“Oh, but before I forget,” Mom said, and Julie turned around. “We signed you and Gavin up to work the first shift at the toy drive tomorrow night from five to seven. I figured you’d enjoy watching the kids get their toys, and a lot of them will be thrilled to meet a professional quarterback. Just make sure to show up thirty minutes in advance so they can go over the rules and instructions.”
“We just hand out toys? That’s it?” Where was the catch? Usually, the moms signed them up for booths without telling them. It’d started in high school and persisted through college, despite the counterargument about them being grown-ass adults.
They’d claim to understand, but then Julie and Gavin would come home for the holidays and Surprise, guess what you volunteered for. Last year she ended up struggling to paint faces, as if her parents weren’t aware she failed at even stick figure art. While she’d attempted snowmen, snowflakes, and yellow blobs meant to be stars, Gavin merely put a black stripe on the kids’ cheeks, as if getting them ready to play football.
One mom griped that her daughter looked like a prostitot thanks to the face full of makeup Julie had given her when she’d asked for that instead of Christmas art. How was she supposed to know her mother didn’t allow her to wear makeup?
But she and Gavin had done the same thing they’d always done: reminded themselves it was for a charitable cause.
Same way they had the year Frozen was all the rage and they’d been volunteered to play Anna and Kristoff. The oddest thing about that was while Julie had blond hair and needed a wig to play Anna, Claudette Hamilton, who had auburn hair, had to borrow a wig to play Elsa.
Both sets of parents were shocked that being dressed like old-timey Norwegians didn’t lead to a Frozen Ever After type fairy tale.
Now she wondered if she and Gavin should prepare a speech similar to the one they’d delivered after that debacle, while she had drawn-on freckles and a cape to swing around for emphasis, and Gavin was still wearing lederhosen. It’d involved letting go of the notion of marrying off their children to each other, demanding everyone accept Kristin as a more permanent figure, and ended with a diatribe that boiled down to “Let us live our own freaking lives.”
“It’s going to be so much fun, just you wait,” Darlene said. “This year will be the biggest and bestest bazaar yet.” The gleeful grin she and Mom shared had foreboding pricking at Julie’s skin. Those two were definitely up to something.
Normally she’d assume it had to do with their matchmaking efforts, but the introduction to Kory and inquiry about their date was throwing her off. Given how content and secure Julie felt in her best friend’s arms last night, she might be the one in need of a reality check.
…
There were the kind of torture tactics used by spies, and then there was the kind you signed up for with physical therapists. Gavin was sure they’d be against the Geneva Convention Laws, but no one required them to be submitted, due to the instructions sounding so innocuous.
Turn your neck to the left. Now the right.
Pain fired across the top of his shoulder, and he gritted his teeth.
Squeeze your shoulder blades together and hold it for six little seconds. Then repeat it until you cry.
To be fair, the therapist said ten times, but semantics. Just when he felt like it wasn’t all that bad, Maggie instructed him to hold on to a wand and lift it over his head. All fine and well till the horrible thing was level with his shoulder.
Fuuuuuck. Such easy movement, but it caught every time he attempted to lift it over his head.
“That’s the thing about muscles,” Maggie said. “When they’re working together, they’re amazing. When one gets hurt, the others try to help. It just makes them too tight to do much helping sometimes.”
Sure. Whatever. Considering Maggie had been working on him since high school, he’d heard the spiel before. Never made him feel much better, though. He didn’t want to know the whys; just make it go away. “I need my throwing arm back as soon as possible.”
“I understand, but your muscles also need time to heal before you can start launching those rocket passes of yours.” Maggie gave him a couple of pages with cartoon characters doing the exercises. “Two times a day. Ice it in ten-minute intervals—”
Gavin said the rest of the treatment along with her.
“Obviously you’re still a smartass,” Maggie teased. “If you’ve got someone who can work out those knots, you’ll be surprised by how much your range of motion will improve. Just make sure they know what they’re doing, or they could cause more harm than good.”
Gavin nodded. Not because he had someone like that, but because it was what was done. He’d have to call and see if the one massage place in town could fit him in before he flew back to Texas in four days.
Then again, Julie was staying under his same roof and was honestly better at working out knots than a lot of masseuses. He just wasn’t sure it was a good idea to have her hands on him right now.
For reasons.
Ones he wasn’t going to think about, because obviously there was some short-circuiting going on in his brain or his body. He told himself his emotions were a mess due to his injury, along with worrying about his team and recovering in time for the playoffs, and that’s why he’d spent the last twenty minutes of the movie watching Julie sleep instead of the characters onscreen doing whatever it was they…did. Fell in love in a matter of a week or some shit like that.
Forced into a chick flick, and the two chicks in the room had checked out before the credits rolled.
But that wasn’t enough. No, Julie had trapped him with her head, and he’d been way too content having her there.
It’s just loneliness. With so many teammates, he’d mentally denied it, arguing he didn’t even have the opportunity to be lonely. Truth was, a lot of weight was teetering on his shoulders, and one of those shoulders had gone and become a big wuss on him.
Nothing rubbed that in as well as struggling to carefully put on the sling he’d been hoping to rid himself of each passing day.
“Let me,” Maggie said. “I can get it secured tighter.”
Around the team, he was the glue. The good job/do better/no I in team/rally guy. As a quarterback, that was his job. But he didn’t have anyone to talk to about the harder days, and he hadn’t wanted to look weak ever, much less in front of his teammates. Now someone had to put on his brace and work out his muscles, and ugh. It was messing with his confidence more than he’d expected.
Time to shake himself out of his funk. Speed walking several miles should help, and he’d add in some legwork, and that’d remind him that while one of his shoulders kept whining, the rest of his body was a well-tuned machine.