The Art of Losing Yourself (27 page)

I twisted my lips to the side and searched my thoughts. Not for something humorous, but for something honest. What
did
I think about the man of the hour? “Carmen and Ben go to church, but it’s just a thing they do. To my mom, I think Jesus was a crutch who never really helped her stand. And don’t even get me started on Chris Nanning.” I hooked my thumbs through the belt loops of my jeans. “But then there’s you. You seem to take the whole Jesus thing pretty seriously. And despite what I may have thought in the beginning, you’re not too bad of a guy.”

“That’s nice, but you’re evading the question.”

“Yeah?”

“I said I wanted
your
opinion on Jesus.” He slid forward and set his ratty sneakers on the cement. “Who do you say He is, Gracie Fisher?”

“Honestly?”

“Always.”

“I have no idea.”

Elias’s ghost of a smile materialized. “Since we’re being honest, what if I told you that I really want you to come to the game on Friday?”

“Seven hours is a long way to drive for an overrated mating ritual.”

“Come on, you’re living with the coach. And you’re friends with the star receiver. You have to come. I’ll even let you wear my jersey.”

“Your jersey, huh? How 1960s of you.” I poked fun, but the offer had an alarming amount of pleasure spreading through my body.

G
RACIE

The student body gathered in the parking lot early Thursday morning while the football team loaded onto a rented bus. Elias found me in the crowd and tipped his chin, a question in his eyes. Was I coming? I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. He laughed and stepped onto the bus, and the Bay Breeze Sting Rays hit the road to the hoots and cheers of my classmates.

Turns out my steely resolve was made more of tin foil. Intrigue won the battle.

Which was why, the next morning, I found myself in the back of a van with a freshman named Samantha Jane, her mom behind the wheel, and Carmen riding shotgun on our way to the Citrus Bowl Stadium in Orlando, Florida.

I was going to a football game.

Chanelle texted me when we were twenty minutes away:
r u coming?

Biting my lip, I stared at her question until we reached the hotel. Once we were checked in, I responded with a simple yes.

Ten seconds later…
Yayayay!! u have 2 sit w/ussss!

My adrenal glands kicked into action. Going to a football game was one thing. Going to youth group with Elias was one thing. Watching Elias play football while cheering him on with his youth group was another. But what was my other option—sitting with Carmen and Natalie and all the booster moms? Or worse, joining Samantha and her dancer friends in the Bay Breeze student section?

Where r u sitting?

She texted me the section and row and somehow, after grabbing burgers with my road-trip buddies, I was wandering through a stadium surrounded by a sea of blue and gold. It may have been over a year of no football, but I hadn’t forgotten what the games were like. Make that game a state championship in a stadium designed for college, and the energy level was insane. As I made my way down section 132, Chanelle found me before I found her. I caught her
waving enthusiastically from row twelve. She wrapped me in a hug when I arrived, her light-brown eyes wide and bright.

“Elias said there was no way you were coming!” She held onto my arms when she talked and hugged me again. “I’m so glad you changed your mind.” She was wearing a blue-and-gold jersey with the number eighteen on it—Elias’s number. He must have asked Chanelle to wear his jersey after I declined the offer—if his offer was even a serious one.

Over her shoulder I saw a guy who had painted his entire face blue with the same numbers painted on his cheeks in yellow as Chanelle wore on her person. I did a double take and realized it was Malik without his glasses. “Hey, Malik.”

“Salutations, Gracie Fisher. You ready to cheer on our fearless friend?”

“I think so.”

Chanelle held out a bag of Skittles, then poured some candy into my upturned palm. “Where are you staying?”

“Comfort Suites.”

“So are we! Girls in one room, boys in the other. You should drive back with us tomorrow morning. It’ll be fun.”

I gave her a noncommittal nod and stuck a red Skittle in my mouth, trying to get a handle on things. It was all very weird—this moment. Standing in a football stadium, being so enthusiastically included. Things were starting to feel uncontained, like my decision to go to youth group had burst open a can of confetti that could not be closed up again.

The crowd broke out into cheers, and the marching band let loose an anthem song. The Bay Breeze Sting Rays ran out onto the field along with the cheerleaders. I caught myself standing up on my tiptoes, searching for number eighteen. He ran up in front, leading the pack.

