Fractured (ON HOLD)

Twelve - Tyler

Would everything have worked out better?

What would our lives have looked like now? Maybe I wouldn't even have been in the NFL. Maybe I went on to do something else. Or maybe I still played football. And maybe when I angled my body the wrong way, and was pummelled to the ground, twisting to the right and letting the impact hit my shoulder. Maybe when I came out of the hospital and was told what my future would be - that there was no future in football now - that there would have been someone waiting for me. Someone I wouldn't go off the rails around. Wouldn't have drunk myself to sleep every night. Wouldn't have wasted my money because at that point, nothing mattered.

I wonder what life would have been like if there was someone there who mattered.

If I had mattered.

"I heard about it," Tally says, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I frown. "About what?"

She tilts her head down. "Your injury. Some of the people I was rooming with were super into football. Watched all the games. They watched..." she winces, chewing on the side of her cheek. "Sorry. That's...sorry."

"S'okay," I say. "Gotta deal with it eventually, right?"

"Are you?" she asks. "Dealing with it?"

"Honestly I don't even know what that would look like. How do you deal with everything suddenly disappearing? How do you deal with knowing that you're basically obsolete now? That I will forever have to be careful about what I do with my shoulder and arm. That I'll have to keep rebuying shoulder braces until I'm old. How the hell is this my reality now?"

I sigh. I sigh so deeply that it feels like all the air caught in my chest is finally releasing but there's no relief. There's no relaxing. Everything is tense. It always has been and it always will be at this point.

"Hey, no one said you had to be perfect while recovering," Tally says. "If you didn't go off the rails a little, getting angry at the world and screaming at it for days...well I'd be more worried that you'd never tried recovering at all. That you were just lying to save face."

"Maybe saving face would have been a better option," I say.

Tally shrugs. "Maybe. But we don't always choose how we react to things. You're not a robot, Tyler. People shouldn't blame you for being young and human."

I smile gently. "Therapist, right?"

"Well, as I said, mostly with kids," she laughs gently and pets the cat's head.

I nod my head towards the feline. "So, you're probably not gonna tell Franny that you almost lost her cat in the middle of a city."

Tally pouts and stares down at the cat who quickly looks away, staring at people walking by. "The guilt of not telling her will eat me away."

"Can't keep a single secret from her?" I scoff.

"Oh," she rolls her eyes at me. "Like you would be able to either."

"Whatever," I grumble but a smile is tugging at the corner of my lips.

"Kind of a coincidence, right?" You coming here while I'm visiting her," she says. "Franny told me you're like a block away too."

"Pretty creepy coincidence honestly," I say. "Gang back together."

A soft smile falls across her face and she shifts her grip on the cat. "Um, did you...keep in touch with Ethan at all? After high school? We never really...well we never really managed to stay in contact. I couldn't find him online or anything."