The crackle of the slightly shitty air conditioning is perfectly clear. I don’t dare breathe for fear of the noise it’ll make. The cat’s finally out of the bag.

From May’s side, sheets rustle, and then, a barely audible hum. Is it shock? Is she shocked? I can’t completely make out the sound. Part of me hopes she doesn’t totally hear me, but I keep going.

‘I never said anything, you know. When I had the chance back then. Sometimes I wonder what things would be like if I had said something. If maybe we wouldn’t be pretending right now.

‘And I came back, and it’s just … It’s so messed up, and I feel like I keep making it messed up. I … May, I wanna make it right by you. You deserve that. You’re owed that. I’m so, so fucking sorry.’

I wait, I wait in hope that maybe she’ll say something, maybe she’ll say what I want her to say. Maybe this is my do-over, this dumpster fire of a confession in a mediocre college hotel room in Albuquerque. But all I hear is her breathing, steady, quiet, even. No words.

I tell myself she’s probably fallen asleep. She probably didn’t hear any of that stuff at the end. And if she did, she’d have been too sleepy to remember it. She might think it’s a dream. Maybe.

I roll back over to face the wall to my left.

I don’t fall asleep for another two hours.

Chapter Seventeen

Mayday

May

‘Sometimes I just wonder what things would be like if I had said something. If we wouldn’t be pretending right now.’

I think about it all the time. There have been countless nights where I’ve stayed up living in a world where CJ Bradley and I addressed our feelings. I spent weeks bouncing between wanting him to have an exceptionally rough practice and take a mean crosse to the face, wanting him to have this ‘eureka’ moment where he figured out he screwed up a good thing, or even wanting him to have the biggest of big goals at his first game simply so that I’d know he was happy and content. Only now, years later, I find out that he’s been thinking about the same things. It’s a damn cruel twist of fate.

I pray he stops talking then and there, but the fool is getting emotional, and I don’t know how to feel about it when he says, his voice a quiet rasp, ‘I’m so, so fucking sorry.’