It’s been a week and I’ve been doing the shoulder exercises that Lia pointed me to. To my complete surprise, it seems to be helping. A big part of that is that I simply haven’t used my shoulder much for throws. I’ve been resting it, giving it a chance to heal. Day by day, the inflammation is diminishing.

The sports medicine doctor tells me that I have an amazing metabolism. I just nod my head. I already know that. I never have to watch what I eat, even though I do try to eat healthy for purely competitive football reasons. But I could eat whatever and not gain a pound of fat. That’s just the way my body works, and I also tend to heal fast.

But these exercises are about training my shoulder to actually move in the right way. To actually get it to the point where it moves properly and doesn’t cause any more injuries. And I feel like I’m the right track.

I show the website to the sports medicine doctor, who tells me he’s impressed. He tells me that it very well could work, but to treat the information cautiously. He tells me that he’s going to look into it for me, and get back to me later.

Shouldn’t a doc like him be cutting edge on this stuff? He makes a handsome salary as the doctor for the team, and you’d think they would have hired not only one of the best, but someone who actually knew how to fix problems. But that’s the way bureaucracies work sometimes, tending to promote inefficiency over everything else.

I don’t participate in practices during the entire week. At least not in the normal sense. I can’t throw the ball, so there’s not much point in me doing anything. Instead, I do my own exercises, and I run a lot, to keep myself in good form.

While the other guys on the team are bashing themselves into each other as part of practice, I’m on the track nearby, doing sprints. I time myself. I do 400s, 800s, and even a mile. Despite my fairly big size (I’m not built in the least bit like a runner), I get a fairly good mile time of 4:45. But that’s pushing myself. I was actually a little faster back in high school, before I had become so muscular. I can sprint 400s faster than I could back then, but running the mile is more about having a low body weight.

I try to avoid thinking about Lia as much as possible.

She stormed off, leaving me there.

I don’t know what to think about being a father. I haven’t told a single person. I haven’t told my parents, or anyone on the team. And I certainly haven’t told Jack, my brother. I haven’t heard from him since he got pissed that I wouldn’t let him store stolen goods at my house. That’s probably for the best, unfortunately.

Lia and I haven’t spoken the entire week.

I’m going to have to come to terms with this at some point. It’s not like I’m going to not support my son, the son I didn’t even know I had.

I’ll do what I can for him. I want to be there for him. I just have to figure out how. The thing with Lia is messy, very messy.

I’ll figure it out at some point. Right now I realize I’m procrastinating, intentionally avoiding a difficult issue.

But everyone deals with this kind of shit in their own way. My coping mechanisms may not be the best. Hell, they may be terrible. But they are what they are.

I sink my mind into football, even though I can’t really play. But I study plays harder than ever. I watch tapes of the teams we’ll be playing throughout the season. I read up on them. I study the history of each quarterback in the league. I study the history of the coaches, and even investigate what they were like earlier in their careers, and how their strategies have developed over the years.

Getting into the mind of the opponents—that’s what I’m trying to do. If I can anticipate what they’ll do in the game, I’ll be way ahead of them. I’ll be way ahead of everyone.

A lot of quarterbacks have the skillset. They can throw the ball well. They can throw it long and throw it accurately. But they don’t always have that strategic component. They don’t necessarily have the kind of cunning mind that’s needed.

My shoulder feels like it’s moving differently than before. I think Lia said it would take a long time to get better. She said it’s a long process to start to retrain it. But really it seems to be happening much more quickly than expected. I can “sense” that something is different as I practice moving it around in various ways.

Maybe my body just recovers faster than others people’s. I also think that as a professional athlete I have a greater “sense” or “feel” about how my body works. That’s not just me though. That’s something common to almost any serious athlete that I’ve ever talked to. Some call it greater body awareness and there are plenty of other words for it.

I’m pulling into my driveway after an early morning football practice, when I groan.

Jack’s van is in my driveway, all beat up and battered. I notice that the brake lights in back have been bashed in. I don’t think they were like that before.

