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Palmetto 4 – 4 Trojans
A sharp, short buzz echoes around the inside of Neil’s helmet and an unlucky commentator tries to make himself heard above the din of a crowd rushing to buy hotdogs and cans of sticky soda. Someone slams into Neil’s back in an enthusiastic slump and the voice in his ear belongs to his co-captain, Bethany, urging him out of his reverie and into the locker rooms for the half-time breakdown. A tie at half-time is good, he reminds himself, the flavour of the voice in his head landing somewhere too close to Kevin. Still, it is the least amount of goals the Trojans have ever let in for a championship game, so far. The Foxes’ own record is held by Andrew, who shut down the goal against Penn State last year with such ferocity that only two goals got by him. Neil couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks.
Still, Neil finds himself anxious. His team seem to be in high spirits, in any case; the freshmen are jittery in the face of their very first championship final but the rest of them are bouncing off the walls by the time Wymack manages to kick them all into the men’s locker rooms, Abby at his hip. She’s holding a tray lined with little plastic cups, each filled to three-quarters with electrolyte water that Neil gratefully chugs the second he gets close enough to snag one.
“Alright,” Wymack says, firm and no-nonsense as ever. “I’m gonna keep this quick. Defense, I do not want a striker anywhere near that goddamn goal for the rest of the game, you hear me? I’ll sign the lot of you up for a marathon if the Trojans take another point from you. That goes for the strikers – I want five more points this half, minimum.
Marathon,” he emphasises, jabbing a finger at the striker line. “Don’t believe me? Ask Josten. Speaking of: any final words of wisdom, Captain?”
Neil worries at his lower lip in thought. It feels like a Moment, like he should have something grand and empowering to say but none of the words seem to stick and he wishes he’d learned the art of motivational speech from Dan.
“An unwise man once told me, fight because you don’t know how to die quietly. Win because you don’t know how to lose. We are Foxes. Proving people wrong is what we do and I want to do it one last time”
Wymack scoffs at unwise but he looks suspiciously misty throughout the rest of Neil’s impromptu speech. Bethany claps Neil on the shoulder and loudly declares, “let’s fucking win this for the captain, yeah?” and the locker room is filled to the brim with a gritty, determined sort of energy as the lot of them chant Foxes!
As they still have a good twenty minutes left of half-time, Wymack gives them permission to cut through the back corridor and pay a quick visit to the Friends & Family box. It fills up easier now than it ever did in the early days of Neil’s Fox career and even more so on nights like tonight – the final championship game of the season.
There’s no one up there for Neil, today. Kevin had sent him a good luck text a few hours ago but Neil knows he’s stuck down in Houston. Matt had sent a photo of the coffee table in his and Dan’s apartment, ladened with snacks artfully organised around the centrepiece – two orange mugs with #1 and #4 printed on the front; Nicky was in Germany, Renee and Allison in Hawaii for their anniversary, Aaron and Katelyn up in New York.
Andrew had wanted to be there. Neil had quietly wanted him there, too – a part of him even expected to see the familiar silhouette of him up in the box, but Andrew is stuck in Philadelphia for a Home game of his own and Neil can’t possibly begrudge him of that. Neil’s family are watching from far and wide but watching nonetheless and really, he couldn’t ask for anything more.
Betsy is up in the box, at least, sitting neatly in the top left corner in a white blouse and a muted orange cardigan. Somebody had painted a small, orange paw onto the soft skin of her right cheek and Neil had been able to see it, earlier, from his position at the lower steps of the stands.
She had smiled kindly when Neil approached before the game, patting the empty space beside her in invitation and asking how are you feeling?
Folding himself into the seat, Neil had replied, “I don’t know.”
Sessions with Betsy had gotten a lot easier once Neil realised he was allowed to not know. They’d gotten a lot easier in general, so much so that he took to seeing her regularly toward the end of his sophomore year and was yet to kick the habit. She had fumbled around in her purse in lieu of responding, seemingly uninterested in getting to the bottom of Neil’s pre-game emotions in favour of just being there.
