Unfortunately, water soaks right through my new gloves. But maybe I’m an idiot for shooting foul shots in the freezing drizzle (frizzle?) at eight-thirty in the morning.
What better way to start the New Year, right?
I’m sure Mr. Hodgson is saying the same thing right now.
It is ass cold out here this morning, but I need to get my shit together, and that starts here on the driveway. No way anyone else is out on New Year’s morning putting time in.
Granted, no one else probably fell asleep at ten-thirty on New Year’s Eve while watching Star Wars: Episode III on the couch with their dad. But still.
So when Tabby’s dad’s truck backs out of their driveway a little after nine, she finds this guy standing in the frizzle like a dumbass, with his hands up his shirt, pressed inside his armpits.
Tabby and her dad laugh at me from inside the truck. I pull both of my black-gloved hands from my shirt and wave like a moron. Tabby waves back with a box of Nerds in her hand.
Not a bad start, really.
Tabby and her dad are headed up to her grandma’s nursing home a couple of hours away to have pork and sauerkraut with her (for good luck!). It’s really the only extended family Tabby has, and they hardly ever see her. From what Tabby’s told me over the years, she’s not a very nice woman.
“Last year she thought I was my mom—who she hasn’t seen in, like, fifteen years—and kept making comments about my clothes over dinner. Nothing like having your grandma call you a slut in a room full of old people. But at least the pork and sauerkraut is gross!”
Tabby told me that one yesterday when she stopped by. She really had a hard time pulling herself away from our Star Wars marathon. And I used every bit of the Force I could muster to get her to stay, but the power of the Dark Accord was too strong.
Mom asked me this morning if I’d made my New Year’s resolution yet. I told her it’s to get a tattoo on my butt cheek of half a heart, like those friendship necklaces, and Trip was going to get the other half—we’re still arguing over who gets the Best butt cheek and who gets the Friends cheek. Each has its own issues in isolation. I feel like there’s a poem in there somewhere.
But as I pull these soaking receiving gloves off my pruney, half-frozen hands, it does seem like a valid question—the resolution question, not the butt-cheek question.
The two things I want most haven’t changed: I still want to play varsity, and I still wish it were my varsity jacket hanging off Tabby’s arms in the stands, that it was me she locked eyes with like I was the only other person in the gym.
But wishing these things doesn’t make them so. And constantly wishing and pining has kind of made me an asshole, I think.
So here’s what we’re gonna do—my resolutions:
1. Practice hard. Play hard. Turn off my stupid brain. The last one is easier said than done, but it’s got to happen. I’ve got less than half a season left, and that means Branson and Lighty have less than half a season left before their varsity careers are over. If I want to have any chance of stepping into their place next year as a sophomore, I’m going to have to turn my brain off and go. I can’t wish Tabby and company were watching me and pissing my pants that they’re watching me at the same time. I’m not out here freezing my nuts off so I can stop playing anytime anyone shows up to watch. I want to run with Trip the way we do at the Y.
Work my ass off. Play hard. No need to think.
2. Be Tabby’s friend. Turn off my stupid brain.
Again, easier said than done.
It’s still going to ache every time I see them together, and I don’t necessarily want to stand there and see them off every morning when she hops into his car and gives him a kiss. But Mom’s right: she hasn’t written me out of her life, and there’s no way I’m writing her out of mine. I still love that girl.
God, I love that girl.
And just like on the court, Branson’s high school career is almost over. Next year—no rides to school. No hugs in the hallway. No postgame gatherings at Valentino’s. In a few short months, Tabby and Branson have gone from curiosity, gossip fodder—A senior dating a freshman? Is that even legal?—to Franklin’s most endearing couple. Branson’s senior friends love her, his sister and sophomore friends love her, everybody in a school of twelve hundred kids seems to know who she is now.
There’s nothing I can do about that.
But in a few short months, it could just as easily fade away. When it does, I’ll still be here. To make her laugh. Get jacked in the arm. Watch Star Wars. Get lectured. Supply her with Nerds.
Be her friend.
I take one last shot before heading back inside.
Buckets.