I really don’t want to deal with another one of Jack’s schemes or scams right now. Not while I’m trying to forget shit like this in my life. I’m trying to forget the whole situation with Lia. I don’t need any more drama.

I get out of my car slowly.

I walk towards the van.

To my surprise, Jack doesn’t jump out of it and start badgering me for money or to let me keep his things in my house. In fact he doesn’t even get out of the van.

Damnit, did he find a way to break into my house or something? Maybe he’s in there, relaxing on my couch, his dirty shoes up on my coffee table or something, sparking up a joint. He’s really going to get it if that’s the case.

Why the hell doesn’t Jack have enough sense to stay away from me with his bullshit? The last time he was here, I had to punch him in the stomach. Does he want me to do that to him again? Why doesn’t he just fucking learn?

I walk past his van and head into the house.

To my surprise, there’s no one inside. I check all the rooms, but there’s no sign of him.

That’s weird. Really weird.

I head back outside to the van.

I put my hands above my eyes to shield from the glare and peer into the van. But there’s no sign of him.

I bang my fist on the driver’s side window.

“Hey,” I yell. “Jack! What the hell are you doing here?”

There’s no answer.

That’s really weird.

He just decided to leave his van here before heading off to whatever the hell it is he gets up to on Tuesday afternoons?

Curious, I try the large sliding door on the side of the van. It’s open.

I stick my head in.

To my surprise, there’s nothing in the van… except for Jack lying there.

All the merchandise he had last time is gone. So are what seem like all of his possessions.

It’s just Jack lying curled up on the dirty van floor.

“Jack!” I say. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Shane?” says Jack. His voice is weak and groggy.

He sounds pretty fucked up, like he’s been injured or something.

“Jack? Are you OK, man?”

He mumbles something.

He doesn’t sound good.

I climb into the van and move over to him, peering down at him.

He turns his face slightly towards mine, giving me a view of his face for the first time.

“What the hell happened?”

His face is bloodied. It looks like his nose might be broken. It’s all out of place. One of his eyes is all blackened around it. And there’s a deep cut on his cheek.

“Some guys…” he mumbles.

“Can you sit up?” I say, trying to help him sit up by pulling on his shoulders.

I get him up, but he just slumps back over, falling down again into a lying down, curled up position. He doesn’t have the strength to hold himself up.

“You’re really bad off,” I say. “I’m going to bring you inside.”

I reach down and scoop him up into my arms. He’s not a light guy by any means, even though he’s skinny. He still has a good amount of muscle left, which weighs more than fat does.

His bones must be dense or something, too, because damn does he weigh a lot.

I carry him inside and look around, trying to figure out where to put him.

I finally decide on the couch in the living room.

“This better not be some ploy to let you stay here,” I mutter at him.

But he doesn’t seem to even hear me.

I head into the mud room that I have a bunch of crap crammed into, and start rooting around for an old towel. I finally find one and bring it back to Jack.

“Now try not to move your head away from this,” I say, lifting his head up gingerly and putting the towel underneath it.

I sit down in an armchair opposite him.

“You’re pretty fucked up,” I say to him, eying him more carefully from a distance.

He mumbles something.

I feel sorry for him, because I’ve never seen him this badly beat up before. But I don’t feel overly sorry. I know he got himself into this mess somehow. Most likely, the guys that he stole the equipment from came to get it back. They didn’t bother going through the police. Instead, they went right to the source and took what they needed.

Oddly enough, I know that when he’s recovered, Jack won’t really mind the situation either. Sure, he’ll wish it hadn’t happened. He’ll wish he still had the stolen equipment and that he hadn’t gotten his ass handed to him, but Jack has a weird sense of morality for a petty criminal. He’ll most likely figure that if they were able to steal the shit from him, then it was their right to do it.

Jack mumbles something that I don’t understand, and falls asleep.

“Just don’t get blood on my couch, asshole,” I mutter to him.

I remain sitting in the chair, watching him.

The weird truth about all this is that I’m glad to have a distraction.

I need to be distracted from this mess with Lia.