Excitement flickered through my veins, and as the game progressed, that flicker grew into a seismic wave. Watching Elias in his element was more mesmerizing than it should have been. His movement was like art. I couldn’t look away. When he scored a touchdown in the first quarter, I cheered with everyone else. When he scored another one in the third, I was practically jumping. And when the final quarter clock ticked down to ten seconds with the Sting Rays behind by two and Elias caught a pass that put the team within field goal distance, my heart thudded so fast and so hard I wondered if it was possible to experience oxygen overload.

The kicker took the field, only instead of watching him, I found Elias on the sidelines with his helmet off, standing beside Ben. Their matching expressions said it all. For all Elias’s talk, he loved this sport. And for all his downplay, at this moment, right now, winning mattered. And since it mattered to him, it mattered to me. So much that my mouth went dry and my palms went sweaty and I didn’t even care that Chanelle’s nails were digging through the fleece of my jacket.

The center snapped the ball and the kicker started his approach. He let his foot fly. The ball soared through the air and sailed between the two uprights. I looked at the referee with wide eyes as he raised his arms over his head and every single person dressed in blue and gold went berserk.

“They won!” Chanelle yelled, still clutching my sleeve. “Two years in a row, they won state!”

The two of us jumped up and down like idiots, and somehow I was running onto the field with Malik and Chanelle and what must have been the entire student body. Chanelle found Elias first. She practically launched herself into his arms and he lifted her off the ground. When he put her back down, our eyes met over her shoulder. I took a quick step toward him. He took a quick step toward me. We didn’t hug, but he did stare down at me with a set of dimples flashing deeper than I’d ever seen. “You came!”

I slid my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, my cheeks hot. This close in his football pads and uniform, Elias looked impossibly tall and athletic and irresistible.

“I can’t believe you came.”

“Yeah, well, I figured since I live with the coach and all…”

He pushed his hand through his hair, his eyes twinkling. My heart fluttering. It looked like he was going to say something, but then a teammate threw his arm around Elias’s neck and dragged him away to celebrate. I watched them go. And in my line of vision, I spotted Carmen walking toward Ben. I couldn’t see her face, since her back was to me. But I could see Ben’s. His hat was askew and he wore a victorious smile, and he looked at his wife in this smoldering way that I was sure would make women all across Bay Breeze swoon. When Carmen reached him, he wrapped her in a hug and pressed his lips against hers. I was mesmerized all over again. In all my months with the Harts, this was the first time I’d seen them kiss.

C
ARMEN

“Who are you trying to race, girl?”

I wasn’t sure. I only knew that between the post-state-champ sports broadcast on Channel Three and this morning’s picture posted on the station’s Facebook page, my muscles felt like sprinting. Far, far away. Logic, however, forced them to slow. Natalie wanted to run five miles. There was no way I could maintain this speed for that long a distance, even with a tsunami of chaotic emotions to expel.

“Did you see the picture on Facebook?” I asked.

“Of you and Ben smooching?”

I shook my head, not because she was wrong, but because the posting of the picture without my permission rubbed me the wrong way. The motion set my curly ponytail into a swing. We jogged down a short incline onto a bike path. In a little over a mile, we’d be running along the bay. Perhaps the gorgeous view would take my mind off my producer’s antics.

“It’s fabulous publicity,”
she had said earlier this morning.
“Viewers are eating it up. Way better for the station than that video in August.”

It wasn’t enough that the station had to show footage of Ben and me kissing as part of the state-championship news story. No, Nancy had to go and post a picture too—of Ben and me standing in the middle of a green football field amongst his celebratory players, with Ben’s arms wrapped around my waist, his lips pressed against mine. Last I saw, it had over three thousand likes and some five hundred comments. People gushing over the win, heralding Coach Hart for his hard work and dedication, and complimenting me for the cuteness that was us—me and Ben, Bay Breeze’s sweethearts. One girl wrote:
UR so lucky! Coach Hart is hawt. <3
She wasn’t alone in her sentiment.

“I’m sick of my personal life being on public display.”

