All Lined Up (Rusk University 1)

From the start, luck is on our side, and we win the coin flip.

We receive, and Brookes catches the opening kick and tears up the field. Moore sticks with him, blocking as they run. Brookes goes down just past the fifty, and then it’s my turn.

The stadium is loud right up until the moment I take the field, and then it all just disappears. There’s no nerves, no fear, no nothing. Instead it feels exactly like Coach said . . . like I’ve come home.

I’ve spent hours and days and years preparing for this, so now I can just turn off everything else and do what I know how to do. I run, and I pass, and I hand off, interspersed with hits and misses.

But I just get back up. I keep going. We’re a team, and the more we play, the more we begin to click together, each person doing their part to move the overall machine.

When I’m not on the field, I walk the sidelines, checking in with the other players. I talk them up when they need it, listen when they tell me what’s working and what’s not.

One quarter passes, then another.

Halftime is a blur of coaches and plays and analyzing what’s happened so far.

When the final buzzer sounds, and we’ve won by six, it almost doesn’t feel real. Not even with the team surrounding me, screaming. Not even when Coach is in front of me, his hand back on my helmet, reminding me that I can take it off now. I pull it off, and all the noise rushes back in.

It takes me a few seconds to tune in to what Coach is saying. I miss all of it but the end.

“You did good, son.”

The field is flooding with students decked out in red, and the team is making their escape back into the locker room. I follow, a smile tugging at my face as it all starts to settle in.

Win number four.

I don’t know what’s coming next. Our hardest games of the season are still ahead of us, and I don’t know if we’re good enough yet, but I know we’re better than we’ve ever been.

I know I’m better than I’ve ever been.

And when my eyes land on Dallas waiting for me near the entrance to the locker room, wearing one of my workout shirts with my number and name written across the back . . .

Well, things just keep getting better.

She throws her arms over my shoulders, lifts up onto her tiptoes, and kisses me. And once again, all the other noise disappears.

There is only her body, her lips, the smell of her hair, and the tug of her fingers through my damp hair. Her lips move harder over mine, and I hate the pads that keep her from getting closer to me.

I don’t hear the cleared throat behind me. Dallas waves Stella off when she thumps her shoulder, and I know that everything else has disappeared for her, too.

It takes a hand on my shoulder before I even pull back enough to breathe. Dallas’s eyes are soft and so green, and they widen when they catch sight of the hand on my shoulder.

I look, and then wish I hadn’t.

Coach Cole is at my back, his lips in a firm line, and my arms are still around his daughter’s waist.

He clears his throat again and says to Dallas instead of me, “I need my quarterback, Dallas. I’ll send him back to you when we’re done.”

She unwinds her arms from me to hug him instead, and when I take my first steps toward the locker room, Coach’s eyes are closed, and he’s hugging her back.

Epilogue

Six months later

Dallas

I love the silence before the music starts.

There’s potential in the quiet, an opening for something new and beautiful to enter the world. I close my eyes, relaxing my muscles, and think back to that moment at the beginning of the year when I’d been so sure that this place would only hold misery for me.

I remember the way it had felt when I saw Carson at Dad’s practice. Even then, I think a part of me knew how perfect we would be together. That’s why it hurt so badly.

It’s easy to tap back into that feeling now as the music starts, and I begin the dance I choreographed that night as I sat in my car trying not to cry.

It’s still angry and raw, but there’s softness in it now, too. The happiness I’ve found has crept in, and rather than just being about pain and loss, it’s a story about what can grow out of that.

I’ll always be the girl who grew up without a mom. I’ll never forget what it was like to grow up sharing my dad with football. I’ll remember forever how I almost let my bitterness and my fear keep me from moving on.

Those things will always be in me, but they no longer feel like separate pieces or different versions of myself. Somewhere along the way those things were stitched together, and I no longer need to hold myself together by holding other people at bay.

It wasn’t the prettiest journey.

Sometimes I was stupid, and I let my anger get the better of me too often. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from creating this dance, it’s that sometimes mistakes bloom into the most colorful moments. They’re unexpected and different, and that’s where the character of the dance lives.

I relive the last year through my movements, and I know that every single moment was worth it.

It got me into the summer program in San Francisco, and on the choreography track, too.

And more important, it got me to a point where I’m at peace with the past and a little less scared of the future.

Dance fixed me. As it always does.

I’m the last performance of the end-of-the-year recital, and when the music ends, and I look out at the applauding crowd, I find Dad and Carson standing together, clapping.

Carson winks at me, and Dad’s clapping so hard, you’d think I’d just brought home the Heisman. The season didn’t end up exactly how they both wanted. There were too many other tough teams in the conference, but a solid 6–6 record was still a vast improvement over the years before. But Carson got his scholarship, and Dad’s contract was renewed.

And as Dad told Carson at the end of the season, “We’re just getting started.”

I feel that way, too . . . like my life has just really begun.

I exit the stage, in a hurry to change out of my costume and go meet them. I don’t bother messing with the hair that’s twisted into a tight chignon at the back of my head. Nor do I bother removing the dark eye makeup; I’m too impatient.

I pull on a skirt, a tank top, and some flip-flops, and find Carson waiting for me in the hallway that connects the dressing rooms to the auditorium.

I throw myself into his arms, and he catches me, swinging me around once before letting my toes rest on the floor again.