It was used so much because it was effing accurate.
I showered and left the room with my game face on.
There would be no sex-drugged looks in his direction.
No daydreaming of how tight his hands held my hips during the third—or was it the second?—round.
No staring at him and remembering what he looked like when he pressed my knees up and braced them on his chest.
And we did well.
Feeding the horses with his grandma was as exciting as I thought, and she laughed at me when I bounced on my toes at the thought of brushing them out for her. Occasionally, I felt eyes on me as we worked in the barn, but I never caught Noah looking in my direction.
When Rick suggested they walk around the property, I followed along. And even though I had the thought that my presence was completely superfluous to this entire process, nobody seemed to question it.
Noah didn't need anything from me, especially because his honest reaction to this whole adjustment was the point of the documentary in the first place. Rick and Marty didn't really need me either. They'd done this before and knew that anything negative caught on film would be caught in editing and removed, probably at Beatrice's request.
Why had she thought it necessary for me to be here?
It was strange to come to that realization now, of all places. The place where I'd felt freer than I had in a long time. Where Noah clearly did too. But it was the truth. I watched from behind Marty as they filmed Noah and his grandma fishing in a pond that had been hidden from view behind the barn. I couldn't help but be thankful that I was here, but the truth was that there was no reason for it. My sisters questioned it, but now I wondered if there wasn't another reason.
Rick came up to me and found a seat on the grass. "You're quiet today."
I smiled at him. "Just enjoying the day."
He nodded. His mouth opened like he was going to say something, but he shook his head and stopped.
"What?" I asked him.
"Just … curious about something," he said carefully, watching Noah and his grandma laugh. We were sitting far enough away that we were out of earshot, and I liked it better that way. Give them privacy where they could take it. "Why do you think he's stayed away for so long?"
My eyebrows popped up at his question. This was the first time Rick had asked my opinion about something of this magnitude. But I supposed it was his job to delve into the hidden layers of his subjects. It was what made him good at his job.
"And you want to know what I think?"
He nodded. "I do. You're intuitive. You've got good instincts when it comes to dealing with someone like him, who was clearly hesitant about this. Now look at him. He barely notices when we're around anymore."
I laughed. "I don't know about that." It wasn't lost on me that I'd ignored his compliment, focusing instead on his observation about Noah. "But thank you," I said carefully. "I like my job. I always have."
"You're good at it." He nudged me with his shoulder. "That's why I'm curious what you see when you look at him."
My face went hot, and I was so incredibly thankful that Rick wasn't looking at me. I thought so, so many inappropriate things when I looked at Noah, none of which Rick needed to know about. I cleared my head of the more lurid ways I could answer that question and focused on the scene in front of us.
"I think," I started slowly, "that it's easier for someone like Noah to stay focused when he keeps blinders on to everything else besides football. Probably to his detriment. Time with his grandma this way, it probably feels like, I don't know, an intrusion on his process, if it comes at the wrong time. So he ignores it. I don't think it means he loves her less, but I think he's so good at compartmentalizing his life that he's separated himself from everything outside of football that matters." I sighed. "And that's sad."
Rick's gaze was heavy on me, but I didn't turn to meet it. I didn't want to know what he'd see in my eyes, in my face, at my answer.
"I think you're spot-on," he said after a minute.
I looked at him when I felt like my face was into a more controlled mask. "Yeah?"
"But it's more than sad," he continued. "It's heartbreaking. When you observe people for a living, like I do, like Marty does, you see where they're headed. Sometimes before they do. And someone like Noah will let his entire life go by unnoticed by the time he retires. He'll finish playing and have nothing left, except for some trophies that mean nothing. Records that hold no weight, except some arbitrary importance that a single, small group of people put on it. Records that can, and will, be broken by someone else someday."