I hang out in the garage on Friday, making calls to people in Pittsburgh. Talking to Coach, the other players, planning my return. It looks like if, by some miracle, the Steelers do get into the playoffs, I might be cleared for the first or second game. Everyone starts the conversation the same way, with some version of: “Shit, when you getting back here?” I tell them all that the surgery is scheduled in Philly for Monday, and I’ll be back home in another few days.

Then I think of Genevieve. I think of the way she gave me her heart. The way she was so happy to help me get my business up and running. The way she called us a we, as if we were, finally, in this life, together against the world.

I grit my teeth. Shit. Did she know how when I was a senior in high school, that was all I wanted in this world? That was everything? I would have gladly given it all up for her.

But now, I fucking can’t.

When I’m done, it’s after six. I lock the garage and go to take a shower, thinking I’ll just get a late dinner of shitty nachos at the Roll-a-Rama.

Before I go into the bathroom, I text Genevieve, What time should I pick you up?

When I get out of the shower, toweling dry my hair, I look at my cell phone, propped on my dresser. She hasn’t texted back yet.

I start to worry, even then. But then I tell myself not to be stupid. It’s only been fifteen minutes.

I wait another fifteen before I text her again: Hey. You okay?

A full hour passes by, and nothing. She’s visiting her dad, I remind myself. She probably lost track of time. Or her phone lost its charge. Still, the doom-and-gloom part of my brain imagines a car accident. I shove that thought to the back of my mind. Not able to stay idle, I sit in the kitchenette, trying to think of where she could’ve gone, and why she isn’t answering her texts.

Twenty minutes after that, I sit back, run my hands through my hair, and drum my fingers on the table nervously. I’m pretty sure she said she wanted to get to the Roll-a-Rama by eight, which is a half hour from now.

She’s onto me.

Not able to stand it, I go outside and sit on the stoop outside my house, hoping her car’s headlights will cut through the dark, pulling up behind my truck. I check the phone screen like a man obsessed, typing in a few more texts to her.

Fuck. I wish I had Abby’s number. Or . . . anyone else’s.

Closing the door to my apartment, I hurry down the steps, jump in my truck, and head to her apartment. Her car isn’t parked outside, and the only light coming from the building is the neon Peking Dragon sign outside, but I climb the steps two at a time and knock on the door. Then bang. Then, shit, try to open the door on my own.

It doesn’t help. She isn’t there.

My palms are slick with sweat now, and I can’t help but think of the last time I saw her, before I went to California.

“Breaking up? After what? How can you fucking say that?” I’d shouted at her in the parking lot of the school. From the gym, some slow song was playing, and all I could think is that we should’ve been inside, with her in my arms. Instead, my jaw ached. My teeth on that side felt loose.

She was standing, facing away from me and the school, staring out into the dark. She was still, but her body was trembling.

“Come on. Let’s just go inside . . .” I made the mistake of trying to put a hand on her.

She whirled around, her hands claws. I’d seen Genevieve angry enough to spit fire plenty of times, but I’d never seen her this angry. She scratched at my arm, drawing blood. Tears were streaming down her face, making her look wilder and crazier still. “Don’t you see? You and I . . . we don’t work. This is a stupid illusion, Silas. You’re you, and I’m me. We’re so different.”

I stared at her. “But that’s what I like about you. And I thought you liked that about—”

She was already shaking her head. “No. I don’t need you. I happen to think you’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met.”

I knew that was a lie. Yeah, I was dumb. I knew that. But she’d always told me before how I just had a mind for other things, and was actually kind of brilliant, in the things they didn’t teach in school. She was pushing me away, for some other reason. “Don’t fuck with me.”

Her eyes flashed defiantly. “I’m being serious. I really need to apply myself if I’m going to get into the Ivy League. And instead, what am I doing? I’m spending time wondering whether or not I can trust you. All the time. I don’t need this, Silas. It’s just a distraction.”

“But . . . you can trust me,” I said. I knew where her concerns had come from. All through high school, I’d been a good ball player, but nothing special in the looks department. My senior year, suddenly, girls were waiting to talk to me at my locker. Chasing me around. Erica Lindley, the most talked-about girl in the guys’ locker room and the source of the most raging hardons, had actually whispered to me in Sex Ed that she wanted to suck my dick. There was graffiti about me in the girls’ restroom stalls. Somehow, I’d won hottest guy in the yearbook senior superlatives. It was all a fucking baffling whirlwind.

But no matter what, I’d never forgotten who I belonged to.

She just shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t do this anymore,” she sobbed. “You’re in the same town as me now, and I can’t stop worrying about what you’re doing when I’m not with you. I can’t do the long-distance thing. It would only be worse.”

I wanted to grab her, to scream that I hadn’t done anything. Instead, I said, “Then I won’t go. I’ll stay with you.”

