My (Not So) Perfect Plan (Believe In Us #2)

TWO

EVAN

I look over at the girl sitting in my truck and then turn down the volume in my car as I pull onto the road. I had no idea hanging out with straitlaced Claire Brown was so much fun. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t a practiced tease, or that she didn’t realize how much of her wide-eyed innocence, blushes, and indignant fury were a turn on.

I could get any girl I wanted, if I I wanted to. I’d just never wanted Claire like that. I still don’t know if I do. I know I had fun with her though. You would never have seen Emily or Sharona or one of their girlfriends dancing and singing with abandon in my truck to 80s music of all things. It made me happy to see a smile on Claire’s serious face. Even better knowing that I was the one to put it there.

I think back to all the memories I have of Claire Brown, from second grade on. I don’t remember her smiling much, or at all, come to think of it. Maybe that’s why it made me feel like I was king of the world when I got her to smile – not that I would mention it to her considering she’d be embarrassed by the fact that I don’t ever remember her smiling.

She’s staring out the window, toying with the end of one of her cute double braids.

“You have a job, Claire?” I ask.

She looks over at me, puzzled by my interest. “Yeah. I volunteer at a Physical Therapy clinic.”

“Hands on. I like that,” I wiggle my eyebrows at her. She rolls her eyes and goes back to looking out the window.

“Ugh, boys. Is everything a double entendre with you?”

“If I can help it,” I smirk and then switch topics because I don’t want her thinking that’s all I think about. “Any ideas on scheduling preferences for your tutoring? What days work for you afterschool?”

Her eyes dart over to mine, doubtful and curious.

“What?” I ask.

She sighs. “I’m just wondering why you volunteered to tutor me.”

“Well, technically, I volunteered to tutor anyone because I needed the volunteer hours, but Mr. Henderson asked me to tutor you specifically.”

“Oh.”

Was she disappointed? I totally was going to push that button. “Would it make you feel better if I had specifically requested to tutor you?”

Her head snaps over to me. “What? No!” But her cheeks flooding with color have me wondering otherwise.

“There’s a party after the game. You’re coming right?” I look over at her. It’s weird to have a girl sitting in my truck that isn’t basically trying to climb into my lap. Claire is hugging the door like I’m diseased. Or scared. The idea that she might be scared is disconcerting though, so I discard that one. Not that I’m diseased is much better.

“No. I don’t do parties.” She meets my eyes across the cab. “And it’s girl’s night tonight.”

My mind implodes with all sorts of not-quite R rated images.

“Oooooo, sexy,” I smirk at her.

She gets the most confused look on her face while trying not to laugh. “What was that ?”

“You tell a guy ‘girl’s night’ and we just imagine a bunch of girls pillow fighting in their underwear. Sexy.”

She smacks me on the shoulder, laughing in disbelief. “Ewww! Gross! You did not just imagine me in my underwear!”

I totally did, and it was hot, and now that she mentioned it, I am imagining that again. But I’m also driving so thankfully, it’s not like a detailed thing.

“And pillow fighting in our underwear?” she continues. “Whaaat? Who does that? And why?”

“I don’t know!” I am starting to feel a bit foolish. I don’t know what I thought girl’s night consisted of, really, because I’ve never had sisters or female cousins, or any other girls around really. My female exposure consisted of women who were coming on to me or who were too old to come on to me.

“Well, that’s just a huge no to whatever you think we are going to do.”

“Fine. What are you doing for girl’s night?”

Her eyes bug out and she shakes her head. “Uh uh. You can’t ask me about the sacred rituals of girl’s night. The first rule of girl’s night is ‘never talk about girl’s night.’”

I pull into a parking spot in front of the Sports Complex. There’s still an hour until the game starts at seven and I wonder what she’s going to do until then.

A bunch of the players and their girlfriends were clustered near the picnic table beneath the big oak tree in front of the stadium. Demolition was scheduled for the end of football season, but it was anyone’s game whether it would be finished by next season, not that I would be here to care. I look over at Claire who is opening her door. I get out and run around to her side.

Her hand fits small and secure in mine as I help her down, my thumb rubs the back of her hand before I realize what I’m doing, but I am rewarded by a shiver from her. She’s definitely not unaffected. A guy could get used to this, I think, moments before she releases my hand.

“You want to wait inside before the game starts?” I ask, shoving my hands in my pockets.

She hefts her back pack up on her shoulder. “Sure.”

“You can leave your stuff in my truck and get it after the game.”

“Um, okay. Tamara is picking me up.”

“I’ll leave my truck unlocked so you can get your stuff if I don’t see you after.” I wait while she tosses her stuff inside and then throw my duffle over my shoulder and walk beside her into the sports complex.