Everything was going so well. Everything seemed perfect. I could have seen us… you know, getting really serious. I hadn’t really thought about what that meant.

I knew I was going to make her mine, in some sense. I knew she was going to belong to me.

Now… I just don’t know.

I finally get up and start doing the exercises that Lia showed me. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this just makes me think about her even more.

Now I head into the kitchen and prepare two huge sandwiches. I grab two beers and head back into the living room.

I drop one of the sandwich plates loudly on the coffee table.

“Wake up, Jack,” I say.

“Huh?” he mumbles.

I poke him with the cold beer.

“Maybe I should have brought you a soda, but I think you deserve a beer.”

This stirs him.

He wakes up and looks around, bleary eyed.

He fumbles for the beer and cracks it open, taking a long sip.

“Eat the sandwich,” I say, nodding towards it.

He gobbles the whole thing down in what must be a new sandwich speed record.

“How you feeling?”

“Like shit,” he says.

“Maybe you deserve it.”

“I probably do… Thanks for bringing me inside.”

I nod at him.

I check my watch. About four o’clock at this point. I don’t have practice until tomorrow.

“You want to watch a movie?” I say.

He looks at me suspiciously.

“Why?”

I shrug. “Something to do.”

“You don’t want to call the cops on me, or call Dad or something?”

“Nope,” I say. “What do you want to watch? I’ve got everything.”

“Remember that movie we used to watch all the time as kids?”

“The Great Escape? With Steve McQueen?”

“Yeah,” says Jack, sounding excited.

“I’ll throw it on,” I say.

It feels weird to be actually doing something with my brother. We’ve been at odds for so long. But maybe this is good.

I cue up the movie, and I join him on the couch to watch it.

We sip our beers slowly, and I continue to eat my sandwich. Jack has long since finished his. I wonder when the last time he actually ate was. With his lifestyle, it could have been forever ago.

I try to keep thoughts about Lia out of my mind. I can’t deal with it now.

But when am I ever going to be able to deal with it?

I’m angry with her. I feel like she deceived me completely. She had my child and didn’t tell me about it. I believe her with that voicemail story. I think she legitimately thought she was doing the right thing… but it’s still crazy. How could she not even make a real attempt to let me know? She must think I’m a real piece of shit if she thought I ignored a voicemail telling me that I was a father. I mean, what does she think of me?

I can feel myself getting angry just thinking about it.

“You OK?” says Jack, looking over at me.

“Uh, yeah, fine,” I mutter. “Just watch the movie.”

“You’re clenching your fists.”

“It’s nothing. Just watch the movie.”

The Great Escape is a fantastic movie. I haven’t seen it since I was about 12 years old. Jack and I used to watch it just about every week. And it’s a long movie. For a long time, it seemed like we had most of the movie completely memorized, line for line. But we still loved watching it. We just couldn’t get over how cool some of the characters were. They were our ideals, and not just Steve McQueen, but the others, like Hendley, nicknamed The Scrounger, and Ives, who was called The Mole, because he was an expert at making tunnels.

Jack and I settle down to pure silence, simply enjoying the tale of these POWs in WW2 trying to break out of their prison camp. The characters, all based on real life people, are immensely clever and they simply never give up. Sort of like Hogan’s Heroes but it’s style is realistic rather than silly.

The movie takes my mind off Lia and Will.

“Wow,” says Jack, as the movie finally winds down to just the credits. “That was crazy. It’s been forever since we saw it. Remember how we used to watch it all the time?”

I nod my head.

“You OK?” says Jack, after a long moment of me not speaking, just staring ahead at the TV screen.

“I think I’m the one who should be asking you that,” I say. “You’re the one who got his face smashed in.”

“Eh, I’m fine,” says Jack. “Or I will be once I get some time to rest.”

“That was fun seeing that again,” I say.

“Yup,” says Jack. “Now tell me what’s going on with you.”

Maybe it’s watching the movie. For some reason I feel connected to Jack like a brother. That’s a way that I haven’t felt in literally years. I feel like I can open up to him a little. And that’s knowing that he’s really not the most trustworthy person.