“You’re insane, Silas. You’re too good to be stuck here,” she said, her eyes trailing to the ground.

“But I’m yours.”

“You never were mine. Stars don’t belong to any one person. They belong to the whole world,” she said softly, before turning and running away in her Chuck Taylors and pink sparkling dress.

I tried to chase after her, but she disappeared between the cars, and from my life. I spent another hour, just wandering about out there, calling her name, wanting her back. When I retreated to my car, a bunch of girls were sitting in the back of Chuckie’s pick-up, getting high and drinking. Erica was there. They offered me some weed, and shots of Jack. I felt so fucking sorry for myself, I did a shot. Then another.

By the time the prom ended and cars started pulling out of the parking lot, I was wasted. I climbed back to my Mustang, thinking of one thing, and one thing only. Genevieve.

I didn’t even notice Erica climbing into the passenger seat beside me. Didn’t even really know what she was doing when she slid her hand in the waistband of my rented tuxedo pants and started to play with my cock. When she took it out and started to suck on it, I didn’t feel anything. Somehow, we ended up in the back seat, and she climbed on top of me, impaling herself on my dick. I closed my eyes, thinking I could pretend it was Genevieve. That if I wished hard enough, I could wish her back into my arms.

I came a split second after Erica slid onto me.

“Fuck, Silas,” she said as I let my head fall back so I could look at the full moon, feeling as shitty as I ever had. “You’re pathetic.”

I knew it. Goddamn, how I knew it.

It’s that night that hangs in my memory as I drive to the Roll-a-Rama, so blind and frantic that I’m sure I speed through traffic lights. No wonder she never trusted me. No wonder she had that wall around her heart. And what had I done? I’d made it my challenge to rip it down again, just so I could drive another nail into her heart.

Of all the women I’ve ever met, she deserves that the least. And yet, I treated her worse than any of them. I am, like they say, like she said, a fucking asshole.

I need to talk to her. If she doesn’t know, I need to come clean and explain, and . . . make this right.

When I reach the skating place, the lot is packed. I find a spot on the gravel, far away from the entrance, jump out of the car before I’ve even cut the engine, then storm inside.

When I get in, I ignore all the familiar faces that turn to say hello to me. Girls throw themselves at me, and someone offers me a high five. I push past them, my eyes focused on the place I’d seen Genevieve before. She’s not there. I scan the rest of the place as Eye of the Tiger blares from the speakers.

Then I see Abby, in a corner, making out with some guy I don’t know. I stalk up to her. “Where is Genevieve?”

She turns to look at me, taking her time, like she knows that’ll piss me off all the more. “Why, hello Silas, and how are you?”

I frown at her.

“Not here,” she says.

“Fuck. You think something happened to her?”

She nods. “Yeah. You.”

“What?”

She lets go of her boyfriend, and rolls her eyes. “I don’t know exactly what you did this time. But she told me that she couldn’t come out tonight.”

What I did? She knows. My throat is closing up. I pull on the collar of my sweatshirt. Breathe. “Did she say where she’d be?”

She shakes her head. “She knew that you’d come after her. She said for you to just go home.”

Home. What a fucking joke. This isn’t my home. I scan the place, realizing that though I once ruled this place, now everyone looks unfriendly and like strangers. This never was my home. Where she is, is my home. That’s the truth. And I fucked it all up.

“Home,” I repeat, trying to get it through my head. “Did she say anything else?”

“No.” She takes a swig of her beer and then regards me with pity. “So just go, Silas. You fucked up her life enough the first time. You really had to go for the sequel?”

I run my hands over my face, rubbing my tired eyes. It had been me, back then. I’d wanted nothing more than her, and then I’d gone, given up, and fucked things up beyond repair.

And now, I’d gotten another chance, and what did I do? I’d wanted her so much that I fucked them up again.

As I turn to leave, women are on me like flies on shit. I look at them like they’re all diseased. I feel rabid, out of control. I push my way out of the Roll-a-Rama doors, jump into my truck, and speed toward home, trying to think where she could’ve gone. She has no place else. If she isn’t in her apartment, where could she be?

After an hour of roaming around, not catching sight of her shitty blue Bug, I finally pull up outside my apartment. I trudge up the stairs, banging my fist on the railing, getting splinters in my hand. Head down, the first thing I see on the stoop is the white envelope, glowing in the moonlight. It has one word on it, Silas, in Genevieve’s looping script.

I lunge at it, lifting it into my hands, surprised by the weight of it. Opening the flap, I lift out the letter. It says, very simply, too fucking simply, See you on ESPN.

I turn the envelope over and it drops like a heavyweight into my palm. My Super Bowl ring.

Then I turn around, slamming my fist hard against the wall, and hurl the thing far into the night, as far as I possibly can, so I know for sure I’ll never see it again.