“What did you mean when you don’t do parties?” I ask, just remembering that that is what she had started out saying.

“What I said. I just have too much going on.”

“So, you’ve never been to a party?” I raise an eyebrow in disbelief.

“No,” the tips of her ears and the back of her neck turn red, “I have. Like, um, birthday parties and stuff.”

It strikes me that Claire is basically virgin territory – not in the sense of being a virgin, though I am 99% sure she is that too, but in that she’s never experienced all the best parts of being a teenager because she’s so caught up in being this perfect student.

“What?” she asks, seeing the look on my face.

“We are going to have to adjust your lifestyle.”

“ Excuse me?”

I can tell from the way her head tilts and her shoulders tense up that I just really pissed her off. I raise my hands defensively. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

But I mean it all the same. Claire Brown needs to live a little, let her hair down, and considering how fun she is to be with, I’m not ashamed to say that I plan on making it my mission in life to keep her in smiles.

Since there’s really no public areas for her to wait before the game starts, I take her into one of the press rooms (these rooms may or may not get used by horny football players and their willing girlfriends, but she doesn’t need to know that.)

“All right. Well, we get free wifi in here so, if you want to surf the internet, feel free,” I say.

She can’t seem to meet my eyes and the room feels surprisingly small, which is weird because there’s definitely more room in here than in my truck. I feel like I should do something before I leave, but I can’t figure out what.

“Um, thanks for dinner, and good luck,” she says as I turn for the door. I look over at her and she meets my eyes. I can’t help but rile her up a bit more.

“I can’t wait for our next tutoring session,” I wink.

Despite fall being being crisp and cool, I am pouring sweat. The game isn’t going great. We’re at 27-17 in the fourth quarter with four minutes left in play. I’ve been playing well, but our defense is dropping the ball all over the place.

“Jerry, 42! 7! 26! Hike!”

I catch the ball in my hands, looking for the opening that’s supposed to be there. Only it’s not there and I have seconds left to get rid of the ball. I know it’s a risky call, but I decide to run it up the middle. I jump over a downed group of guys in front of me. To my shock I manage to make it through and take off running for all I’m worth. I have a vision of a runaway train in my head because visual imaging helps me move that much faster. I’m almost to the goal line, less than ten yards left, when a someone slams into my side one way, and then someone hits me on the other side with the force of a mack truck. I feel my leg snap to the side as I go down, buried in a pile of muscle and pads. A guy rolls off of me and offers me a hand up. I try to move, but fall back down as the movement makes me want to cut my leg off. He stands back. My knee is in so much pain I can’t think about anything else.

I have no idea where the ball went and pain is lancing up my leg. The wild cheering of the crowd has become a death-like silence. I blink back tears from my eyes. This is bad. It’s really bad. Whatever is wrong with my leg, this isn’t something I’m going to come back from. I don’t know what has me so convinced. Call it intuition or something. I turn to the side and throw up, the puke partially sliding into my helmet to coat my jaw and partially falling out onto the grass.

Trainers and coaches come rushing up.

“Talk to me, Carmichael. You hit in the head?”

“No. My right leg. I can’t move it.”

Someone moves it and I twist and writhe in pain, holding back curses, but unable to stop the tears that spring to my eyes.

“All right. Can you stand?”

I shake my head. There’s no way I want to even try.

“Get a stretcher out here.”

Around me people are talking, but their voices and words are like gnats, flitting around my ears and I can’t figure out what they are saying. Somewhere in the stands my mom and dad are watching. Mom is probably losing her mind. But I just don’t want to be in pain like this.

“All right, son. We’re going to move you now.”

I nod. Hands reach underneath me and even though I know they are trying to be careful, something jostles my leg and I cry out. Something pricks my arm and I slip away into blackness.

When I come to, I’m in a hospital room. The lights are off except one, the blinds drawn, but I can tell it’s still night. Mom is sitting in a chair, her head leaned back, sleeping. I don’t know where my dad is, but I can feel his disappointment from here. Did they already tell him the bad news?

A nurse comes in, she’s in her forties but has a cheery smile on her face that annoys the hell out of me. Does she not realize she works in a hospital? A place where dreams come to die?

“Oh, good! You’re awake!” Her voice wakes up my mother who jumps to my side with a sad smile.

“Hi, hon. How are you feeling?” she asks, grabbing my hand and squeezing. She leans forward and gives me a hug and a kiss on the forehead.

I’m not one of those guys who is really demonstrative with his mother, but right now her touch makes me want to crawl into her lap and cry.

“I’m all right,” I say, my voice gruff with emotion. “My knee’s not hurting anymore at least.”

“I’m going to go get the doctor, okay?” She rises to her feet to go, but I catch her hand before she can turn away.

“Where’s dad?”

