got it?”

I nodded as I took the ring.

“I’m not going to tell her because she’d just feel like an idiot that she had no idea, but I should. I should tell the entire school who you really are and see if you’re still big man on campus.”

As she got angrier, I just shrank more and more inside.

“Okay, we got it,” Nate said, opening the door.

She looked over and laughed. “Oh, so you’re the new boyfriend? You know he dumped the last one without even telling him why, right? When it comes to Danny, it’s all about him, and no one else matters.”

Nate took a step toward her and growled, “Bitch, you have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not his boyfriend, he didn’t blow your sister off, and if he did dump some guy, do you think he did it with a smile? You think doing something like that would be easy? And before you ride out of here on your broom, the reason he has to lie to people like your sister and dump guys he really likes is because of small-minded fuckers like you, who think threatening to tell people is acceptable.”

Her mouth was almost to the floor, she looked so shocked.

“Well, you two should be very happy together,” she snarled, storming out.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, but I’m pretty sure she never heard me.

“I’m not gay, bitch!” Nate bellowed before he slammed the door. “Though chicks like that sure make me wish I was.” He looked over at me, and whatever he saw wasn’t good. “Danny? You okay?”

The room was spinning as I felt the house of cards that had been my life come crashing down around me. Cody, Tommy, all of it just came slamming into my brain at the same time and I fell back onto the couch, dropping my ring because everything it reminded me of just made me sick.

And that’s how my summer ended, sports fans. Not with a victory but with a big old Danny Monroe clusterfuck.

Yeah, I don’t know how I couldn’t have seen it before. God loves me big time.

W
HEN
SUMMER
break ended, Nate went back to College Station, and I got ready for a school year that was going to suck in, like, fourteen different ways.

I don’t want to say that the guys were happy I wasn’t playing that year, but it was pretty obvious they weren’t going to be crying rivers of sadness for me. I had done too much last season to alienate myself from them to think they would have some sympathy that I’d busted up my leg and hip. The coach explained I would be acting like a student coach that season, meaning I was going to watch the squad and work with the guys one-on-one to build up the skills they needed to improve. At first it seemed like the shittiest thing I could do for a season, but then something happened.

I remembered how much I loved the game of basketball.

Last year it had been all about points and winning, and I forgot the sheer joy of just playing the game. It crept up on me. I was going over hand placement for free throws when I got up and hobbled over to the free-throw line. I couldn’t even jog yet, but standing still, I could do all right. The guy I was showing—I think his name was Simon or something—was watching as I steadied the ball with my left hand, showing him what I’d been talking about.

I dribbled twice and looked up at the basket, and for a brief moment it looked like it was a million miles away. My mind couldn’t understand how I had ever sunk a ball into that tiny basket from so far away. Suddenly I felt like I had never played before and everything was completely alien.

Then I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Without thinking, I put the ball up. My hip ached as I went up on my toes to give it power, but I ignored the pain and stood there, watching the ball sail away from me in slow motion. It spun over and over as it drifted toward the basket as if it had all the time in the world. I was sweating as I watched that ball climb and climb….

And miss as it ricocheted off the backboard.

I could hear Simon stifle a gasp next to me, because if that had happened last year, it would have been followed by a string of curses blaming everything but myself for the miss. Instead I just laughed and said, “Okay, you want to do it exactly like that except for the missing part.” He saw I wasn’t upset, and he laughed also.

From there things began to change.

The rest of the guys realized that the accident hadn’t only hurt my leg but possibly knocked out the gigantic stick that had been up my ass. It was a good day, and by the end, Simon’s posture was better, and he was well on his way to mastering the free throw.

The rest of my day, unfortunately, went downhill the moment I walked into rehab.

Maybe I was limping, or maybe PT guy had some weird psychic sense, but he knew instantly something was wrong. “You playing basketball?” he asked as I began to stretch.

I froze, wondering how he could have figured that out. “No,” I said instantly and then looked away from him before he could use his crazy eyes on me. When I glanced back, he was still staring at me. “Not really,” I added, and his expression didn’t change. “It was a free throw. One free throw!”

His face lit up as he smiled. “Oh, just a free throw. Then that’s cool.”

I sighed in relief when was he suddenly in my face screaming. “No, it is not cool!” I winced, but he kept on going. “Do you get that you’re lucky to be walking without a cane? No, of course you don’t, because you think this is all a joke.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he wasn’t in the mood to let me talk. “Your hip is on the verge of cracking, and when it does you’re going to have to have screws put into it, and then you’re going to be lucky if you can jog, much less do free throws. Every time you put stress on it, say like coming back down from a jump, you run the risk it will just go, and that’s it. No more basketball, no more normal life—you’re just a tall guy with a limp. So you wanna think this is a waste of time or that you’re invulnerable? Be my guest. Because
my
hips are fine.”

I felt so bad I thought I might throw up.

“Don’t even bother warming up. I am too pissed right now to do this. I’ll just end up hurting you.”

