I hissed and groaned as I unlocked the front door when I got back to the dorm, a movement that shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, but it lit every muscle in my back on fire. I was always sore after a game, the result of sixty minutes of hard-fought yards gained.
But after a loss?
The pain always seemed worse.
I barely managed to swing my duffel bag into the corner of my room before I face-planted on the bed, already considering another shower. I’d already taken one at the stadium, but here, I could stand under the stream of hot water for an hour undisturbed and soak away some of the soreness.
If I was going to, I needed to do it before sleep pulled me under, so I pushed myself off the bed with another groan.
But then, I heard the music.
Sad and slow, a somber beat that drifted through the thin wall separating my room from Riley’s. I sighed, walking over to rest my back against the wall, my head falling back to do the same. I listened for any hint that she was crying, but heard nothing other than the music.
I closed my eyes, chest aching with what I knew she was putting herself through in there. In all the time we’d played together, I’d seen her miss a handful of kicks — and never more than one in a game. She was off tonight, and we paid for it.
I knew she’d never let herself live it down.
Pushing off the wall, I left my room and walked right over to hers before I could talk myself out of it. I rapped my knuckles on the old, thick wood door, but no greeting came.
“Novo,” I tried, but she didn’t answer.
With another knock of warning, I tried the door handle, turning it slowly and opening her door just a crack to give her the chance to scream or throw something or spew fire from her mouth like a dragon if she wanted me to fuck off.
Again, nothing.
I opened it a bit more, heart sagging at the sight of what I found. Riley sat on her floor, feet soaking in a sad container of soapy water, shoulders hunched and eyes out of focus as she stared at the bubbles. A bowl of melted vanilla ice cream sat untouched beside her, sprinkles swimming in the goop. The song ended, but another melancholy one took its place in the next beat, and she didn’t so much as look at me when I sat down across from her.
“I see you and Gavin went to get ice cream after all,” I commented, nodding to the melted mess and pretending like I didn’t already know.
Riley looked at it, blinked, and then looked at the bubbles again.
“You okay?”
She didn’t move.
I sighed, crossing my legs under me and balancing my elbows on my knees. “It’s not your fault.”
She finally looked at me then, pinning me with a look that said bullshit.
“It’s not. You missed a kick. But there were plenty of other opportunities where we could have scored, or defense could have stopped them from scoring.”
“Defense played the hell out of that game, and you know it,” she countered, her voice gravelly and raw. “And I didn’t just miss a kick. I missed two. One of them being a fucking extra point. An extra point kick, Zeke.”
I pressed my lips together, giving a tight nod to let her know I understood her frustration. I glanced at her feet in the tub, then. “Hurting?”
“More than usual.”
“That’s the pride,” I said with a smile.
She didn’t return it.
“Here,” I said, unfolding my legs and reaching my hands out for her feet. I made a give me motion with my hands when she didn’t move. “Let me help.”
As if she wasn’t already frozen before, every part of her stiffened, and she arched one eyebrow so high it could have passed as bangs.
I barked out a laugh. “Give me your feet, Riley.”
“Ew! Are you insane?” She coiled away from me, taking her bucket of suds with her. “Absolutely not.”
I let my hands fall with a clap against my thighs, giving her an exhausted look of annoyance. Then, I dunked my hand right into that soapy bucket and grabbed her ankle.
“Hey!”
She tried to wriggle free, but I held tight.
“That water is lukewarm and not going to do anything to help. Stop being stubborn and just… fucking relax.”
Her eyes narrowed even more, but with a glance at the pathetic water, she made a face and eased up, letting me guide her ankle into my lap.
“They’re wet,” she warned me, as if I couldn’t already tell by the way her foot dampened my shorts. “And probably dirty.”
“You act like I don’t smash up against wet, dirty men every day of my life.”
She almost crooked a smile at that, but in the next breath, her entire face twisted up in pain, body curling in as something between a yelp and a groan escaped her lips. I had barely even started massaging her, which told me how sore she was.
“Easy,” I told her, then I hopped up long enough to grab a few pillows from her bed. I propped them up behind her, waited until she relaxed against them and took her other foot out of the soapy water, and then pulled her ankle back into my lap. “Try to relax.”
I started slow, squeezing her foot in my hands and rubbing wide circles on her heel. She hissed, staring at where my hands worked like she still wasn’t sure about me touching her. When I ran my thumbs hard and slow up the arch of her foot, she moaned, her head falling against the pillows as her back arched, fists clenching at her sides.
I froze at the sound, at the sight, a very non-PG-13 image striking me without warning.
Riley seemed to sense it, too, her eyelids fluttering open as her hazel eyes made contact with mine.