“I’m a dad,” I say, saying it all at once.

I’ve been avoiding the issue and it just kind of comes out of me. The words tumble out of my mouth.

“You’re a what?” says Jack, his eyes widening.

“Turns out I got someone pregnant in college, but I never knew.”

“Wow,” says Jack. “I don’t even think I’ve done that.”

“You have to get laid to knock someone up.”

“Nice one,” says Jack. “But I get laid plenty.”

“Not looking like that, you don’t.”

“Maybe so. So you just found out about all this or what?”

“Yup.” I tell him a little bit about reconnecting with Lia and how she dropped the news on me after we were spending some time together.

“Well that’s cool, man,” says Jack. “Congratulations on being a father. That’s like huge.”

I look at him, studying his face. There isn’t a trace of irony or sarcasm in his voice. He’s being sincere. His sincerity is a little more palatable somehow coming from his busted up and bloody face.

“I’d better get you an ice pack or something,” I say, for some reason not wanting to continue the conversation.

I head into the kitchen and root around in the freezer for an ice pack. But I don’t have any. The doctors told me not to use ice for my shoulder, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s not in fashion anymore. Now they seem to use heat packs. Although once they did have me sit in an ice bath after practice. It’s hard to keep track of what’s supposedly good or bad for you these days. It all seems to change so far… kind of like my life.

I grab a bag of peas that I’m definitely never going to eat, since I’ve always hated peas.

“Here you go,” I say, tossing the bag at Jack, as I come back into the living room.

He misses the catch. The bag crashes into his face.

“Ow, shit,” he says.

“Sorry,” I say. “You OK?”

“I’m fine,” says Jack, wincing. He takes the frozen bag of peas and holds it up to his face. “You delivered the punishment and the medicine in one swoop.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“So you didn’t answer my question,” says Jack. “I’m your older brother. You can tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“You didn’t ask me a question.”

“Oh, right. Well, I was going to, before you left.”

“And that was?”

“What’s your plan now?”

“My plan?”

“Yeah, like are you going to be in the kid’s life or what?”

“Of course I am!” I say indignantly.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like you’re taking any steps in that direction.”

“That’s because Lia… well… I don’t think she could take it. She left, twice…”

I can feel myself getting angry.

“You seem like you haven’t resolved your feelings about her.”

“I have,” I say. “I know she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

“You’re the one who seems angry,” points out Jack. “Listen, these things don’t go down the way you want them to. That’s not how shit works out. So she left you a voicemail and that was it. So maybe she made a mistake. But she was doing the best she could. Do you think she wanted her kid to grow up without a father? And do you think it was easy for her to tell you after all these years? She probably feels horrible.”

I fall silent. Part of me realizes that what Jack is saying is right.

How does he have so much insight into this?

“Remember the story of Mom and Dad?” says Jack.

I shake my head.

“They weren’t expecting me. I don’t know if you knew that.”

I shake my head. “It’s news to me.”

“Well,” says Jack. “I shouldn’t know the story, but one of Dad’s friends told me once when I was drunk.”

“Who?”

“You remember Mr. Masters?”

I nod my head.

“I stayed with him once when I got out of jail. Turns out he was a huge drunk and couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Anyway, he told me how Mom and Dad had actually broken up when Mom realized she was pregnant. They had a huge fight or something… a big blow out… but the news of me got them back together.”

“Really?” I say.

Jack nods.

“Hm,” I say, not knowing what to say.

“So what you going to do?” says Jack.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I need to think about this. Oh, and you can stay here. There’s a spare room upstairs. But just don’t get your blood all over the sheets. Clean yourself up before going to bed. There’s food in the fridge. I’m going to take a walk. I need to do some thinking.”

“Thanks, bro,” says Jack, looking visibly touched.

I nod at him and head out the door, letting it close loudly behind me.

I’ve got some serious thinking to do.

Right now I know two things: that I want to be Will’s dad, and that I want to be with Lia.

I just don’t quite know how…

How am I going to do it?

Can I really go from being single to being a family man?