Page 49 of Going for Two
Nora nodded her head as if that was all quite logical. “All things that are meant to last will always work out in the end.” She reached over and placed her hand on mine before she announced to the room that dinner was ready. I stood there in the kitchen for a moment longer, looking down at the hand that she had touched, trying to understand what she saw.
“Coming.” I glanced up to see Nolan standing next to me with two plates in his hands. He handed one to me and the two of us went to get in line with everyone else.
For the first time in my life, I got to sit down at a kitchen table in a room full of so much love and not a single argument filled the air.
Derek and Olivia broke the wishbone together and Olivia cackled in his face when her piece came away bigger. Hawthorn took first duty with their kids so Sarah could eat. Adam laced his arm over the back of Nora’s chair. Jamil told stories about Thanksgivings with his family of ten back in his hometown inFlorida growing up. Maggie and Tommy were snuggled up in each other’s arms as they laughed along with everyone else.
It was all just so … perfect.
“Lottie and I can clean up,” Nolan told everyone once the food was nearly all gone, and another bottle of cranberry wine had been opened. The two of us collected all the plates and brought them to the kitchen together.
“I’ll wash, you’ll dry?” Nolan asked me as he started filling the sink up with water and soap. I grabbed a couple of dry towels from under the sink and began drying off the dishes he handed to me.
“Thank you for your help today,” I told him once we’d settled into an easy rhythm.
“Was it everything you hoped it would be?”
“And more,” I told him.
A smile lit up his face when he saw the happiness on mine. “Even Olivia and Derek’s fight over the wishbone?”
A laugh bubbled out of me. “Especially that.”
“Then I think there’s only one thing left to do,” he told me as he grabbed a pen off my counter and extended it to me. I gently took the pen from him and uncapped it as I walked over to the list on my fridge.
“Only a few left,” Nolan noted as he watched me mark off the one about Thanksgiving.
“A lot of them are thanks to you,” I told him.
Nolan studied me for a few moments before he spoke again. “Once I stopped being a complete asshole to you, I realized that I quite like it when you’re happy.”
This time, I completely ignored that voice in my head telling me that it was all a lie and by tomorrow he’d be bored of me as I reached for him and pulled him toward me until our bodies were flush together. As soon as his arms wrapped around me, Ifound enough courage to kiss him in a room full of our friends and family simply because it made me happy.
Because I wanted to prove that voice wrong and show it that I was worthy of someone’s love, even if it believed otherwise.
Chapter 23
Nolan
Lottie and I spent nearly every moment we could together to try and get my knee healthy enough to play against Denver the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Lottie understood that this team and this game brought me happiness that nothing else I’d experienced in life did and she was doing everything in her power to make sure it wasn’t the end for me. Between therapy sessions and discussing the prospect of coaching after the season was over, she had her sights set on what made me happy. There was a part of me that felt guilty for not telling her that the team had offered me another year, but I wanted to make the best decision for myself without anyone else’s influence. Especially because I knew that Lottie would always tell me to do what was best for me.
Lottie even showed up to the facility with me early so I could have extra time preparing before the game. She never complained when I asked anything extra of her. In her eyes, her job was to help me be successful and she would do whatever it took for that to happen. Lottie must have sensed the nerves I had about returning to the game without me having to say anything to her and she made sure to stick strictly to our routine to help me mentally prepare.
I felt at home back on the field telling my team the next play in the middle of a huddle. But the two games I had missed had left me on shaky ground during the first half of this game. There was rust on the wheels that I had yet to knock off and after thefifth pass that I threw short of my receiver, I was beginning to worry if I was the right person for my team after Caleb’s lights out performances.
“Are you alright?” Derek asked me on yet another third down that looked like we wouldn’t reach the first down marker.
“Yeah,” I told him with a false bravado that Derek’s frown told me he saw right through.
“It’s just you and me, bud.” With a slap on the back, Derek ran to his starting position for the next play.
I sighed, because while I appreciated what he was trying to do, Derek didn’t realize that during every play all I could see was everybody but my intended receivers. I was distracted by the menacing looks on the defenders’ faces or the face-painted fans in the stands trying to distract me and doing a marvelous job of it today.
Nobody really talks about the hardest part about coming back after an injury. It isn’t doing the movements that you’re so used to doing during a game. It’s getting past the mental barrier that injury built in the darkness while you were trying to work on getting better. The way that injury secretly tore down every shred of self-confidence you had ever built, making you feel uneasy doing the thing you loved.
No matter how hard I tried to remind myself of all the times I’d succeeded and performed better than everyone else around me, my mind replayed the sharp pain I felt as my body slammed into the ground just a few weeks ago. As if the injury had even poisoned my own mind to work against me.
The crowd in Denver was practically feral as we ran off the field for the half. They had the lead over us, which had been considered unlikely heading into today’s game seeing as Denver was having one of their worst seasons to date.