All Played Out (Rusk University #3) (11 page)

That’s where I belonged. Where I thrived. The only place where there was no one to live up to, no one to fall behind, because it was
my
domain. No one in my entire extended family had ever been to college. My grandparents emigrated to the States from Italy a few years after they married. They groomed my mother to take over the restaurant. Dad was a waiter at the restaurant, and she fell for him even though he was older and Nonna didn’t approve. My aunt worked in the restaurant, too. By the time I was in high school, things were going so well that they were thinking about opening a second location.

They wanted Leo and me to help run it. I know they did. But I couldn’t go my entire life trying to belong in the restaurant when there was another place where it felt so natural for me to be. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to learn more,
be
more. Beyond that, I wanted to go to graduate school, probably get my doctorate. Other kids balked at the idea of more school. I craved it.

All I’ve ever wanted for my future was to live in a world that’s bigger than the one I grew up in. But now I’m realizing that all I did was trade one small, stifled world for another. It’s not right that last night was more interesting than every other night in my life so far combined. I’m torn between wanting more nights like it and going back to my normal routine of class, sleep, and more class just because it’s safer. Easier. Far less terrifying.

But how long can I live with just safe and easy before my life becomes completely devoid of meaning? I’ll have work, sure, but what if I end up not liking it as much as I think I will? For so long, I’ve thought that the most important thing in my life was my career, getting to where I want to be. Finding a place where I fit. But what if it’s not as satisfying as I always thought? What if I got it wrong, and I didn’t like class because I fit there, but because I
thrived
there? Because it challenged me and pushed me in a way that my childhood in the restaurant never had?

And then the big question is . . . am I thriving here? I’m excelling, certainly. My grades are good. I’m making plans. But I don’t know if that’s the same as thriving. I just don’t know.

I used to think about the future in terms of goals and achievements, and now all I can think of is all the things I might end up regretting. And it’s all this stupid list’s fault. And Dylan’s. And
Mateo’s
. I was perfectly fine ignoring my doubts until Dylan pointed out how blindly I was pursuing my future, without even exploring any other options.

Does that make me any different from Leo? He stepped right into his position at the restaurant, no hesitation, no thought to any other future because it’s what he’s good at. I’d thought him so naive.

If he was, I guess I am, too.

I rinse off my plate and load it in the dishwasher, and then dial my parents. My mother answers on the fourth ring, and just by the chaos I can hear in the background, I can tell she’s at the restaurant. Probably in the kitchen prepping for the day.

“Antonella?” she says loudly. “Are you there?”

“Yeah, Mammina. I’m here.”

She says something in Italian to someone on her end, something about preparing the bread, and after a few seconds I hear a door shut and the din disappears.

“How are you,
passarotta mia
? It’s nice to have you call me for a change.”

My little sparrow. She took to calling me that sometime during high school. She said all I ever talked about was leaving the nest. And even though I’ve heard the endearment a thousand times, this time it has tears filling my eyes, and no matter how hard I press my fingers against them, I can’t get the tears to stop.

“Mamma,” I choke out, my voice surprising me as it cracks. And even though it’s just one word, she knows. In that way that all mothers seem to be able to tell what their kids are feeling with just a tiny sound.

“Oh, Nell. What happened?”

I don’t have words for all the things I’m feeling. It’s all too big. Too frightening to admit out loud.

“I’m doing everything wrong,” I tell her, because that’s what it feels like. I have this one chance to get things right, and I thought I was doing it it. I thought I knew what I wanted to do and who I was, and now all I can see is a future that terrifies me. A future where I turn out to have made all the wrong decisions.

“Impossible,” she says. “You’re too smart for that.”

That only makes me cry harder. Because that’s all I’ve got. I’m smart. But what does it really matter in the long run? What if I graduate in the spring, and then I go to grad school, and then I get my doctorate, and then I start working only to discover that I’ve spent years of my life pushing blindly toward a future that doesn’t make me happy? My brain has never been the problem. But my heart is an equation I don’t know how to solve.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she says. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”

She’s a good mom. My parents are
good
parents. And I’ve always felt guilty that my only goal is to not be like them. It’s because of them that I don’t have to work. Because even though they were sad that I wanted to leave, they wanted me to have every opportunity, to take every chance that was offered to me. They wanted more than anything for me to be happy, and
I’m screwing it all up
.

