I shake my head. “I don’t even know where to start, Dad. I really don’t.”
“It’s not still Kylie, is it?”
“No. It’s not about Kylie.” I roll down the window to block out “Oh Juliet” by Joel Crouse.
How do you explain what happened? With Cheyenne, first, and then, even more difficult, with Echo. It seems impossible. How do you explain the significance of what happened with Echo?
I can almost taste your kiss…
Jesus, that song is fucking killing me. It’s the reverse of what happened, in some ways, because I feel like it’s my heart that was broken, not hers, but the emotion behind it is just slaughtering me.
I punch viciously at the radio until something else, anything else, comes on. I leave it at a pop station, something electronic and recycled and auto-tuned and polished with a packaged, factory-processed shine. The kind of empty bullshit that I loathe, but it holds no emotion and no sting of pain.
Dad glances at me with something awfully close to amusement in his eyes. “Well, that explains a lot.”
I growl. “I don’t think I can talk about it, Dad.”
“Is it worse than everything with Kylie?”
I shrug. “Different. Everything with Kylie was a long time building, and it was mostly my own fault for waiting so long. This is different.”
“Well, I’ll let you be for now. We got us a long drive ahead of us, though, so if you feel like talking about it…”
“I can’t, Dad. I just can’t. It’s too much, too soon, and I don’t even know where to start or what I’m gonna do.”
“If there’s a question of what you’re gonna do, then it ain’t over, is it?”
I sigh. “Not really. Here’s the short version: I met her in San Antonio. Under…unusual circumstances, and just leave it at that. Turns out, though, that she goes to Belmont. And I really don’t want to go back to Nashville, for a lot of reasons. I’m as over Kylie as I can get, but it’s still going to be hell having to see her. Plus, my football career is over, and all my friends at school are football buddies. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t—I don’t know who I am, Dad. And being in Nashville is just going to confuse me even further. Kylie, football…and now Echo is there too…it’s the last place on Earth I want to be. But I couldn’t stay in San Antonio any longer, and with my knee fucked up I can’t drive for long, and I don’t know where else to go.”
“Got yourself a pile of troubles, it sounds like.” Dad switches the radio station, but tunes it to a more traditional country station, the older stuff, George Strait, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks. “What’s the deal with…Echo, you said her name is?”
“Yeah. Echo. It’s hard to explain. Partly because I don’t even know what the problem really is. She wouldn’t say. She just…shut me down, but I could tell the reasons she gave weren’t the real ones.”
Dad mulls on it. “Well, in my experience, when a woman shuts down like that, it’s out of fear or the need to protect herself, usually a bit of both. She may be afraid of what she’s feeling, you know? I mean, obviously I don’t know her or the situation, but that’s my experience.” He glances at me. “You want my advice?”
“Sure.”
“When we get home, take some time to settle in, first, okay? Let me get you in to see Doc Petersen, get another opinion on your knee. And then I think you need to face the mess you left behind in regard to Kylie.” He glances at me, eyes sharp. “She and Oz got married, you know that, right? They’re living in Nashville. They’re happy. But I can tell she’s upset about you, how things ended. You left real sudden, you know? And before you left, things were—”
“I was an asshole. Please don’t remind me.”
“I think she just wants her friend back—”
“I really don’t know how I’ll handle that,” I interrupt. “I don’t know how I’ll feel seeing her again. I feel like I’ve had enough time and space to know that I’m past the craziness I felt back then, you know? Especially because I’ve got all this with Echo on my plate. But it’ll be hard, regardless.”
“I guess all I want to say is just don’t not handle it. You two were best friends for far too long to let it sit.”
I nod. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ll handle it, I promise.”
“Good.”
We drive in companionable silence for many hours after that, sometimes talking, mostly not; Dad and I are alike in that we don’t need to talk for long periods of time. Somewhere past midnight, I convince Dad to let me drive for a bit so he can take a break. He falls asleep quickly, head against the window, and I let the road hypnotize me, let my thoughts spiral loose and free. I let myself think about Echo, about how much I miss her, how much I want to not even go home first, how I want to find her at Belmont and demand a resolution, demand truth. I let myself think about Kylie, too, for the first time in a long time.
I can’t say I would have done anything differently, given the chance, because I’m just not sure how else I could have felt, under the circumstances. But I do wish I’d been a better friend, thought about Kylie more and myself less. I was worried, though, you know? Given initial impressions and first reactions—judging totally by appearances and rumors—Oz should have been trouble, could have been really bad for Kylie. Could have taken her down the wrong path. But fortunately for her, he turned out to be a decent guy who really does love her. But it could have turned out much differently.
It didn’t, though, and like Dad said, I owe it to the friendship we had to fix things.
* * *
I’ve been home for two weeks, resting, staying home, lying low and keeping to myself, trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do. Moping, basically. Finally Dad all but drags me to Doc Petersen’s office in step one of the fix-Ben’s-life program.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to concur with the doctor in San Antonio,” Dr. Petersen says, a sympathetic expression on his aged face. “Given a lot of hard work, you’ll see normal everyday mobility. Walking, even jogging, won’t be a problem. But competitive ball? Especially on the professional level? Impossible, I’m afraid. If you’re tough enough, you might get a season or two out of it, but one injury, push it too hard, and you’ll be worse off than ever. And even if you were careful, the strain would eventually just be too much.”