DiPalma began. “The Tide doesn’t have any next of kin listed for you. People for us to call when serious injuries, like yours today, happen.” He waited a beat before continuing. “Talk to one of the administrative women in the front office next time you come in and take care of it.”
“Nothing to take care of, Coach. Just me.”
“Despite your performance in this room this afternoon, I do know you didn’t spring from a donkey’s behind. You have family.”
Michael shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
“Girlfriend?”
Not anymore.
“No.”
DiPalma’s brown eyes were full of a lot more understanding than Michael was comfortable with. The weight of that knowledge was too much for him to bear. And that was before DiPalma began speaking again. “I was alone for a lot of years, Santiago. Had a lot of fun in those years. Met a lot of women, dated a few, did a few things more with a boatload of others. But when I met my wife, I realized what I’d been missing. Now, I’m not saying you need to find a wife or a serious girlfriend, but being alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially on a night like tonight.
“You need to list someone for us to call who should be notified in the event anything like this happens again. I expect to see you Tuesday morning to discuss our upcoming opponents.” DiPalma swiftly exited the room, leaving Michael alone with himself, his future suddenly looming like a big, black hole, with no definition.
~ * ~ * ~
“I saw the clips on the news tonight.” Calleigh made her way inside Mary’s apartment, her eyes grave.
“Thanks for coming over,” Mary sniffled into her bottomless tissues, her constant companion since seeing Michael’s injury.
“Of course. What happened?”
“What happened during the game? Or what happened with us?” Mary asked, blowing her nose, trying to quiet her heart that was pumping in double-time.
“The latter first, please,” Calleigh quietly asked as she settled herself on Mary’s loveseat.
“It was so stupid. We went to dinner at one of his teammate’s house and he made this stupid crack about marriage and how guys get what they deserve when they get married. He tossed it off in this patronizing way that indicated
he
would never be stupid enough to get married. Then, it just snowballed from there.”
Calleigh nodded her head in support. “He made a crack about marriage and…”
“And I asked him about it on the way home. Asked what he wanted for his future. Asked all the questions you’re supposed to ask when you love someone. Then I realized he doesn’t love me back, that we will never want the same things, and that it would hurt too much to stay with him knowing he would never want to be married.”
“So you broke it off.”
Mary nodded. “Yeah. And now he’s hurt,” she wailed, devastated that she wasn’t with him. He was completely without family, both literally and figuratively. Would any of his teammates visit him at the hospital? Who would drive him home? Who would reassure him that everything was going to be alright?
“What are you going to do about it?” Calleigh asked.
Mary shrugged. “What can I do about it?”
“You can call him. I’m sure his cell phone is still working in whatever hospital he was taken to. Ask him if he’s alright and if he needs anything. Go visit him.”
Mary shook her head before Calleigh even finished speaking. “No. I made it clear what I wanted and what I needed and he made it clear he doesn’t share my beliefs. There would be no point in visiting him.”
“You’d feel a whole lot better,” Calleigh gently pointed out.
“But that’s about me, not about him. I’m sure wherever he’s at, they’re taking good care of him.”
“You sure? You might regret not reaching out at a time like this. You don’t always get a second chance,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m positive. He’ll be alright and I’ll be the one worse for wear. Things are better this way. Our break remains clean,” Mary said, as the tears continued to mutely flow down her cheeks while she and Calleigh sat in the quiet silence.
~ * ~ * ~
The Tide’s weight room was as empty as his heart, all of his teammates on the practice field. Hollowed out with his blood barely coursing through, enough so that he was living without truly being alive. Two weeks had passed in a blur and at the same time, with crystal clarity. After being casted at the hospital, Dr. Harrington had released him the following day. Reaching his condo, it mocked him everywhere his eyes landed, daring to question the series of choices that had landed him alone at home and on the sidelines on the team. He couldn’t enter the kitchen without seeing Mary sitting at the island or standing at the stove, missing something they would share. At the grocery store, he’d unconsciously reached for her Special K and soy milk before realizing what he was doing. His bed had enlarged overnight, far too large without Mary in it. Flipping through channels, her shows remained on despite his disinterest, reminding him of all the nights they’d spent together watching television together before bed.