I suck in a breath, trying not to let on just how freaked out I am. “I just . . . I’m lonely, Mamma. And tired. And I’m worried about the future, and I don’t know. It kind of all overwhelmed me this morning.”

Understatement of the century. But I hate making her worry.

“Why are you worried about the future? Are classes not going well?”

“No, classes are great. I’m doing really, really well. Still on track to graduate early, and I’ve been researching and talking to my professors about grad programs.” Grad programs that I should already have researched enough to know my top choices so I can start thinking about the application process. But for some reason, I just can’t get myself to make a decision. “But, Mamma, what if I’m wrong? I picked biomedical engineering based on an aptitude test and an article I read in a science magazine when I was seventeen. And I know we got my tuition covered here at Rusk, but grad school won’t be that easy. It will be expensive. And . . . and I’m just worried that I’m going to spend all this time and money on something I arbitrarily chose as a teenager. Something that I could have gotten wrong.”

“If you got it wrong, so what? You think you have to get everything right on your first try?”

“With something like this? Yes. I do.”

“Oh, psssh. You are twenty years old. And you are brilliant and beautiful and driven, but you are not perfect, despite how often it seems so.” I do a weird, gurgly, sobbing laugh, and I can’t help but think about Torres last night. He called me perfect. Several times. But that was an entirely different kind of compliment, and one that has no business sneaking in around thoughts of my mom. She continues, “You are allowed to make mistakes, Nell. And even though it might seem right now like one mistake is enough to derail your entire future, it’s not.”

“You don’t understand, Mom.”

“Don’t I? I might not have gone to college or picked some high-tech career, but we all make choices. You don’t think I agonized over whether or not to marry your father? You don’t think both of us had doubts about taking over the restaurant? You don’t think it’s terrifying to raise children? To know that every choice you make not only determines your future, but theirs, too? The future is never just one choice. It’s a thousand. And they never stop. You will choose your future every day of your life. And should you wake up one day to find that you regret the choice you made the day before, then you make a new one. Don’t worry about whether you might be wrong
someday
. Worry about whether you’re right
now
. Tomorrow can wait.”

“Tomorrow can wait,” I repeat. The tears are still flowing, but I no longer feel like I’m choking on some invisible ache in my throat. I no longer have to gasp for breath.

“It can,” she promises. “No point worrying about what happens at the end of the road when there’s a hundred steps to take before you get there. You worry about today’s step. Because I promise you,
passerotta
, there will come a day when you stop obsessing over what lies ahead and begin to look backward instead. And when that day comes, it won’t matter so much whether every step was in the right direction because life is not a straight line. It will only matter that you took them. That you never let yourself stand still.”

“I don’t know why people always call me the smart one,” I say. “You definitely have me beat.”

She laughs, and the sound lifts me in a way that even her words didn’t quite manage to do. “I am firmly in the looking-backward stage,” she says. “And things are much easier to understand on this side.”

“Thanks, Mamma.”

“You’re welcome. And I’m glad you called. Do it more often.”

I agree, and we say our good-byes, and when we hang up, I know exactly what I want to do today. It’s officially November now, and I graduate in mid-December. If that’s all I have left, I’m going to use every day I have. Maybe I
am
wrong. But short of tacking on another major, it’s too late to change my plans completely. I want to check another item off my list, but I can’t do it alone.

Chapter 12

Mateo

T
here’s no feeling quite as miserable as returning to a locker room after losing a game. A home game, too, which makes it twice as bad. We went into this game 6–1 on the season, and this was supposed to be the game where we officially surpassed last season’s 6–6 record. And even though 6–2 isn’t bad, there’s this air of uncertainty in the locker room. This deep unspoken fear that everything is going to go downhill moving forward, that maybe we’ll fall short again and again until we end up right back at 6–6 for the second year in a row.

