Hoops Holiday (Hoops 2.50)

My shoulders shake with the emotion I’ve been hiding from for a year.

“When I saw the note, it had my name on it. No one else’s.” I shrug helplessly. “There was no message for anyone else, so I kept it to myself.”

My laugh comes out hollow, barely a laugh at all.

“And if I’m honest, I didn’t want anyone to know

. To blame me like I blamed myself.” I swipe trembling fingers over my wet cheeks. “God, I didn’t want his mother to blame me like I blame myself. For her to think he did that because of me.”

The words slip-slide on my tears, barely discernible, but Deck understands. He pulls me close, one hand stroking at the small of my back and one hand cupping my face as he kisses the wetness on my cheeks.

“Listen to me.” His voice falls soft and firm over my hiccupping. “I don’t know what you could have done differently in your relationship. When a relationship fails, we look backward with much more perspective than when we’re in it. Believe me. I learned that after my divorce.”

I sniff and nod against his chest for him to go on.

“And replaying our arguments and rehearsing our mistakes won’t change how we handled things,” he says. “But in a situation like that, you aren’t responsible for someone making that decision. Our lives are just that.”

He dips his head to catch and hold my eyes with his.

“Ours.” He frowns, pressing his lips together over a sigh. “You remember that Sports Illustrated party a couple years ago?”

“Yeah.”

We hadn’t spoken, but I remember that lightning strike of seeing Deck again after so long. How my palms went sweaty and my heart went haywire and my stomach went all fluttery. I had seen him from time to time over the years from a distance, but that night, he’d been so close. Closer than he had been for a long time, and as much as I made sure nobody knew, it affected me. He affected me.

“I wanted your fiancé out of the way.” His voice is gruff, prompting me to pull back just enough to see his face. “And I didn’t care that I was there with Tara. I didn’t care that you were with him. I’d wanted you for years, since the first time I saw you, and I resented him touching you. Resented his ring on your finger. I resented him having you when I never got my chance.”

He pauses, a deep swallow bobbing his Adam’s apple.

“I thought about that when I heard he had died,” Decker says. “I felt guilty for even wishing him out of the way.”

“But you didn’t . . .” I pause to sort my thoughts and find the right words. “You had nothing to feel guilty about. Your desire for me didn’t kill Will. He did that.”

“Exactly, Avery.” He brushes my hair back from my face. “Exactly.”

His words sink in and I try to put myself in that place where I’m absolved of guilt. I can’t quite do it yet. I know he’s right theoretically, but that night I found Will wasn’t theoretical. It happened to me, and I haven’t gone a day without seeing him that way. Without asking if he was there because of me.

“I can’t imagine how much pain Will was in to do something like that,” Decker continues. “I assume it’s something he wrestled with at other points in his life.”

“All through college.” I pause, before sharing another thing I haven’t even told Sadie yet. “His mother actually told me his first attempt was in high school, and then again in college. I had no idea.”

I shake my head, overwhelmed with how much I missed. “How did I live with him, share my life with him, wear his ring, plan our future and not know he’d tried to take his own life? Twice?”

“How would you have known if he didn’t tell you?” Decker asks. “We hide in the open. We cover our scars so we can move on. Sometimes we hide because we’re ashamed. Because we’re afraid people won’t accept us or love us or understand. No matter the reason, you didn’t know. But even if you did, would you have stayed in a broken relationship for the rest of your life from fear that he would do something like this? These were demons he’d wrestled with before he even knew you, Avery. You can’t take responsibility for his life, for his decision. You couldn’t do it while he was alive, and you can’t do it now that he’s gone.”

My therapist has said these things to me. I’ve replayed them to myself on days when I thought the guilt, the weight of his death would drive me mad. But there’s a ring of truth when Decker says it that I haven’t allowed myself to hear before. Maybe I thought I was letting myself off easy. In situations like this, you need someone to blame, and it feels wrong to blame Will. If I allow myself to place the responsibility with him for even a second, I become furious. I get livid with him for leaving me and his mother and his friends who care about him. Who love him and miss him and will live the rest of their lives asking the same questions I do.

Why?

How could you?

What didn’t I do?

Could I have been enough to keep you here?

I want to throw things at the wall and I want to punch him in the face. More than anything, I want to rewind to an illuminating moment when I could have made a difference. I replay our years together over and over, watching from an objective distance, searching for that second when I could have looked in his eyes, seen how truly miserable he was with this life, and fixed it.

And maybe that’s the problem. I’ve accomplished all my goals and created the destiny I envisioned for myself. A woman accomplishing what I have in sports and television is rare, much less a woman of color. I rose above expectations and limitations at every turn. I defied the odds. Every hurdle, I’ve jumped. Every problem, I’ve fixed. But I could never solve Will.