Girls Can't Play Football

Epilogue

"Hello?"

"Mom!" I exclaimed. "Where are you?!"

"SEE! See, Charles! I told you to drive faster! But nooooo. You wanna go so slow. So slow that people walking can pass us!"

"It's called following the law, Emily."

She completely disregarded his statement. "Sam, darling. We're almost there. Almost. If your dad would've sped up just a little bit, we would've been there half an hour ago!"

"Hey! You took over an hour bringing those cookies and whatnot along. And then your makeup and this and that and blah and blah and--"

"Oh, you shut up! How do you know what it's like to be a woman?!"

A small smile formed on my face. We'd all been through such a hectic two years with court hearings and so much more. It was nice for us to be this way again.

The first year was awfully rough. I had to balance out being there for my family and my studies and court and it had been so stressful. Moreover, I had to put in extra effort to keep my scholarship intact. I took therapy this time-- not because I was forced, but because it was the only time I could breathe. 

Which said a lot about how my time went. 

The whole situation had affected me mentally. And I found myself fighting to hold on a lot of the times.

But mom. . .mom gave me hope. Mom gave me a reason to keep going. With her arm amputated, she only had her left hand to work with. And initially, she was horrified and struggled to cope. It took a lot of time. And it was only until just recently that she started to learn to live with it and move on. 

The first time she baked for me, I had tears in my eyes. She'd used only her non-dominant left hand to bake those, and that day, I realized a huge weight lifted off my chest. Somewhere inside me, I couldn't take the fact that my driven needs for justice had brought such a tragedy upon my mother.

But that day, that smile brought life into me.

Every single bite I took of those cookies, it felt like we were one step closer to being us again. 

To add to that, after more than a year of presenting our case in court, Seb got the justice he deserved.

His killer was subjected to lifelong prison. Furthermore, every single person-- or at least, most of them-- involved in the drug dealing was sentenced from a range of 6 to 25 years of prison time depending on their crimes. 

That joy. . . that final declaration. . . that was something else. 

I'd never felt that way before. But that joy felt well-deserved. And long due.

We all cried like babies that night. Happy tears, of course.

We gathered up with a bunch of Seb's baby pictures and laughed at his stupidity that whole night. We celebrated his life and embraced his death. 

Fast forward to a few months later, I'm on the football field, stressing about my first game in years. 

Ceci and I ended up renting an apartment. We shared one, while Alex and Brad resided in another one right across our building. With them in their fourth years and us in our third years, we were doing well. 

Alex left his position as a quarterback when he got offered a paid internship from a pretty successful company. The whole team was bummed out. But he'd explained how he wouldn't have been able to put in enough hours of training and juggle the both of them simultaneously. 

He was peeking into his future. And I was peeking into mine. 

With him gone, there was an empty gap. And a need for replacement. And then came everyone's eyes on me.