Her face falls and she pats my hand.

“He couldn’t come.”

No apology. No explanation. Just a pat on the hand. Figures that on one of the most important days of my life, dad isn’t here.

After a moment to make sure I’m not going to lose it, she leaves the room while the nurse continues to check me.

“How’s your pain on a level one to five, five being the worst pain you’ve ever had?” she asks.

“One.”

“Good. Means that pain killer is working,” she says indicating the drip next to my bed.

“Did the doctor tell my mom yet?” I ask her.

“Tell her what?”

“That my leg is shot?”

“I wouldn’t know. But I can’t imagine them discussing your future without you being awake for it.”

She bustles around a few more minutes doing stuff that I’m too tired and sore to care about before she leaves the room.

After a few minutes the door opens again and my mom comes back in followed by the doctor. He’s tall with salt and pepper hair and a serious demeanor.

“Hello, Evan, I’m Dr. Rodriguez, the surgeon on call. We took a look at your Xrays and the MRI. You have a stage 3 tear of your ACL, PCL, and MCL. Overall, that’s pretty severe. The important thing is to get your mobility back and get you walking again, but it will take time. So we have a couple of options. We can leave it and hope it heals on its own, in which case, you might recover full use of your leg, but there’s no guarantees. Or we can do reconstruction surgery now and you can get use of your leg within six months with physical therapy.”

I can hardly believe it.

“You mean I could be back to playing football in time for college?” I ask, relief swamping me.

A pained look crosses the doctor’s face as he exchanges glances with my mother. “Well, no. I’m afraid it’s unlikely you are going to be able to recover the mobility you had in your leg before. You’ll eventually be able to run and everything, but it won’t be the same. You’ll have some loss of speed.”

I close my eyes, holding the curses in only because my mother was there. My hands fist in the sheets. Everything gone up in smoke. Why did I decide to run the darn ball?!

“If you opt for the surgery, we can schedule it for the day after tomorrow. That should be enough time for the swelling and inflammation to calm down.”

“And if not? If we opt to wait it out?” my mother asked. I opened my eyes again.

“There’s no real advantage. Recovery will take significantly longer, and he may or may not recover full mobility of his leg.”

“So if he gets reconstruction surgery now, he’ll get full mobility? Like he’ll be able to do everything he could before?”

“It’s possible. Not likely, but possible. Look, with the surgery, his chances are much higher that he’ll be able to get to functioning normal, that is, being able to jog and walk without a limp, within six months. If he doesn’t do the surgery, functioning normal might take significantly longer, if it ever happens at all.”

I swallow down the burn of tears. I’ll be darned if I’m going to cry in front of them.

“Can you give us a few minutes to talk about it, doctor?” mom asks.

“Sure. Physical therapy will be stopping by and then once he’s outfitted with a wheel chair, he’ll be discharged. My contact information is on the discharge paperwork so you can contact the outpatient clinic and set up the follow ups and then surgery if you want to.”

My mother shook his hand and then the doctor left. I threw an arm over my eyes, not wanting my mom to see my weakness.

“Well, hon. What do you think?”

“I think my football career is shot.” I hate the way my voice catches on the last word.

“Maybe,” she says, like it’s a matter of something not that important, like the car getting a flat, or breaking a finger. My mother’s voice doesn’t sound the way I would expect it to. Where is her crippling disappointment in me? I take my arm off my head and look at her. She’s taken a seat on the end of the bed near my good leg. The other leg is propped up with pillows beneath my knee and calf.

“Football isn’t everything, Evan,” she continues. “I know you wanted to play in the NFL, but sometimes plans change.”

I can’t believe she’s telling me this.

“What?” she asks me, catching my mouth agape.

“Who are you and what did you with my mom?”

Mom chuckles. “Come on, Evan. What, you think your football career matters more to me than your peace of mind. A football career has never been my dream for you, dear. That was all your father and yourself.”

I think back over the years. My mother was always supportive, but she never pressured me to do anything. She made it clear more than a few times that whatever I decide to dedicate myself too, I shouldn’t do it halfway. But it’s not like she was all hung about football itself, unlike dad. Seemed like outside of football, and my future career as an NFL player, I held no interest for him.

“What about dad?” I ask her.

She frowns. “What about him?”

I swallow and pluck at the fibers of the hospital blanket. “He’s not going to want anything to do with me now.”

“Oh, Evan.” She scoots up next to me and draws my head in the crook of her neck and I let her. “Your father loves you. He’s just really bad at expressing it.”

I can’t bring myself to believe her. I pick up my head.

“The only thing he ever liked about me was that I was a good football player, someone he could brag to his friends about. Now, I don’t even have that.” I sigh and lean back against the pillows. I just wanted to go home and hole up in my room. “So what use am I to him now?”

