I pace around before marching to a hall closet. I find an old cardigan and slip it on. I exit the patio door and find the cobblestone path to the beach. The moon is white and full, illuminating the waves rolling onto the beach. I reach the edge, letting my toes feel the cool water.
Graham is about fifty yards away, staring out at the waves. My feet press into the sand as I walk to him and then stand next to him, just letting the silence of the night wrap around us.
A crab darts out of the water and inches close to me, and I squeal and dart to the other side of him.
“It’s not just scorpions, huh?” he asks.
“Just make it go away,” I say, and he shoos it away from us and onto the beach.
I study him, taking in the furrows on his forehead. “Thanks. What are you thinking about out here?”
If he says Divina, then I’ll deal with it. I’ll be cool. I’ll go along with whatever. I mean, who am I to ask him if what we have is something real?
I shake myself. Is that what I really want? No.
“Football, actually. Training camp starts Monday in Atlanta. It will give you time to acclimate to my apartment without me.” His lips twist wryly.
“Do you have mixed feelings about playing?”
Instead of answering me, he bends down to pick up a seashell, studying it carefully. A wind blows, ruffling his hair as his scent fills the air, thick with cherries and leather. I inhale it deeply.
“Graham? You can talk to me.”
He clenches the shell in his hand, and it shatters. “I saw a doctor, who warned me about CTE. Do you know what that is?”
We start walking, our shoulders side by side. “It’s caused from concussions, right? Lots of famous people have had it. It’s believed Muhammad Ali did. Brett Favre has admitted to over a thousand concussions and says he doesn’t know what it is to be normal anymore.”
His jaw pops, emotion flitting over his face as he tosses the crushed shell into the sand. “Yes. There’s no way to diagnose it when you’re alive; instead it’s by symptoms—personality changes, anger issues, depression, suicide. Several players have even murdered people or committed suicide. Eventually, it can lead to dementia and Parkinson’s.”
The words settle around us heavily. I thread my fingers through his, and he starts. He stops, gazes at me, and then looks down at our hands. No one’s here to see us pretending, but I don’t care. I want him to know that he can come to me, talk to me. “And you’re worried about it because you had a bad concussion.”
“My headaches and dizziness are gone. My sensitivity to light. I’m great physically.”
“Mentally?”
He pops an eyebrow. “What are you insinuating?”
“So you would have married a girl who stole your car anyway?” I tease.
“I’d do anything for my brother, so yes.” He stares out at the ocean. “I’m the same as I always was, I think, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He turns to look at me, and his eyes hold mine for several moments, until I’m breathless.
“Graham?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
My instinct senses that he just needs me to listen, so I stuff my questions away as he tells me more about his appointment with the French doctor, about MRI scans and autopsy reports. His doctor sent him more information after his appointment, about a famous player and sports analyst who recently passed away at age seventy-one. He donated his brain to science to raise awareness of the disease, and they discovered stage-four CTE, the most advanced, which presents as severe cognitive and behavioral issues.
In an interview, the player’s widow said that in the last years of his life, he’d isolated himself from everyone, even her, and that he’d struggled daily with balance, memory loss, paranoia, and severe depression. He was terrified to watch football games with his buddies because he didn’t know what was happening on the field anymore. When asked about how many concussions he’d had during his fifteen-year career, he’d said ten but possibly more, since he’d played at a time before the NFL kept an official count.
Graham picks up another shell, his fingers tracing it. “Boston University has a CTE center, where they do a lot of research. Five players who committed suicide, one of them only twenty-seven years old, had CTE. On the other hand, the NFL is making helmets stronger and making new rules about tackles. We aren’t ignoring CTE.”
A deep unease and anxiousness rises inside me as the enormity of his issue dawns. He wants to play, but he’s also worried about the future, of getting Parkinson’s, of losing his memory.