Her words, accompanied by those of DiPalma, echoed through his head in a continuous loop. A recording he couldn’t turn off and couldn’t run away from, literally and figuratively. A day hadn’t passed without him reaching for the phone, or at least contemplating it, calling her up, checking in on her. Telling her about his accident and confessing how much her absence gutted him. In the end, it turned out he’d wussed out and was too much of a pussy to contact her.
As much as it killed him to admit it, a part of his ego expected to hear from her first. What would he do then? Beg her to take him back? Confess his feelings?
“You know, I don’t pick your ass up and bring you here every day so that you can stare into space. Either start lifting or I’m going to tell Johnson where you live. You know he’ll be terrorizing you come off-season, stealing your game tapes, rifling through your notebooks.” Murray ambled in, settling in on the bench press across from where Michael considered the state of his life.
He pulled down the trapezoid bar while his triceps flared to life before responding.
Coughing, he said, “Thanks. It means a lot. I know it’s a pain in the ass to pick me up and bring me in every day.”
“Shut it, Santiago. I’m not looking for your gratitude, I’m looking for your fucking sweat. Every day you can’t work your one leg is a day that you have to work all your other muscles that much harder. I know you know this. What I don’t know is why when I come in here, I find you looking like a tub of butter. I’m not doing this for my health.”
Michael contemplated confiding in Murray. Sharing the details of his daily life with Mary liberated him in ways he’d never imagined, opening him up in an unexpected way. But what the fuck could he say to his defensive captain?
I’m an asshole and I lost my girlfriend.
I don’t know what I’ll do with my life outside of football if I can’t return, in part because I lost my girlfriend.
I miss my girlfriend so much, it physically fucking hurts. My chest is always tight and my thoughts are always scattered and upset.
My one refuge is now lost to me, until next season, which seems as far away as anything.
Instead, he went with: “I’ve got some things pressing on my mind.”
“Like your girlfriend?”
“Ex-girlfriend,” Michael answered, far too quickly.
“Ahhhh, I wondered why she wasn’t around.” A few more beats of silence while they both completed their lifts, not meeting each other’s eyes in the age-old way of macho men, entirely uncomfortable with discussing anything that remotely resembled that word. Feelings.
“Look, you miss her, tell her. You want her back, tell her.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, Santiago, sometimes it is. Love is one of those times.”
~ * ~ * ~
Her number, scribbled in his chicken-scratch, challenged him on the white piece of Tide letterhead. Accustomed to finding anything and everything any Tide player could ever possibly think to request, the public relations department tracked her down with an ease and swiftness that should have alarmed him.
Now he sat in his condo trying to decide what to do with it.
To hell with it. There was a spectacular chance she wouldn’t even allow him to introduce himself before hanging up. Or she’d listen and hang up on him. Likely, after telling him to fuck off.
Dialing her number, he let it ring.
One. Two. Three.
“Hello?”
“Is this Calleigh Stuart?” he asked.
A slight hesitation on the other end.
“Yes. Who’s this?” Suspicion iced every word.
“Michael Santiago. I’m a friend of Mary’s,” he answered. “We met at College Career Day.”
“I know who you are. Why are you calling me and what do you want?”
Michael licked his lips and thought this might be the second most important conversation in his life. Second only to the one he hoped to secure after this phone call.
“I need to talk to Mary. I messed things up between us, badly, a couple weeks ago.”
“I know you have her phone number and it hasn’t changed. Why don’t you call her? You do know how to operate a phone, right?” Sarcasm replaced the frost.
“The things I need to say, the first time I speak to her after what happened last time, I need to do in person,” he pleaded.
“So call her and set up a time to meet. It’s a free country.”
“Look, I need to do this in person. I don’t want to do this at school because it’s inappropriate and I would never blindside her that way at her work. And if I go to her apartment, I’m not sure she’d let me in.”
