All Played Out
(More lies.)
So, even though I hate my list . . . even though I said I was through . . . when Saturday comes, I make plans to check another item off my list.
10. Go to a football game.
After this . . . I’ll be done.
TAILGATING.
Dallas tells me that it gets its name from everyone camping out at their trucks, setting up food and drinks on their tailgates to party before a football game. Personally, I think it’s absurd to make the name of an inanimate object into a verb, but no one asked me. I also think it’s absurd that in a sport called football, the majority of the game has very little interaction between balls and feet. But again . . . not my choice.
Dylan, Matt, Dallas, Stella, and I carpooled together, and I follow them to a section of the parking lot where the student union is throwing a huge tailgate party. From the few things I’ve picked up over the years, I had expected the game not to be very female-friendly. I mean, it’s sports, for one thing. But so many commercials and photos I’d seen played up the cheerleaders in skimpy clothing, and I figured that kind of stuff would run rampant. Ironically, there are a lot more half-naked guys than there are girls.
There’s one large group of shirtless guys whose chests are painted a dark red to match the school’s colors. Each guy has a single letter on his chest in white, and while I’m sure this was not their intention, the four closest to me spell out the word “suck.”
I get a hot dog, but decline alcohol, and the five of us sit down on those concrete slabs that are placed in front of parking spots. As I eat, I survey the group of shirtless guys again, taking in all the letters, and working anagrams in my head trying to figure out what they might say. They’ve shifted again and instead of “suck,” there’s now a group sporting the word “scat.” Again, I’m doubting (and also weirdly hoping) this was their intention. There are somewhere between fifteen and twenty guys, and they keep moving around, which is putting a serious damper on my anagramming.
“What are you staring so hard at?” Stella asks beside me.
Everyone else has kept up a steady stream of chatter, but the two of us have been quiet. I heard Dallas mention something about this being the first game Stella has attended in a while. According to Stella, it’s only been like a month and a half, which doesn’t sound like that big of a deal to me, but everyone else seems to think it’s significant.
“I’m brainstorming possible combinations of the letters on those shirtless guys that are really extraordinarily drunk considering how early in the day it is.”
She smiles. “What do you have so far?”
“Well, this group here and that one over there could combine to spell ‘scrotum.’ But I feel confident that’s not their intended message.”
Stella chokes on her soda. “Oh God, I hope it is.”
I think about how much of a kick Torres would get out of this, and my heart rattles.
“More realistically, though, they’re spelling something to do with the school. Rusk. Those letters match up. There’s not a Y that I can see, so I don’t think it says ‘university.’ There’s an F and two Os, so I’m betting ‘football’ is part of it. But that still leaves some letters unaccounted for.”
“Wildcat,” Stella provides. “The team mascot, I think the rest spells ‘wildcat.’ ”
I scan the letters again, and she’s right. I nod. “Mystery solved.”
Then I go back to chewing my hot dog. And chewing and chewing because I don’t know what to say. I should be working on that whole friendship thing. That’s the one thing that might be salvageable from this whole list disaster. Everything else might have backfired, but I know now that I can’t let myself go back to being lonely. I can’t work that way, and it was foolish to think that I could.
“I’m nervous,” I tell Stella. “About seeing this game.”
“Don’t be. Football isn’t as complicated as it seems. You’ll get it in no time.”
I shake my head. “It’s not that. I was sort of, briefly, dating Torres.”
She coughs and thumps her hand against her chest a few times as if she’s choking. “You were? Seriously? How did I miss that?”
I shrug.
“Damn,” she continues. “I’m off my game. Usually, I’m the first person to know that kind of stuff.”
“Well, there’s not much to know anymore. We got in a big fight, and it’s over. Really, it was doomed before it ever started because . . . well, it just was.”
Because me and emotions don’t mix.
Because I was just a stand-in.
Because we’re too different. Way, way, too different.
She says, “I know a thing or two about being doomed before it starts.”
“It’s awful, isn’t it?”
She glances over her shoulder, almost like she’s checking to make sure her friends are still busy in conversation. Satisfied, she turns back to me and says, “It’s like . . . you have plans, ideas for how something is going to unfold. And you’re patient, you don’t try to rush things because you know they’ll happen when they’re supposed to happen. But then what happens is something altogether different. And it doesn’t just affect your old plans, it obliterates them. It makes the choice for you. And you’re left feeling stupid that you ever even considered those old options, that you ever got your hopes up.”
Stella and I are both short, roughly the same height, actually, but she seems so small next to me. My first instinct is to attribute that sense to her emotions . . . except she’s not really showing any. Her hands don’t shake as she continues eating. Her expression is neither wrought with feeling nor purposely blank. Her eyelashes are long, but she’s not blinking like she’s fighting off tears. She seems normal. Fine.