Natalie laughed. “I guess a career in acting is out, then? Do you ever look at those celebrity magazines? I saw one at the grocery store yesterday. Leonardo
DiCaprio was on the cover, standing next to a
urinal
. What is wrong with the paparazzi?”

“Anytime I go to the grocery store, I run into somebody who thinks they know me.”

“You are on their television screens every morning. And they probably follow you on Twitter or something.”

“Don’t get me started on Twitter.” Another one of Nancy’s “suggestions,” which were never really suggestions at all. The things I posted on Twitter weren’t me. They were alter-ego Carmen. The one who lived in Happy Land with her happy husband. “Whatever happened to broadcast meteorology being about
broadcasting meteorology
?”

“I understand wanting some privacy, especially after the whole expectant-mothers sign demolition, but might I suggest something?”

“What?”

“You’re overreacting?”

“Overreacting?”

“Carmen, it’s a good picture. You and Ben look cute.”

Yeah, and deliriously happy. But Ben and I weren’t deliriously happy. And therein lay the crux of my ire. I was tired of feeding the illusion. I was tired of smiling for the camera. My smiles were counterfeit.

“So guess what I signed up for in January?” Natalie asked.

“What?”

“CPR class.”

“Any particular reason?”

“You know how I’ve been miserable at home without Reese? Well, Brandon and I have been having these knock-down-drag-out fights about me working again. He’s so old-fashioned. Anyway, the other day he pulls this idea out of thin air. I love kids. He loves having me at home. Why not start an in-home day care?”

“That’d be right up your alley.”

“I know! Wanna join me?”

“With in-home day care?”

“No, the CPR class. It’s a good skill to have.”

Maybe Natalie was on to something. According to our social worker, some couples waited two years before they were chosen. The thought of waiting that
long in this torturous purgatory made me want to crawl out of my skin. Perhaps adding
CPR certified
to our portfolio would snag the attention of a birth mother. “Sure, I’ll join you.”

“Perfect. I’ll get you registered. Now catch me up. How are things going with Gracie?”

“We remain in this very odd, courteous twilight zone. And she joined the academic bowl team. She seems to like it so far, even if she would never say so.”

I had told Natalie about getting stuck in the mud on the way to Tallahassee, the fight that ensued, and the deal we’d made at the rehabilitation facility. But I didn’t tell her about Gracie’s accusation—the one where she called me a hypocrite. Of all the words we exchanged, those were the ones that left the deepest impression. I didn’t want them to be true anymore, but peeling off so many accumulated layers of persona was no easy thing. I was slightly terrified that once I peeled them all away, nothing would remain but a bag of dry bones. I forced my breathing into a Lamaze-type rhythm. “Hey, Natalie?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you and Brandon ever had marital problems?”

“Have you not been listening to a thing I’ve been saying lately? I wasn’t kidding about the knock-down-drag-outs.”

“Yeah, sure. You two argue.” A lot, actually. But they touched a lot too. Poor Samantha had been mortified on more than one occasion. “I’m not talking about arguments. I’m talking about…” What was I talking about? How did I even begin to describe this thing we’d become?

“Are you and Ben okay?”

“I don’t know.”

Natalie slowed into a walk and took my arm so I had to slow too. “Carmen?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her. All of it. From the very first moment I began pushing Ben away, to the giant wall that stood between us now—the one I yearned for him to claw through, even though I had no idea what I’d do if he did. I wanted to peel off the layers until they were nothing but a littered trail of metaphorical onion skin on the path behind us, but after years of holding my cards so closely, I couldn’t get the details out. “We’ve hit a rough spot, I guess.”

Natalie wrapped her arm around my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic
squeeze. “You and Ben have been through a lot these last few months. You’ll get through it, especially now that football season is over. You know how that is.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“All last week, I thought Brandon and I were going to rip each other’s throats out. But we’re okay now. Every marriage has dry patches.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure this was a dry patch so much as a dead one.

Natalie and I resumed our jogging and rounded a bend. The bay came into view in all its sparkling late-morning glory. It should have taken my breath away. Instead, I beheld the scene before me with a dispassion that shouldn’t be. I attempted to pray, to speak words to God in my mind. All I could manage were two. They repeated in tune with my panting.

Lord, help…Lord, help…Lord, help…

For all I knew, I was speaking to the air.