“Andrew implied that if I ask nicely you might be willing to take a ‘selfie’ with me,” Betsy had told him, then. Neil had realised it was her phone she’d been looking for – a smartphone Andrew unceremoniously dumped into her lap after he graduated and one she was still getting to grips with – and he had taken a slow moment to consider the undertone of that sentence.
“He asked you to. Didn’t he?”
Betsy lifted a shoulder in a look that read guilty as charged.
It had taken some careful manoeuvring to work around Neil’s chest and shoulder padding so they could both fit somewhat within the frame. Betsy being surprisingly shorter than Neil and Andrew both did nothing to quell the illusion of Neil taking up most of the space but after a few blurry attempts she managed to secure one where they were both smiling.
Neil hadn’t missed it when she almost immediately opened up her text thread with Andrew to attach the photo and, despite everything else whirring around in his chest, Neil felt inexplicably warm and fuzzy.
Fingers snapping between Neil’s eyes startle him from his brief reverie and he sees Wymack standing over him, tall and quiet in the otherwise empty locker rooms. “Still in there?”
“Sorry,” Neil tells him, tucking a smile into his fist when Wymack pops him around the head for apologising. Seemingly realising that Neil has no interest in revisiting the box with his teammates, Wymack jerks his chin toward the door and stalks out with the knowledge that Neil will follow.
They wind up in Abby’s small office. She’s leaning one hip against the big cabinet, unpacking and repacking the little first aid kit she carries out onto the court. None of them are expecting intentional injury from the Trojan line-up – they haven’t relinquished the Day Spirit Award trophy in over twelve years, now – but Exy is still Exy and bruises are inevitable.
Wymack gives Neil a brief once-over as soon as the door is closed behind them, finally asking; “you doing okay, kid?”
Neil shrugs. There are no words to describe the tumult of emotions ploughing through his chest like a cyclone, so he doesn’t try. There’s the usual adrenaline, the fire that seeps into his very fingertips and urges him to win to the point of desperation. An added layer of that due to it being their last finals match and then over again because they’re defending a two-year title. In Neil’s time at Palmetto they had only ever lost once, his Junior year, and he had sworn it wouldn’t happen again under his captaincy.
On top of all of that is the bone-deep fear that they’ll come this far and then lose, that Nei’s last act as captain of the Foxes will be to lose them their trophy, that the signed contract in his desk drawer will crumble to dust and Ichirou will decide Neil isn’t worth the hassle, after all.
And even if they win, there’s still the baseline fact that this is Neil’s last game as a Palmetto State Fox. The Foxes made him who he is and Neil doesn’t know how to live without that, not really. Neil looks at Wymack, the man who flew across the country and took a chance on a flighty kid from mid-nowhere, who kept offering up those chances until Neil found one that stuck, and something burns hot in his throat.
He says, “I wanted to say thank you”
Wymack tells him, “don’t start with me, Neil Josten,” and he turns to rummage in the drawer of Abby’s desk. What he comes up with is an envelope, small and white and rectangular with Neil’s name written across the front in Abby’s bubbly handwriting.
“What’s this?”
“Open it and see, wiseass”
Inside is a card, a watercolour fox splashed along the front of it with an Exy Racquet trapped between two orange front paws. Neil had known Abby enjoyed painting in her free time but he hadn’t quite realised she was this good at it – the fox looks about ready to leap off the page and it makes Neil smile, quiet and low.
Neil,
Congratulations on making it to the finals! We’re both so proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished and we’re certainly going to miss having you around once you graduate. No matter which way the game goes you are still Neil Josten and you will always be a Fox – I only wish someone could have told the boy we met five years ago all about the man he would become.
Try not to break any bones tonight, kiddo.
All our love, Abby and David.
