Blind Side(5)

When he wasn’t busy with his new family, that is — the one he’d easily replaced us with.

Maliyah had been by my side through all of it. She was there through the episodes with my mom, who didn’t know how to cope after the loss of her marriage and tried to find solace in the worst kind of men after. She understood the abandonment I felt from my dad, and her own father stepped in to take his place, teaching me all the things a father should have as I grew up. More than anything, she was there through all the ups and downs of playing football, reminding me every chance she had that I would make it one day, that I would go pro.

It didn’t feel like losing my girlfriend.

It felt like losing my right arm.

It still hadn’t sunk in that we’d finally made it through a grueling year of long-distance — her in California where we grew up, me here in Massachusetts — only for her to get into NBU, move across the country, and… break up with me.

Nothing about it made sense. I’d tried combing through every word of her breakup speech and had come up empty each time I tried to find reasoning.

“What we had was a great first love, Clay, but that’s all it was — a first love.”

Maliyah’s face crumpled, but not in the way that said she was actually hurt by the statement. It was a collapse of pity, like she was telling a little kid why he couldn’t ride the big boy rollercoaster.

“We made a promise,” I said, thumbing the promise ring on my finger. We’d exchanged them at sixteen, a promise that we’d be together forever — a wedding band in everything but law.

But when I reached out for hers, her finger was bare, the gold band nowhere in sight, and I swallowed as she pulled away with a grimace.

“We were young,” she said, as if that made her breaking my heart reasonable, as if our age somehow disillusioned the love I felt for her.

The love I thought she felt for me.

“But, you’re finally here. You’re at my school.”

That made her frown. “It’s my school, too, now. I’m on the cheerleading squad. And I have… goals. Things I want to accomplish.”

She couldn’t look at me when she said it, and my nose flared with emotion that I struggled to keep at bay. I knew that look. It was the same one she gave when I bought her a dress that she didn’t really like, but didn’t want to tell me so because it would hurt my feelings. It was the look she got from her father, Cory Vail, a powerful tech lawyer in Silicon Valley who was used to getting what he wanted.

And who expected his daughter to do the same.

It was easy enough to put the pieces together, and I sobered at the realization.

“I’m not good enough.”

Maliyah just looked at the ground, unable to even deny it.

And in the blink of an eye, the girl I thought I’d marry and build a life with was abandoning me, just like my father had — even when they both had promised they’d stay.

I was the common denominator.

What I’d done hadn’t been enough for either of them.

“We’ll both be happier,” she said, patronizing again as she rubbed my arm. “Trust me.”

The memory was wiped from my mind with the hard snap of a damp towel against my thigh.

“Argh!”

I cried out, hissing at the sting it left behind as Kyle Robbins howled with laughter. He bent at the waist, the towel he’d wound up and whipped me with falling to the ground in the process.

“You were zoned out man,” he said through the laughter. “Didn’t see that shit coming at all.” He popped up then, looking across the weight room at another teammate. “Did you get it?”

Before whoever he’d tasked with videotaping the prank could answer, I grabbed him by the neck of his tank top and ripped him down to eye level, holding him firm when he tried to squirm away.

“Delete that shit, or I swear to God, Robbins, I’ll give you the biggest wedgie of your life and hang you from the rafters by your shit-streaked, shredding tightie whities.”

He almost laughed, but when I twisted my fist more, intensifying the grip, his eyes flashed with terror before he smacked my arm and I released him. He and I both knew I could have held on longer if I’d wanted.

“Damn, someone’s got their panties in a twist,” he murmured.

One of our teammates returned his phone to him, and I snatched it out of his hand before he could walk away, deleting the video myself before I tossed it back to him.

“You used to be fun,” he commented.

“And you used to have Novo’s name shaved into the side of your head,” I shot back, which made the guys around us break out in muffled laughter that they did a sorry job of hiding.

Kyle’s face turned red, the memory of him losing a game of 500 to our kicker last season, and therefore having to do whatever the team decided as punishment washing over his narrowed gaze.

But he just sucked his teeth and waved me off, making his way over to the bench press, and it felt like a fly finally ditching my picnic for someone else’s.

Kyle Robbins was a prick, and the fact that he’d cashed in on the whole Name, Image and Likeness thing any time he could meant he brought even more attention to the media circus we already had around us on any given day. I hated it, and only tolerated him because he was a damn good tight end and on the same team as me.