Chapter 18 Asher Nash

Is That Something I Want

I’m dialed in again, focused, as rap music blares in my ears.

Or I’m faking like I am, anyway.

I can’t seem to get in the right headspace. Everything feels like I’m looking in from the outside lately rather than participating, regardless of how much participating I’m actually doing.

It’s sort of how I’ve felt my entire life, I guess.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m the youngest. Nobody really ever knew what to make of me. I’m the unpredictable one. Spontaneous. Eccentric. Weird. A bad boy. A rule-breaker.

My brothers weren’t like that. They followed the rules, got good grades, and worked hard. They weren’t perfect. They got in trouble, had one-night stands, and broke hearts. But ultimately, they all ended up where they are now: happy, successful, and rich in many different ways.

I’m a hard worker, too, I guess, but I never really had to be. Things always came naturally to me. People say it’s because my brothers paved the way for me. Maybe that’s true.

I jog along the half of the field we have for our warm-ups, the light cardio getting my body ready for game time. I do some stretches, and then we have our position drills that Coach Bruce, our tight end coach, leads us through. Ben Olson, a former Vegas Aces tight end, is here today, too, and he’s conferring with Coach Bruce while the four of us tight ends—Austin Graham, Justin Miller, Chase Morgan, and myself—run footwork drills.

I should be closer with these three men than I am, but there’s a divide between us that’s solely due to the fact that I’m starting every game this season and they are not.

In formations when we use two or three tight ends, they’ll get playing time. But not as much as I will.

I don’t need to be best friends with the people on this field, but having mutual respect would be nice.

It didn’t feel like things were like this back in Indy where I started my career. I had friends there, but I still held back from getting too close. It’s the nature of this business. People come and go, and watching all three of my brothers walk out the door when they each turned old enough to do it made me feel like everyone eventually leaves.

Even my parents split up when their boys were all grown, which only served as one more example of everyone leaving.

I suppose it’s why I don’t get too close to anybody.

My closest friends are probably my brothers, and that’s only because we share blood.

Would I be friends with Lincoln if we met outside of our family? Probably not. He’s serious and focused like I am when it comes to the game. He’s a leader and probably the one of my brothers I’d most want to emulate…except he’s married now and has a kid and a stepkid. We’re in two different phases of life.

Would I be friends with Grayson if we met outside our family? Maybe. He’s the life of the party, the charismatic guy everybody loves, but also the guy who doesn’t really let anybody get too close. If I were deemed worthy of being let into his inner circle, maybe we’d be tight.

And what about Spencer? He’s the logical, smart, responsible one. His hobby is building Lego sets, while my hobby is destroying them—much to his complete and total irritation when we were kids. But he’s the one who called on me to accompany him to Temecula last week, and he’s the one I confided in about my night with Des on that same trip. I was vague about it, opting not to get into the thick of it. I told him I’d met someone I only had one night with, but I left out the fact that it was over three months ago.

I didn’t want to sound like a total loser, even if that pretty much sums me up.

We talked about how love isn’t always logical, and I was easily able to talk him through his own problems by looking at what he was going through from an outside perspective.

He’s scared of commitment. I don’t want it. Grayson nearly walked away from the love of his life to avoid it. Lincoln waited around for the same woman for twenty years.

Honestly, each of these events just made me see how much our parents fucked us up.

I think for the hundredth time how I should move out of that place Dad and I are sharing, but truthfully, I’m not home all that much.

I glance up in the stands. Both my parents are here somewhere. I usually get my dad a single seat in the lower level, and he comes to every game he can so long as one of us buys him a ticket.

My mom usually sits in the owner’s suite. With one of her sons coaching, one of her sons playing, and one of her sons recently retired from this team, she loves being here every chance she gets, even though she lives full time in New York.

I refocus on the field. The stands are filling as we warm up. I love the roar of the crowd, the sound of cheering, the deafening rumble when we score. I love seeing the faces of each of the sixty-five thousand fans who will fill these seats between now and kickoff.

I think about one more glance around the stadium. What if she’s here?

Exactly. It’s a colossal what-if , and I can’t do it. I can’t see her before a game.

But my gut tells me she’s here.

I’m not sure why , but this strange feeling falls over me.

I can’t look for her. It’ll only steal my focus the way she stole a piece of me, and I can’t afford that when I’m about to start the second home game of the season.

We head into the locker room, and my brother says a few words to motivate us. Travis Woods, one of our team captains this year, steps up and says some motivating shit, too, and then it’s game time.

The starters are introduced, and we each run through the tunnel formed by our teammates as pyrotechnics explode on the field. I don’t even hear the hype music over the roar of the crowd.

I take my place on the sidelines next to Travis, who’s one of the starting wide receivers. He motions to somebody up in the suite, presumably his wife and kid, and I watch as Lincoln does something similar to his wife and kids.

I’m surrounded by these men who think of their women before they take the field for this game we’re all so focused on, this game we all love so damn much…this game that has always come first.

I don’t have that, and I never wanted it. But something feels like it’s changing.

It’s as I head off the field at the two-minute warning when I glance up at the scoreboard. We’re up thirty-one to seventeen. We’ve got this in the bag. I don’t even need to get back out on that field for the final snap, though I will.

My eyes edge from the scoreboard to the fans in front of me. They’re all up on their feet now, yelling and screaming as we wrap up this win, and as my eyes move up the rows from beneath my helmet, that’s when I see it.

Long, red hair swirling around shoulders.

She’s yelling like all the fans are as they create a deafening cacophony of noise.

My eyes move to her face. Her green eyes are on me, and they sparkle brightly in that unique shade even from here.

My breath catches in my throat as I realize it’s her .

She’s here.

She can’t know I’m looking at her from under my helmet, yet her mouth closes, and she freezes.

My eyes edge down a little lower, and it’s all wrong. Totally wrong.

She’s wearing a red Aces jersey with the number five on it.

It’s missing the fucking eight.

She’s here, and she’s wearing the wrong man’s number, and rage fills me at the realization.

But one thing is clear.

I need to find her after the game. It’s time for the explanation she never gave me so I can finally put her out of my fucking head once and for all.