All Played Out

But she got her hopes up for something.

And I know how that feels. I spent all that time wondering whether I was capable of a relationship. Whether I had it in me. I was stupid to not be prepared for it to be him that got in the way.

I never would have done that in an experiment, let a factor like that go unconsidered.

“I don’t think you were stupid,” I tell Stella. She stiffens beside me, and I keep going. “I don’t really buy into that word. There are only wrong answers and right ones. Stupidity and intelligence, those are attributes we add to make ourselves feel better. Making a stupid decision doesn’t make you stupid. Just as making a smart decision doesn’t necessarily make someone smart. Our bad choices don’t make us stupid, they just make us wrong. About that one thing. Not about everything.”

“I want to believe that. That one choice, one thing, doesn’t define you. But everything is just like fucking dominoes, and they keep falling, one after the other, and I can never get ahead of it. So as much as I want to believe what you say, I can’t.”

The two of us sit in silence as we finish our food.

And maybe Stella is right. There’s a reason the social sciences exist, because people are unpredictable. They’re not like math and physics and biology. They’re different, separate. You can’t depend on people to be consistent or rational. So much of what I’m learning in school deals with medicine’s attempt to remove humans from the equation as much as possible to prevent human error.

Maybe that’s where I went wrong, trying to approach life the way I approach science.

In science, every action might have an equal and opposite reaction, but not in life. Life is unbalanced. Life is complicated. A little lie can cause a lot of pain. A big event like an important game or losing your virginity can have an enormous impact or it can turn out to not mean that much in the end.

“There’s no predicting it,” I say aloud. “How one thing can affect your life. There’s no way to know until it’s too late.”

“Life’s a bitch like that.”

I tap my water bottle against her Dr Pepper can, and for the rest of the tailgate party, Stella becomes my partner in silence. She doesn’t push me to talk, and I don’t push her, and when we head for the stands, I’m relieved to be seated by her.

And when the players exit from the locker room, and my eyes pinpoint Torres in his uniform, she bumps her shoulder into mine. “You okay?”

I shake my head, then nod, then shake my head again. “I don’t know.” I’d thought coming to a football game would give me some kind of closure. I’d get to see him again to ease the ache in my chest, but I’d also see how different our worlds are. That realization was supposed to help me let him go.

Instead, I watch him stretching and my own heartbeat sounds suspiciously like Love him, love him, love him, in my ears. This isn’t going to give me closure. It’s just going to give him more power over me.

Torres is my catalyst. He set my life spinning, and there’s only one way to counteract that kind of momentum.

Friction.

I’ve got to fight back. Resist the urge to miss him, to seek him out. I’ve got to resist. I stand up as the band starts playing next to the student section, and at first no one hears me over the music, so I have to say it again, louder. “I can’t be here!”

I can’t sit up in these stands, watching him risk his own health for a game that could never be more important than his future. There are two things I know for certain about Mateo Torres:

1. He has a type (my type, apparently).

2. He will always put football first. He did it with his ex, and now he’s doing it again with his health.

And there’s one thing I know about me:

1. I don’t dwell on setbacks. I move forward. Always, always forward.

Stella stands, and hooks her fingers around my elbow. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

“Wait. You’re leaving?” Dylan asks. “But you’re the one who wanted to come.”

I shrug. “Sometimes you make the wrong decision. And that’s okay, as long as you don’t keep making them.”

“Stella?” Dallas asks. There’s a bigger question in those two syllables, but whatever it is, it passes just between the two friends. Then Dallas nods even though Stella hasn’t said a word, and the two of us begin inching past all the people in our row.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say.

Chapter 26

Mateo

My mind tries to wander to the empty bed I woke up in this morning, but I don’t let it. There’s nothing good down that path. Standing in the locker room, I focus instead on the fact that today is my third day without symptoms.

I did the right thing. There’s no reason I should miss this game. I’m fine.

Physically, at least.

My head is a little blank. A little numb. But that’s not the concussion. That’s Nell.

I keep waiting for it to feel like Lina, like my life has just detonated. But no, Nell isn’t the type to leave shrapnel, well, not unless you count the final words she said to me Tuesday night when I dropped her off at home.

I get that you loved her. But any kind of love where you have to prove yourself to be worthy is the wrong kind. And you’re better off without her.

No, Nell didn’t leave me with any wounds. Instead, she healed them. Losing her was the final thing I needed to heal all the damage Lina did to me. Nell fixed me, which is kind of what I’d been hoping she’d do all along. Only this was better. This wasn’t just blotting out memories, it was putting them into context. It was taking away their power.