One thing Neil knows for certain is that Coach had no part in the writing of this card, but the Exites gift voucher that falls from between the folds was definitely his doing. When Neil lifts his head he finds Abby watching him with big, glassy eyes and he huffs, surprised when the sound comes out shaky.
He complains, “Abby” but he allows it when she pulls him into a fierce hug, her chin pressed to the top of his head and her lavender perfume crawling up his nose. She whispers, “I’m so proud of you, Neil” and Neil steadfastly ignores the lump in his own throat.
Wymack is there when Abby releases him and he claps a big hand on Neil’s shoulder, eyes suspiciously glassy. “Aw, come on, coach. Not you too”
“Shut your face,” Wymack insists, voice gruff. “It was Abby’s idea”
Neil’s mouth quirks. “Thank you”
“Go round up your team, Captain”
He keeps the card clutched tight to his chest all the way into the locker room, ignoring everything around him until he has it safely tucked away between his sweatpants and his hoodie. Then he shucks on his Captain Shoes and goes out to collar the stragglers still socialising up in the stands, sends everyone on for stretches before they have to get into position across from the six players standing between them and one last win.
The starting buzzer sounds for the last time and Neil Josten sprints into the fray with five-years of memories fuelling his every step.
Everything Neil loves about Exy boils down to this very game; the exhilaration of playing against some of the best defensemen in the NCAA, the very defensemen who held out enough that the Trojans swept in and took the title Neil’s Junior year. These are athletes who value the very essence of what Exy is, the thrill of sticks clashing against sticks and the ball thumping off the wall in tandem with the thrum of Neil’s blood in his veins.
In the end, the Trojans put up a fierce fight. Neil almost doesn’t believe it when the buzzer sounds on an 8-9 score, Foxes favour, and he doesn’t even manage to collapse to his knees before his Junior striker is tackling him in a hug so ferocious he thinks he might bruise. Within seconds the sub bench has hightailed it onto the court and Neil is completely bombarded by a swarm of orange and white, his legs swept from under him when his entire team hoists him into the air.
Someone’s hand is digging into the back of his thigh and there’s a helmet shoved up against his spine but Neil’s smile is so wide it nearly hurts and he can’t stop the laughter that bubbles up out of his helmet grate.
Wymack’s voice floats into the ruckus when he calls up “don’t break your damn captain,” just before Neil is less-than-graciously dropped onto his feet.
“Not your captain anymore, coach” Neil manages to say, the breath not quite steady in his lungs yet, and Wymack pops him around the back of the helmet.
“Until the lights go out in this place tonight, you’re the captain of these yahoos. Now call them to order, would you? We have hands to shake, a trophy to polish and a table full of finger-food at Abby’s to lay into”
Adrenaline alone is what carries Neil through the motions of thanking the Trojans for a good game, and again through the more ridiculous press questions waiting for him in the foyer. Neil drags Bethany along with him, debuting her as the brand new captain of the best team in NCAA Class I Exy, but what the reporters really want to know is who are you signing with, Neil?
So far, speculation is that he’ll join the Houston Sirens’ line with Kevin, but Neil has no intention of playing anywhere with Kevin that isn’t the US Court. If Neil had his way, he might be up in Philadelphia with Andrew but as it is, the Pythons have more than enough striker subs. All Neil will give them in response is the side of his finger tapped against his lower lip and the repeated insistence that, “I’m not at liberty to say just yet.”
Half of his team are dressed by the time he stumbles away from the hungry press and into the quiet sanctuary of the locker rooms. He receives so many back-slaps en route to the shower that he half-expects to find a bruise there when he peels off his shirt and struggles out of his padding. Neil holds his sweat-soaked jersey in numb hands, thumbs smoothing over the 10 plastered across the back. As he peers down at the number that carried him through the last five years, Neil is overcome with gratitude that their position as current district champions allowed them to win tonight’s game at home.