I shed my uniform, and Brookes lets out a low whistle beside me. There’s a massive purple-black bruise already forming on my left hip and up onto my side.

“That hit at the top of the half?” he asks, and I nod. He shakes his head. “I knew it. That one looked brutal.”

I shrug. “Could have been worse. A few inches over and that second dude’s knee could have landed in a much more vulnerable place.”

It had been my best catch of the game. I’d had to jump high to get it, and I had two guys trying to block it. We all collided in the air, and we ended up hitting the ground in a tangle of limbs with me on the bottom.

The coaches infiltrate the room then, and Coach Cole steps up into his usual place beside the whiteboard.

“You all know what I’m going to say,” he begins, “but I’ve got to say it anyway. We played a sloppy first half. I’m sure we could blame it on the fact that we had last week off, and that some of you, no doubt, overindulged last night on Halloween. Whatever the reason, it was not up to par with what this team is capable of.”

There’s one reason he doesn’t name, but I have no doubt that most of the team is thinking of it.

Jake Carter.

Formerly one of our team leaders, a senior lineman, and one of our defense’s biggest assets. He’s the dude that assaulted Stella at a party back in September. He hasn’t been suspended by the university, nor has the district attorney brought him up on charges, but Coach got the athletic director to permanently suspend him from the team. Our defense is a hell of a lot weaker without him, but the majority of the team doesn’t give a fuck.

There is the minority, though. Guys I’ve heard grumbling about Coach’s decision. None of them have dared to outright mention Stella’s name yet. They’re not that stupid, but you can tell they talk about it when those of us that know Stella are not around. It doesn’t help that she refuses to talk about it, to set the record straight. Hell, I don’t even really know exactly what happened, I just know it was bad. But without the facts, I hear people making up their own, and I don’t like it. Not at all.

Doesn’t help that the dick is still on campus. I’m sure he’s spreading his own version of the story all over the place.

When I tune back into Coach’s speech, he’s on to the second half now, where we finally got our asses into gear. Unfortunately, it was too late. We got close, within three points, but we just couldn’t make it all the way back in time.

“Whatever the hell happened tonight, I expect it to be out of your system. And next week, we come back looking like the team I know you are. Other people may underestimate us, but we never let that be an excuse for doing less than our best. I don’t underestimate you. I know just how much effort and sweat and strength and heart you can give me. And I swear to God, the next time we step on this field, I better get it. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” we answer.

“I believe in this team. I believe we can surprise people. That we can be more than the small team in this conference. I believe that each and every one of you is so much more than people ever give you credit for. I’ve coached a lot of players. I’ve coached guys who have gone pro and guys who haven’t, and I can tell you that the biggest difference between those groups is that those who go on to a future in this game know how to rise to the occasion. They know how to show up. And they do it when they’re tired. They do it when they’re hurting. They do it when they’re distracted. They know how to put all that aside and play. And that’s what I need from you all. That’s what I expect from you.”

Someone to my left, Carson, I think, says, “Yes, sir,” and the rest of us follow.

Coach tosses the towel on his shoulder into the laundry cart and tells us, “Clean up. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and be ready to work on Monday.”

We gather closer, not quite in our normal circle because the layout of the locker room won’t allow it, but we put our hands out as if we’re circled up. Coach counts to three and we break with our usual chant of “No Easy Days.”

And goddamn if those words aren’t true.

As I hit the showers, I know I’m one of the ones who fell short during the first half. Not because I overindulged last night . . . well, not on alcohol at least. And I sure didn’t take things easy last week. The one downside (or maybe upside) of being friends with the quarterback and captain is you don’t get to take things easy. Because when the coaches aren’t looking, McClain most definitely is. And if not him, Moore or Brookes. And not a single one of those guys would let me get away with dragging my ass if I were ever so inclined. Not that I want to. The goal has always been football. It’s not just the end of the road for me; it
is
the road.