With the TV running—for now—I turned back to Anette. “Is that why you’re here all the time?”

  She smiled. The pain in her eyes shone through the mask she was trying to put on, but she smiled anyway. Then she shook her head, not in negation, but thoughtfully. “I come in every night. I used to do it after I talked to my girls and told them goodnight. They’re grown up now, and I try not to call them too often. They have their own lives, and I see them on some holidays. Beth’s got a kid of her own now. I’ll never get to see him again, though.”

  She trailed off, and the Cornerstone went so quiet the only sounds I could hear were the narrator talking about the game on the TV and the sirens outside. They were starting to peter out, wailing into the mid-evening air until their batteries died or the patrol cars carrying them moved slowly through the clogged streets.

  I checked my watch. Thirty minutes. Maybe a little less.

  “Negroni or martini?” I asked Anette. She looked pale, but she held up two fingers.

  “The second one. And thank you for making me do that. It’s more of a relief than I expected.”

  The quiet hung in the air. I didn’t know how to respond to that, and after a moment, I focused on making the drink exactly the same way I had the first time.

  “Barry? You change your mind?” I asked.

  But the balding man had me on ignore. His eyes were glued to the tube. The Giants were winning, but I didn’t have time to see who they were up against.

  “I’ll talk,” Randal said.

  Randal didn’t ever say more than he had to. The big, blonde dude could have had serious golden retriever energy, but instead, he always sat quietly at the bar in a T-shirt that looked three sizes too small for him and stared at the bottles. I nodded and got to work: orange juice, schnaps, and vodka. Plenty of vodka; I wanted Randal talking, if only to fill the silence. Besides, after he spoke, it’d just be Barry and me. As curious as I was to listen to the barflies’ stories—especially Barry’s—I wasn’t sure about sharing my own.

  The candied cherry plopped down into the center of the drink, and I slid the glass into Randal’s outstretched hand. He closed it, brushing my finger just a little, and took a long drink. “I’ll need a second. It’s a long story. It started in middle school.”

  -Randal-

  The East Side 113 Lions were New York City’s reigning middle school football champions for the third—and final—year, and Randal Davids knew it before the game even started. He was bigger than anyone on the other team. Stronger than them, too. And, most importantly, he was faster. No two kids could tackle him, and none of them could catch him in an open field.

  “Put the pedal to the metal!” his dad screamed from the sidelines.

  Randal did. He tore down the field, feet pounding the astroturf to death. The clock had zeroed out, and it was score or lose. And Randal was many things. The answer to some high school coach’s prayers next year? Absolutely. The most popular, most well-liked boy at 113? Yes. The boyfriend of a cheerleader, just like it should be? Uh-huh.

  “Yes, Barry, I was a middle-school football champ. Homecoming king in high school, too. Twice.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “But you were thinking it.”

  More than any of those things, though, Randal was a competitor. He was a winner.

  Randal crossed the line, spiked the ball, and listened as half the crowd went wild. The Giants and Jets had each painted one end zone of Metlife Stadium’s field, and Randal was one of four boys who’d carried the ball into one of the two. He’d made it three times. Eighteen points—plus two from the kicker. And now, they were city champions.

  He was on top of the world. This was his life's crowning, most important achievement—at least for now. Sammi charged him in front of the swarm of parents and fans, her pom-poms shaking wildly, and launched herself at him like a meteor. He took the hit; he’d been breaking tackles the whole day and didn’t have the energy to dodge even if it had been a linebacker instead of 113’s cutest cheerleader.

  He’d won the game.

  He was the champion.

  Everything was coming up roses, as the expression his grandma sometimes used went.

  So why did everything feel like it was about to fall apart?

  For once, Barry wasn’t focused on the game. I paused as the Giants started losing to the Falcons, and the old bastard didn’t even blink.

  Randal didn’t blink either as he sucked down the Sex on the Beach in one long, endless pull. The fruity drink smelled too strong for me—I’d made it double the strength the boss wanted me to, and with the good stuff, just like Anette’s martini. I didn’t want to think about what it was doing to Randal. Then again, he looked like he needed the drink—and he was so big he could take a couple before he felt it.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Let me guess? Things didn’t go great for you either, huh?” Anette asked.

  “Actually, they did. The Musketeers from East Side High 36 took fourth my freshman year. Twelve and three record, lost in the semi-finals, then lost again in the third-place game,” Randal said. He looked sick. “Best performance for the Musketeers in half a decade. I kept my grades going, and Sammi and I stayed together. That was wild. None of my friends or teammates stuck together with their girls for more than a couple of months after the middle school season.”

  “So why are you here?” Barry interrupted.

  Randal turned toward Barry, face shifting from a mask of nerves to disgust and anger. He only said three words to the old guy, and I agreed with every one of them. “Let me talk.”

  -Randal-

  Randal sat in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan Cancer Center.

  He should have been on the field. East Side 36 was up against the defending champs way out in Buffalo for the quarterfinals, and he should have been there. His teammates kept texting him, and the news from the game wasn’t good.

  But Randal was leaving them on ‘read,’ and he couldn’t care less about the game. His whole focus was on a white double door on the far side of the waiting room, and the long hallway behind it. Every ounce of his focus was on the lead-shielded procedural room at the far side that he wasn’t allowed anywhere near, where his dad lay on a bed as the doctors did something Randal didn’t understand to him.