An irritated sigh crawled through the line, irritating his already frayed nerves. “I’m not her scheduler or keeper, Michael. I’m not sure what, exactly, you’re hoping to accomplish with this phone call to me. Are you trying to get me to maneuver her somewhere that you can magically appear at? Only to do what? What are your intentions?”
“I can assure you my intentions are entirely honorable. All I’m asking for is a heads-up if Mary’s planning on being anywhere that you know of in the next couple of days. That’s all. I promise I won’t do anything that would make you regret helping me.”
Calleigh’s silence lasted no longer than probably ten seconds. The ten longest seconds of Michael’s life. He lacked confidence in Plan B, but he could execute it if he had to. He hoped it didn’t come down to that.
“She’ll be at the Governor Hotel Saturday for Operation Rudolph. There will be signs directing you to it when you enter on the Tenth Street side.”
“Thank you.” His heart immediately lightened at her assistance. Buoyed, he would have jumped in place if he could have.
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t. I promise, Calleigh. I owe you. If there’s ever anything you need, you’ve got my number.”
~ * ~ * ~
The Governor Hotel’s second floor library ballroom on Southwest Tenth and Alder was decked out in all the best holiday decorations the season offered for gatherings. Four individually themed Christmas trees anchored each corner of the room, glittering with multi-colored lights, alive with shiny bows, twinkly garland, homemade and fancy ornaments, candy canes, and angels. Operation Rudolph was in full effect, with the kids and their families milling around, sipping hot chocolate, chowing down on donuts, cookies, and other treats, waiting for their turn with Santa as well as a few of the city’s stars, including a couple of Tide players and several Trail Blazers.
Mary was thankful none of the Tide players were among those she’d met that fateful evening at Murray’s house. An evening that seemed like an eternity away, but was really only a matter of weeks. She was dying to walk up and ask for an update, but where, exactly, would that lead?
“Hi. You don’t know me, but I used to love your teammate, Michael Santiago. And I know the news says he has some problem with his leg and is out for the rest of the seaso
n. Is it true? What can you tell me? Does he miss me? Has he asked about me?”
Yeah, that conversation would go over real well and result in a visit from a cop asking about stalking. Since the game, she had picked up her cell phone at least once a day, wanting to call him, hear his voice and ask him if he needed anything. Her sense of self-preservation was too strong and strangled any urge to communicate with Michael.
Rat bastard.
“Mary, Mary. You’re looking quite contrary. What’s wrong?” Calleigh glided up with a saucer of eggnog, David in tow slightly behind her.
“Nothing,” Mary responded, sipping the creamy concoction, surveying the room. The festive cheer was at odds with her melancholy, but she did not want to focus on it. Rather, she wanted to focus on her friends around her, the kids who were receiving presents they otherwise wouldn’t, and the fact the holiday season was her favorite time of year. The snowflakes, the street decorations, the store front displays, the holiday parties, the good cheer. Mary had put up her miniature Christmas tree in the living room earlier in the week, but even that failed to lift her spirits, then or now.
“What do you want to do after this?” Calleigh asked. “We were talking about heading down to the Heathman for a few drinks, then over to Higgins for dinner?”
“I was hoping Mary would have dinner with me,” a deep, dark voice stated from behind her.
The trio turned collectively to stare at the source. Michael was there, in front of them, in a dark navy suit that couldn’t quite hide the walking cast on his right leg. Mary’s heart leaped at the sight of him, but her Midwestern manners asserted themselves before she could embarrass herself and tackle him. Not to mention her brain reminded her of their last conversation.
“Michael. What are you doing here?” she asked, eating him up with her eyes, noting that he looked as though his nights were as restful as hers had been. Which was to say, not at all.
“I heard you’d be here.”
Unable to formulate any type of response, she went with introductions.
“Michael Santiago, you may remember Calleigh Stuart. I understand you know David.” As they exchanged handshakes, Michael didn’t take his eyes off her.
David took Calleigh’s hand in his. “We’re going to go check in with Santa.” They left the two of them alone together in a room full of people.