I tore my gaze away and focused on her foot, letting out a slow breath as I made the same motion, a little softer this time.
“You were in your head,” I said, desperate to talk about anything so I could stop zeroing in on the little noises she was making as I massaged her. “I saw it even before the game started.”
Riley sighed. “I know. I felt it.”
“What’s going on?”
Another deep sigh, followed by a groan as I massaged the ball of her foot, thumbs working up the middle. “I don’t know. Maybe just pressure since we haven’t lost a game?” She frowned. “At least, we hadn’t.”
“You had the yips.”
She cocked a brow.
“I mean, not technically. But you know what I mean, it’s like… a mental block.”
Riley nodded, her brows tugging together as she stared at where I worked on her foot. “I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t shake it. I…” She swallowed. “I’ve never felt like that before.”
Her eyes watered, but she sniffed quickly, blinking several times to clear any sign of moisture or emotion.
“It’s different from high school, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
I considered my next words carefully. “You know… if you didn’t want to do this anymore… Gavin would—”
“I want to play.”
I knew what she’d say before I even baited her to say it, but I couldn’t help but smile a little, my eyes finding her determined gaze.
As if she’d been caught in a trap, she cleared her throat, sitting back a little as she amended. “I made a promise.”
“And you love it.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, silent.
“I don’t know how to bounce back from this,” she confessed a few minutes later, her voice soft and cracking. “I know it was just one game, but… I feel like it sank its teeth into me. And the way everyone looked at me in the locker room…”
“Fuck them. They all had things they could have done better tonight, and they know it.”
“But it was my kick that lost the game, Zeke,” she said, her eyes flicking between mine. “You and I both know it, and so does everyone else.”
For a while, I just worked on her foot, up her ankle, even taking time to stretch and crack her toes before I moved to the next foot. She groaned with even more earnest, and I realized it was her kicking foot, the top of it a little bruised from the bad contacts tonight.
“Maybe we could help each other.”
She quirked her head to the side. “No offense, but I’m pretty sure you don’t know the first thing when it comes to kicking.”
“Hey! I helped train your brother when we were younger, thank you very much,” I defended. “And helped you get ready for tryouts in high school, in case you forgot.” I shook my head. “But that’s not what I mean.”
Riley was quiet, waiting.
“I know we’ve kind of been at odds this season…” I made a face. “Or for years, if we’re being honest. But what if instead of working against each other… what if we work together?”
I met Riley’s skeptical gaze.
“Look, Coach called me into his office after the game. My grades are… well, they’re not looking great. If I want to remain active on the roster, I’m going to need help. And I know you could help me. And I,” I continued, shrugging. “I know what it takes mentally to play football — through the good and the bad. I can get you back on your game and show you how to work through times like tonight.”
“We have a mental health coach,” Riley argued. “I can just go see her.”
“Sure. You could. But would you open up to her? Would you be able to pinpoint what’s going on?”
She frowned. “Well, she’d help me figure it out.”
“Only if you were willing to open up. And let’s face it — you don’t open up to anyone.”
Riley frowned even more at that.
“I know you,” I said softly, touching her shin until she looked at me again. “I know what you’ve been through. I know you felt pressure tonight because Gavin was in the stands, and because our record so far seemed too good to be true. You were already planning to fail tonight, because life has taught you that any time things are going great, the other shoe will drop and everything will crash down around you. And I know that you put so much goddamn pressure on yourself to be perfect that the outcome has become your identity.”
Her eyes widened a bit more with everything I said, her breaths more and more erratic.
“When you’re performing well, you’re happy and amazing. When you mess up even the tiniest bit, you feel worthless and like an imposter.”
Her lips parted, and I knew I’d nailed her down.
“Right now, you’re probably overanalyzing everything about tonight — the way you lined up for your kick, your skip-jog up, the placement of the ball, the way you made contact. You’re wondering if you should change something, or everything, because clearly it isn’t working. But that’s a lie, Novo — it does work. It has worked ninety-nine percent of the time. Consistency, that’s what we want. Not perfection. And I can help you shrug this off and get back to performing the way I know you can.”
She looked as though I’d just stripped off every piece of my clothing, her little mouth open in a gape as she blinked a few times before zipping it shut.
“So… you help me on the field, I help you with schoolwork,” she finally said.
I nodded.
Riley rolled her lips together, sitting back against the pillows and shaking her head like it was a ridiculous idea. But then her eyes flicked to me, and she swallowed.
“What do you have to lose?” I asked.
She considered, and then with her brows folding inward, she simply nodded.
I gave a short nod in response, picking up her ankle again to work on her Achilles. “We start tomorrow.”