Oh my God, he’d been holding back this entire time?

“Be here tomorrow if you’re serious. If not, do whatever you want. It’s your life.”

I hobbled out of there as fast as I could. As I sat at the bus stop and waited for the shuttle that went by the base, I thought about what he’d said. The thought I might never play basketball again really hadn’t sunk in. I had been scared I might not be as good as I was, but not being able to play at all was something I couldn’t get my head around. What was the point of my life if I couldn’t do the thing I loved? What would I do? I couldn’t even imagine it. I loved absolutely nothing else as much as basketball. On the bus I swore I would take PT seriously and do everything I could do to get back to basketball.

Because I didn’t know any other way to live.

At school I did my best to get the guys ready for the season, and after school I threw myself into PT as if my life depended on it. Because in a lot of ways, it did. PT guy didn’t say anything to me, but I knew he was watching me like a hawk. He expected me to mess up again, and I knew it would be the last strike against me. So I focused all my energies into getting better and stopped worrying so much about the season.

It was a couple of weeks before the season started when Nate hit me up on Skype from his dorm.

“So he hasn’t killed you yet?” he asked me about PT guy.

“Not yet, but I thought he was going to when I told him about the free throw.” I could see Nate’s dorm room behind him, and it looked like the coolest place I could imagine. I mean, sure it didn’t look like much, but it was his, all his, and that was something I had never had before. Every room I’d had really belonged to the military, so it never felt like it was really mine. I was a renter—no, a squatter at best—since I didn’t pay anything. So the dorm looked like it was Willy Wonka’s place in my eyes.

“Well, that you deserved,” he said, laughing. “You could have messed yourself up bad. And it wasn’t even a real free throw.”

I gave him a grin. “So if I busted my hip making an actual point, then it would be okay?”

He pretended to think about it for a second. “Well, yeah, that seems fair.”

“Fuck off,” I said, laughing.

He looked like he was going to say something when a head came into the frame. I didn’t know who she was, but she was really pretty. “We’re going out to Westgate,” she announced before giving Nate a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll be at Mad Hatter’s if you change your mind.”

He kissed her back, and I felt a small chill go down my spine.

“This is Danny,” he said, gesturing to the screen.

She looked over and waved into the webcam. “Hey, I’ve heard about you,” she said, smiling.

I smiled back, but I felt my stomach sour. “Hey,” I answered, not sure what to say.

She waited a few seconds to see if there was anything else, and then she looked back to Nate and said bye. He watched her leave the room, and I just felt worse and worse. “So yeah, that’s Amy…,” he began to explain until he saw the look on my face. “Danny? What’s wrong?”

It was a good question, one I couldn’t answer. I mean, why was I so upset? I knew Nate wasn’t into guys. Was there some part of me that was jealous? I mean, I knew I had no right, but my heart apparently thought otherwise. “Yeah, I’m cool,” I answered, sounding lame even to myself.

He paused and looked at me through the screen for a long time before he started talking. “Danny, you know I’m not like that.”

Awesome, not only am I being stupid and jealous, but I’m being
obviously
stupid and jealous.

“I know,” I said way too fast. “It’s not that.” I lied so badly that I knew I would never be a criminal mastermind because once accused, I’d just look down and deny it so badly they would have no choice but to lock me up.

“Danny,” he said, but I refused to look up at the screen. “Danny, look at me.” I peeked up, and I saw him staring at me intently. “You know I care for you as much as I can, but I don’t want you to get confused about what we are.”

“I’m not,” I said honestly. “I just….” And my words left me.

“It’s just what?” he prompted.

I took a deep breath and readied myself to say the last words I would ever say to Nate, because after this he would turn off his computer and never talk to me again. “It’s just this summer I got used to having you all to myself… even as friends, and I just miss you and it kills me I am stuck down here and can’t even play basketball and I am just a screwed up guy and I won’t blame you when you stop talking to me I just….” I felt my eyes start to sting, and I swore I wasn’t going to break down in front of him. “It’s nothing, my fault completely.” I’d expected a lot of different responses coming from him, from screaming to just unloading a buttload of insults at me, but I wasn’t ready for what he actually did.

He started laughing.

My mind didn’t quite know how to process that, so I just sat there dumbfounded. When he didn’t stop, I had to ask. “What’s so funny?”

He wiped his eyes and shook his head. “Dude, you are worse than any three girlfriends I have ever had.” I scowled, not really understanding what he was getting at but pretty sure it wasn’t good. He had to see the look of confusion on my face, and he sputtered out between laughs, “It’s not bad. I’m just—” He caught his breath. “—I mean, I spent my entire summer break taking care of you, and you want more?” Yep, I was right, I now felt even worse. “Look, bud, we will always be friends if I have my wish and no girl will ever change that, and the fact I go to school, like, eight hours away from you sucks, but neither one of us has enough money to commute back and forth just for a weekend. This isn’t about me. It’s just that you’re lonely.”