  Almost every ounce of his focus.

  A tiny part of the sophomore’s mind was glued to the phone. To the text message that hadn’t come in yet. Sammi should have sent something by now, even a message asking how he was. Randal tried to push that thought out of his head. She was busy cheering the Musketeers on. That was all it was; her phone was probably in her backpack on the bus. Where could she put it in that outfit, anyway? Cheerleader miniskirts and tops didn’t come with pockets.

  A nurse pushed through the door as the next text came in. East Side 36 had been forced to kick a field goal. Again. They needed their star running back.

  But Randal couldn’t be there. He had to be here, at the cancer center, waiting to make sure Dad could come home, and if his teammates didn’t understand, then at that moment, he didn’t want to be part of the team.

  They needed him, but so did his dad. And more importantly, he needed his dad. So he sat and waited, and he stared at the white double doors.

  “We lost.”

  The words hung in the air. I could almost have cut the tension with a knife, but the Cornerstone didn’t serve food, so I only had a mixing spoon. I finished stirring a third Sex on the Beach and handed it to Randal. The kid—he couldn’t have been more than a year or two younger than me, but right now, he was a hurting kid—looked at me gratefully and drained the whole thing.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” I said. It really wasn’t. I knew what was coming. “Do you want another?”

  “Maybe later.” Randal burped. Then he kept going before Anette or Barry could say anything.

  “Dad died early my junior year. I took the year off from football. My coaches were ready to kill me. So were my teammates. I had to break a few noses to get them to lay off me, and got suspended for fighting twice. Sammi decided the quarterback had better prospects, and I let her go. She was cute, but something felt wrong about that relationship. Looking back on it, it always had. Besides, I needed to focus on myself, Dad’s funeral, and helping Mom through it.

  “Then my senior year rolled around, and I embarked on my revenge tour.”

  -Randal-

  East Side 24 was fifteen and zero. A perfect season. Number one in the seeding for the high school championships. A juggernaut no one wanted to play, with no real weaknesses. And they were six minutes from their sixteenth—and final—win.

  Randal stood at the fifty-yard line. The rest of the Musketeers kneeled around him. Metlife Stadium was almost half-full—a massive turn-out for a high school game, even a state championship. There were scouts’ eyes on him. He knew it. He was the big draw here, not the two quarterbacks or any of the receivers. They were good, but they weren’t Randal good. The other team’s safety was, though. That guy was faster than Randal. And once he got his hands on a receiver, the receiver was as good as stopped. He hadn’t missed a tackle the whole game.

  He’d been single-handedly ruining the Musketeers’ passing game for three and a half quarters. And now, it came down to the run.

  Fortunately for the Musketeers, Randal was unstoppable.

  He had three touchdowns already, and the game was theirs if they could score once more in the next six minutes. All he had to do was break through and beat that one safety’s tackle, and no one else would be able to stop him. They hadn’t all night, and they couldn’t now.

  The quarterback took the snap and pitched it to Randal. He took off.

  The field flew by, and Randal could almost hear his dad screaming at him to put the pedal to the metal. He did. Every ounce of strength he had left went into his legs, powering him through a linebacker and down the field. He didn’t bother dodging, didn’t bother trying to break tackles. He just ran over the defenders, like he’d been doing all game. He was bigger. Stronger. Faster.

  And he wanted it more.

  Thirty yards. Twenty. Ten.

  Arms wrapped around his legs. He started falling, tried to prop himself up, and his body twisted. His hand slipped. A weight landed on his leg and drove the side of his knee into something hard and unyielding under it.

  Something tore. No. Something shattered.

  The ball came loose, and Randal screamed.

  “And that was that,” Randal said. “Rochester scooped up the fumble, and five minutes of game time later, they managed to get a field goal. I was in the stadium’s medical room getting looked at, then being loaded into an ambulance, so I didn’t see the last drive, but I found out after the fact. We didn’t score. East Side 24 lost twenty-eight to thirty. And that was the end of my high school career.”

  “But not the end of your career, overall?” Barry asked. “You played for someone in college, right?”

  I tried—and failed—to avoid rolling my eyes. “That’s what you’re focusing on? The game?”

  “No,” Randal interrupted, “that’s fair. The game was what mattered to me. That game was what mattered to me. I needed to win it for Dad. Instead, I spent a year recovering in a brace. And I learned a lot about myself in that year of recovery and reconditioning. Enough that even though I enrolled at Ohio State and worked my ass off my freshman year, I didn’t bother even trying out for the football team my second year. My heart wasn’t in it, and I wasn’t as fast as I used to be.”

  “So what’d you do?” Anette asked. She looked thirsty, so I got to work on another martini.

  “I’ll have another, too,” Randal said. I nodded, and he kept pushing forward. “I moved back here. It wasn’t home, but it was close enough. I’m a personal trainer. It’s casual enough that I can keep in shape without aggravating the knee. But football’s not happening. And I’m okay with that. But…”

  “But you still come here every afternoon,” I finished. “You still drink like a fish. And you still put up with me IDing you every time. Why?”