Rookie Playing For Keeps #Wattys2015 #NewAdult

Chapter 5 Part 1

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Chapter 5

Present

4:21. Caleb is sitting beside me in the chair Abby abandoned hours ago, both elbows resting on his knees. I wonder if I will ever get a proper sleep again. These short little catnaps are adding to the craziness I'm feeling sitting in this hospital room.

            "How are you doing?" he asks, sliding the beanie off his head and running his fingers through his hair. I wonder when he grew up. I know he has his own life now, but it doesn't stop me from feeling like he is still just a little boy inside a man's body. The cuffs of his wrinkled shirt are rolled up, revealing his sleeve of tattoos.

            "I'm okay," I lie. I'm terrified and tired, but there isn't anything anyone can do right now to change either of those feelings for me. Caleb looks over to Jackson.

            "He's missing the whole show," he jokes.

            "He needs his rest." I adjust a little and stretch, my muscles aching from spending so much time in the same position. "You don't have to stay here. It's so late, and you need your rest, too."

            "Don't even try," he warns. I know that my brothers are not going to leave this hospital until we all leave together. 

            "Abby left?"

            "She's out in the waiting room. She said she wanted to let someone else have a turn with you guys. Ben is passed out, drooling, so I called dibs on the empty chair."  

            "You are all going to be like zombies tomorrow. I can't even imagine how cranky Ben's going to be." I pick at a thread that is coming loose from the coverlet where my hand is resting. The sky is brightening outside the window and my perfectly painted fingernails make me smile.

            "I'm not worried about us, and you shouldn't be, either. There are more important things to be thinking about." When Jackson moves a little we both hold our breath, only resuming our conversation once he has stilled again. This time our voices are lower. "Dad is losing it out there."

            My dad handles stress very well, but worrying about his family is something that can cause him to become unglued. "Tell him everything is stable right now. I'll call or send a nurse out if anything changes."

            "Do you want us to stay out so you can get some sleep?" As much as I feel the pull of sleep, I don't really want to be alone.

            "I like you being here."

            Caleb smiles affectionately. "I feel like there is something more I should be doing," he confesses. "I hate just sitting here and not being able to help. Are you hungry? Thirsty?" There is nothing he wouldn't do for me, regardless of the hospital rules, but my stomach is in such a knot that the thought of food makes it turn over.

            "No, I don't think I could keep anything down right now." He shoots me a concerned look, but covers it quickly with his trademark humor.

            "This reminds me of the draft week. I don't think you ate for days." He laughs a little and leans back in his chair, and an unruly tuft of hair falls across his forehead. "You two have been through a lot together in a short amount of time. You've always done everything with flourish. Never a dull moment."

            He's right. The week that Jackson was chosen in the NFL draft was crazy. I had gone from knowing very little about football to living right at its epicenter in just a matter of months. I wouldn't change a thing about it, but I must have looked like a madwoman as I paced around our living room and tried to help Jackson prepare for interviews with reporters.

            "I wonder if he ever misses the rush of that experience?" I ask, letting my eyes wander back to Jackson's face.

            "Oh, he's had plenty of rushes in his life. I don't think he's missing out on anything he wouldn't give up in a second to be closer to you." Caleb scratches his head and looks approvingly at Jackson. 

            "I felt so guilty praying he would end up on a team that was close. I know he would have loved to play near his mother, too, but I just couldn't imagine sending him off to the other side of the country and seeing him only a few weekends a month. It felt like this horrible clock was counting down our time together and I was supposed to be happy about it." I reach out and slide my hand up Jackson's arm, watching his lips curl slightly in his sleep.

            "You shouldn't have let him fool you, sis. He was even more nervous than you. He must have called me every day that week, going over the plan for what I needed to do if he had to leave. He would have had me grocery shopping for you if I didn't push back a little." Caleb chuckles and slowly shakes his head.

            "You never told me that!"

            "I was sworn to secrecy," he answers, crossing his heart with his finger. "I was to make sure your car was always working, you were using the new alarm at the house, and then there was this weird thing he kept saying about the trellis at your old apartment building. Swore to me he would fly home and kick my ass if I didn't check on it once in awhile to make sure it wasn't loose from the wall. What was that all about, anyway?"

            It's my turn to laugh. I feel my cheeks heat a little with the memory of that first night on the rooftop. "I used to climb the trellis at my apartment and sit on the roof."

            "Were you insane? You could have fallen to your death!" he scolds, but his smile betrays him. His eyes drift back to Jackson. "That asshole was right, then. It was a matter of life or death. I asked him why it was so important and he said you needed your options. That's all he would say."

            "He found me there the night before the draft. I like to go there to think." I keep my eyes on Jackson as he breathes softly. There is a little scruff on his face. He always has it shaved for work, and he had it shaved that night on the roof before the draft, when I thought our stretch of spending nearly every night together might be coming to an end. 

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