Page 111 of The Backup Plan
The tension simmered, but in a shifting landscape of friends hurting and hiding from one another, this was one dinged friendship he could fix.
He’d texted Ethan an hour before and asked if he could call, and received a terse reply that he’d call him after practice—whenever that was. Cam waited, stomach rumbling, bouncing his hat off the ceiling, running his list of things to say.
The ringer set on maximum volume nearly startled him off his bed. He had the phone on silent for so long he’d forgotten what the ringtone sounded like.
Cam dove in without a greeting. “I’m sorry. I should have called you sooner.”
“I heard you’re staying.” Ethan’s voice was flat.
“I am.”
“And I heard you got the girl.”
“I did. The two are not related.”
“That seems a little unlikely, but okay. Good for your team, I guess.”
“I mean it,” Cam insisted. “I made the decision before I made any kind of move with her. Something happened the morning after I talked to you, and Cory will tell you my mind was made up when he called to nag me at eight a.m. This is not about her. Maybe it only happened with her because I got fired up to push things forward instead of waiting for a shove.”
Ethan sighed. “Did you go move your bee into a private hive and bring it home to live happily ever after?”
Cam ignored him and scrolled through his photos, then sent one. “I told you about my UT hat. The one I wear everywhere, and my P.R. team hates it. Can you zoom in and read what it says above the signature?”
“Come back.”
“Peyton Manning took that off my head and signed it when my parents came to pick me up, and he said ‘Every setback is a setup for a comeback. Come back next year. We’ll save you a spot.’ I never got to. My mom and dad wouldn’t let me. For years, I’ve worn this hat backward, and I never look at the signature anymore. It’s like a security blanket. Sunday morning when I woke up, it was jammed under my pillow, and when I smoothed it out, the words just jumped out at me like I’d never seen them before.”
“So you’ll stay because Peyton Manning told you to.”
“Until Jordan left, I never questioned that as a personal motto. It meant I should keep trying. Don’t give up just because I’m scared or my parents are scared. I lived by that. I’m the comeback guy here, and this thing I thought was a core part of who I am went out the window when I needed to step up the most.”
“Probably because your stupid P.R. crew made you wear a different hat.”
Cam snorted a laugh. “You might be right. This one has wires that connect to my brain.”
“It also sounds like the missing piece of all that stuff you were going on about the other night. Fuck the bee. It was about a comeback, not actually coming back home.”
“And it was literally on my head the whole time. This is about getting back to myself and what I know I can do. It was on me to step up and take control of my momentum, and I finally did. I’m so sorry I unloaded on you and acted like an ass.”
“Friends should be able to unload. I acted like an ass right back, and I let all that confusion hit me personally.”
“You didn’t say anything untrue.”
“I wasn’t supportive when you needed it.” Ethan heaved a sigh. “I don’t know how those guys did this support group thing back before there was a chat app and text messages. I think there was an email listserv for a while, then some private social media groups. It’s easier to talk when we type, and it’s easier to be vulnerable and really let some emotional stuff rip. And for me, it’s easier to respond in anger. If I’d been sitting next to you when you were half-drunk and telling me a bee told you to transfer out, I don’t think I’d have been such a jerk about it.”
“This job and what it stands for are important to you, and I said I was going to dump all that. Of course you got a little hot.”
“Cam, you’re my friend. Whatever that means in a world where I’ve never actually met you, I think of you as a friend. Football is this big, iconic thing that connects us, but I used it as a weapon to make you feel worse. I tried to make that shit all about me and how disappointed I was.”
There was a long silence, and Cam knew Ethan was working out something to say. He waited.
“Cory and I hung out for a few days on spring break last year,” he said finally. “He was a first-time starter, five stars, and I had a godawful season and was almost ready to quit. Do you know how fucking weird it is to be this age, an adult with all this stuff on your shoulders, and you’re going to ask a guy you’ve never met, who’s seen your rawest and worst, to come stay in your mom and dad’s basement and play video games for a few days?”
Cam furrowed his brows. “Hell of a first date.”
“It was worth the weird ask. We tore it up. Played a little Madden, but otherwise didn’t touch a football. I felt like I was thirteen and just a normal kid making friends again. Thatch is shit at ultimate frisbee, by the way, if you ever want to beat him at something.”
“So what you’re saying is that you want to hang out when I’m in town, since I’m staying the night.”