She clutches my fingers, but doesn’t say anything, because she knows I’m right.

“Let’s not forget everything we owe your father,” my mother says. She chews on her lip like she’s not sure whether she should tell me something.

“What is it, mom?”

She sighs and covers her eyes for a moment before dropping her hands and clutching them around her middle.

“Okay, I haven’t told you this before because I really hoped it wasn’t going to matter, but… I don’t know. Maybe it will help contextualize some things.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Your father met me after I was already pregnant with you.”

My mind can’t process what she’s saying, but tears spring to my eyes all the same. “Mom, what do you mean?”

“I mean… maybe he’s always had a hard time identifying with you because technically, you’re not his child.”

“So… I’m a bastard?” I growl out.

“No! No. You were born after I was married, you grew up with a father who raised you like his own son.”

I laugh bitterly at that. “If I’m raised as ‘his own son’ it’s a darn good thing he never had kids of his own.”

“Evan!”

But I can’t stop laughing.

“Look, we are going to get you home, you are going back to school, you are going to start physical therapy and we’ll go from there. We’ll figure it out, okay? Evan?”

I sigh, and use the heel of my hand to rub away the hysterical tears that have risen there. I figure I better play along or she’s going to continue torturing me with words of forgiveness and excuses for Jack Carmichael. “Yeah, sure.”

She pats my hand. “Why don’t you try and get some sleep, dear?”

“Hey mom,” I ask before she turns away. “Who’s my biological father?”

She squeezes my fingers and smiles at me sadly. “I’m sorry, baby, I don’t even know. I was young and stupid. But I got you out of it. And I thank God for you, love.”

Getting fitted for a brace sucked. Transitioning from a drip pain killer to pills sucked. Suffering through my father’s refusal to even address the fact that I had been injured, sucked. Lounging around at home with nothing to do but read, ice my knee, and play video games sucked. Visitors were few and far between in the first week. I was surprised, considering I had a wide circle of friends. Or I thought I did. I could only assume that the extent of my injury had leaked somehow and now that I had no football career, I was more or less a nothing on the social scale. What else explained the absence of my fan following?

The day of my surgery I am surprised to hear a knock at the door. Mom is out getting groceries which means I have the house to myself and no one is going to open the door for me. Cursing the fact that I have to go around the house using a walker like an old guy, I manage to get to the front door and pull it open.

A delivery guy from Edible Arrangements stands on the doorstep holding a box.

“Evan Carmichael?” he asks, staring at a palm held device.

“Yeah.”

He scans the side of the box and shoves the box in my hands. “Have a good day.”

I look down at the box. An envelope is taped to the top. What the heck?

I maneuvere my way inside and by the time I get back to the couch, I am sweating. I don’t care who comes to the door next, there is no chance I am going to answer the door again. I pull the envelope off and pull out a single card of plain stock. It is a short letter.

Dear Evan,

Heard you had a horrible week last week. Hope this one’s better. I just wanted to say, get well soon. Since you have to lay around doing a lot of nothing, I thought maybe you could do it like Romans. At least until this box is gone.

- Claire

Claire, the girl I was tutoring? Weird. Nice, but weird. And how did she get my address? I set aside the envelope and open the box. Chocolate dipped strawberries. I read the note again envisioning some sort of debauched Roman party where people lounged around in togas and ate chocolate dipped strawberries along with their grapes and wine. I laugh.

They look surprisingly good. I momentarily consider sharing them with mom, but then realize I don’t want the questions. I eat two and they are really good. Not bring a smile to my face good, but the fact that anyone thought to send me anything makes me feel a smidge less sucky.

We drive to my first physical therapy appointment on Thursday afternoon and I am crabby as a poked bear. My mother trys to help me with the crutches, but I shove her hands away, annoyed with her constantly trying to mother hen me. And then I feel like a tool for treating her like crap.

Of course, karma’s a witch so as soon as I get out of the car, my crutch slips and I fall to the ground. I have to do everything I can to avoid landing on my bad leg. Two people come rushing out of the clinic with a wheel chair and manage to get me into it. I don’t look at any of them because it is too humiliating, getting treated like a baby. They push me inside while the back of my neck and my ears flame red and I silently scream epithets against my leg.

They park us in the waiting room and ten minutes later usher us into the physical therapy room. There is all the usual equipment you’d expect to see in a physical therapy room: a thing with railings for walking, big exercise balls, a few padded tables, some weights. But what draws my eye is the back of a tall young therapist in scrubs that does wonderful things for her rear end and waist. I am just about to thank my lucky stars for the universe finally sending me a break in having a hot, young therapist when she turns around.

My jaw just about hits the floor.

“Claire?” I croak out.