What the fuck?
Fury explodes across my chest. I fire the ball at him with enough force to make my shoulder twinge, watching as it bounces off the back of his head and his neck jerks forward. He whips around and is already running at me before I have any time to take off. He slams into me. I hit the ground hard. Not any harder than I have millions of times in a football game.
But it stuns me for just a second. I’ve never seen Sam like this.
“How many times did Kim break up with you? Do you even remember?” he says, standing over me.
I push myself up, refusing to be intimidated. “I’m guessing you do. How many?”
He grabs my collar, twisting his fists into it with a raw anger that’s clearly been boiling for a while now. “Seven. Seven times since the ninth grade—”
Suddenly all the frustration I’ve been shoving down the last few months erupts all at once. At him. At what happened. Who the hell does he think he is? How dare he tell me how to feel?
“And she was about to do it again, Sam! But she died,” I say as I shove him away, his fingers releasing the fabric around my collar. “What am I supposed to do? Pine forever? Stop breathing?”
“I would,” Sam says, all of the anger rushing out of him, his shoulders dropping as a heavy weight settles down on them. A weight that I recognize. Then… he confirms it. “I loved her too. Really loved her. And I would never let her go.”
We stare at each other, his words knocking me speechless. But he isn’t done.
“You don’t deserve her, Kyle,” he says, his voice low. “You never did.”
He turns and stalks off the field, his broad shoulders fading farther and farther away into the distance. I watch Sam disappear completely from view, my head spinning.
Sam loved Kimberly?
I see it now, the pieces clicking into place. The way he would stand behind her protectively. The way he always deferred to her. How broken he was after she died.
How the hell did I miss it? How, in all these years, did I not notice that my best friend was in love with my girlfriend?
The other guys act like they weren’t watching the fight go down. No one comes over, and I don’t expect them to. I haven’t been close to any of these guys for a long time. I didn’t see it until now, but when I left the team, I left them behind too.
Everyone but Kim and Sam.
So how did I not notice he loved her?
Because I was selfish.
The words ring around my head, crystal clear. Painfully true.
All I did was see the world, my friends, my girlfriend, through my lens. I didn’t once bother seeing it through any of theirs.
* * *
Later that night, Mom finds me in my room, my eyes fixed on a small dot on the ceiling.
“You wore it, you help fold it,” she says, dropping the laundry basket on the floor by my door. I groan and roll out of bed to follow her upstairs, one hand clutching a bag of frozen peas to my bruised side, the other juggling the basket.
Mom keeps glancing at me as the two of us start folding together in her bedroom.
“I thought this was supposed to be a touch game.”
“It was for me. Sam, though…”
I didn’t plan on saying anything, but my mind hasn’t stopped going over it all. So I tell her everything. About the fight. And Marley.
“Sam’s right,” I say after a moment of silence, a worn Ambrose High football sweatshirt in my hand. “Maybe I never deserved Kim at all. Maybe she was too good for me.”
“What does Sam know?” she says, rolling up a pair of socks and tossing them at me. “You’re allowed to have other friends. Even other… more than friends.”
My stomach lurches, but I can’t go there right now. I can’t stop thinking about what Sam said. “He was in love with Kim,” I say finally, expecting her to look up. To be surprised. But instead she nods. She knew. This whole time, was I the only one oblivious to it?
Did Kim know?
It’s just another question I’ll never be able to ask her.
I watch as Mom folds a towel, her face becoming thoughtful. “So… what are you going to do?” she asks.
“About what?”
Mom rolls her eyes at my lack of response.
“You’re a hopeless romantic, honey. I’ve watched you with Kimberly since you were eight years old. Once you set your heart on her, no one else would do, even when you drove each other crazy,” she says finally. “But because of that, you never let yourself imagine your life without her. You always centered everything around her, and… that’s a lot of pressure in a relationship. A lot of pressure on a person who’s still figuring out who they are.”