Seeing her at work killed me, but it wasn’t as bad as it would have been if I couldn’t see her at all.
Every afternoon when I walked into my office, she was already set up in hers, working away and getting our boys in top shape for the game on Friday. We didn’t speak about what had happened Saturday night at the wedding. Hell, we didn’t speak at all other than in staff meetings or in the locker room when everyone was present and she needed to update me on an injury.
We avoided each other at all costs.
But when our eyes did meet, it was like standing in a blue-flamed fire.
I knew she was hurting. I knew she couldn’t have been sleeping or eating much more than I was managing to. I wanted to ask her a million questions. I wanted to hear her say a million things that would take what happened at my brother’s wedding away and give us the chance to start over. I wanted to pull her into my office, pull her into me, hug her and kiss her and tell her everything would be okay.
But I couldn’t, because nothing was okay right now.
We were both fucked up, but what mattered even more than that was that we were both set in our ways.
She believed she was right.
I believed I was right.
And there was no in-between, not for either one of us.
I struggled with understanding her, especially after everything she’d told me about what Randy had done to her over the years. Here was the perfect opportunity to get him to answer for his evil, and she was too coward to stand up and make him pay.
I knew Paige complicated things, and that she was worried his power was too much, that we could never win.
But Paige was smart. She was kind-hearted. She knew right from wrong, and I believed in my gut that if she knew the full story, if her mother explained it to her, she would be okay. Maybe not immediately — but eventually. She was a tough kid like that.
Then again, did I have a right to say that, to believe that, when I’d never been a father? How could I ever fully understand the position I’d asked Sydney to put herself and her child in? How could I know what it feels like to make a decision that affects not only you, but a growing child, who will likely grow up differently because of that decision?
The answer was that I couldn’t.
And could I really say that we had nothing to worry about when it came to Randy, that the justice system would prevail and the bad guys would lose and the good guys would win?
Because, realistically, what proof of that did we have anywhere?
If anything, the daily news only supported her side of it — that right and wrong didn’t always matter, and sometimes, good people got fucked over.
But, it wasn’t her views on what the right thing to do in this situation was that upset me the most. That wasn’t what drove the nail deeper and deeper into my splitting chest, making breathing damn near impossible.
It was that I came to her with something I hadn’t told anyone. I trusted her. And when everything was said and done, I looked her in the eyes and told her that I needed her.
I need you, Sydney.
And she’d denied me.
My ribcage hollowed out at the reminder of it, but it was a stinging pain I was beginning to get used to — like chronic back ache after a sports injury. I subdued it as best I could, focusing on the clipboard of plays in my hand as I talked to Coach TK in a hushed voice, our eyes on the players on the field.
It didn’t matter now, what had happened between Sydney and me.
It was over.
We were over.
And maybe what hurt the most was that we had never really begun, at all.
I wished so badly to live in this moment that — before Sydney — had been all I could dream about. I was at the State Championship game. My boys were warming up on the green turf of Tucker Stadium at Texas Tech. We were about to play the other top high school team in the state of Tennessee, to have the chance to prove that we were the best. The massive arena was filled with screaming football fans, with our entire town, everyone showing up to support us and cheer us on to another W.
This was all I’d wanted.
Until Sydney.
I felt her warmth even when she was on the complete opposite side of the benches from where I stood — which was where she aimed to be at all times, it seemed. She was keeping her head down, working on players, wrapping and taping and doing soft tissue work and ensuring we were ready to play.