If he’d had to play his last game as a Fox out in California, wearing the orange-on-white Away uniform, Neil doesn’t think he would have been able to handle it. Judging by Wymack’s lingering stare when he initially made the announcement, he didn’t think so, either. As the hot water soaks into muscles that have barely had time to relax the exhaustion finally begins to set in and Neil thinks, it’s over.
Five years of blood, sweat and tears but also, most of all, five years of memories, of friendship, of home. Neil Josten had walked into the Foxhole Court a jumble of lies and loose ends and somehow he had been lucky enough to find a family. It seems inexplicable that after everything, he’s allowed to walk out of the other end with a future and a plan and, most surprising of all, Andrew Minyard by his side. Neil lifts a hand to push his palm against the orange-on-white tiling of the showers until his knuckles go white with the pressure.
Saying goodbye to the Foxhole Court will be the hardest thing Neil ever has to do, but…
Neil had said goodbye to the girls. Had said goodbye to Kevin and Matt, to Aaron and Nicky and even to Andrew. Andrew’s graduation had hurt the most, but Neil had healed from that absence just as wholly as he’d healed from the departure of the rest of his family, his Foxes.
It would be difficult but Neil would heal from this, too.
Only when the shower water runs cold does Neil realise just how long he’s spent being melancholy. No amount of hurrying his damp skin into warm clothes can change the fact that when he emerges, Wymack is standing alone in the locker room with his arms folded accusingly across his chest.
“Done moping?”
“Are you?” Neil counters. Wymack laughs, a gruff thing that always sounds warmer than Neil thinks he intends it to.
“I’m not gonna miss that smart mouth. Come on, grab your shit. There’s something in the lounge for you”
Though he dutifully gathers up his duffel and tucks his uniform into the team hamper for the last time, Neil frowns. “You already-”
But when he turns back to the doorway, Wymack has vanished down the hall.
Outside, the crowd consists of stragglers and press packing up their electronics and so the settled quiet of the inner hallway is a stark contrast to the adrenaline still fizzing in Neil’s veins. If his teammates were around he’d no doubt hear them; the last time they won championships Benny had jumped on one of the lounge sofas so much that it fell through and all but two of the girls pulled flasks from their sports duffels as soon as they left the showers. He can only assume that the lot of them have split up between cars to hurry down to Abby’s house – Wymack may well have stopped supplying bottle upon bottle of whisky to spur on his Foxes but nothing calls out to a hungry athlete like Abby Winfield’s cooking.
The door of the lounge is wedged open just a crack and Neil can see, bafflingly, that the lights are off inside. He doubles back to peer at Wymack’s office on the off-chance that he misheard but the door is shut tight. When he tests the handle, just to be sure, it resists and Neil feels himself frown. Something close to uncertainty prickles along his spine and makes the hair at his nape stand on end.
It’s just Wymack, Neil reminds himself. It doesn’t stop the slight tremble in his fingertips when he nudges the door open, nor does it stop the way his heart leaps up out of his mouth when the lights flick on all at once and the room’s inhabitants yell “surprise!”
“Oh,” says Neil, startled and then, “oh my god” when his eyes catch up with his brain and he realises what he’s seeing.
Or rather, who.
Someone has shoved the bulky television off behind the entertainment centre and there’s a cake in place of it, white icing with a wonky orange paw piped onto the top and orange confetti strewn in a loose circle around it. A banner above the table reads CONGRATULATIONS NEIL but Neil barely notices it, more distracted by the men inexplicably holding it.
Kevin’s fist is curled into the fabric just below the C and his eyes are glittering with the smile he’s barely holding back. Matt stands at the other side and the L is crumpled with the force of his grip – he’s wearing his old Fox Jersey, Neil notices, and with a sharp pang of emotion he realises that they all are. Dan stands proudly beside Matt, her jersey tied into a knot over a white shirt, the knot resting on her round tummy where Neil imagines the actual jersey wouldn’t have fit. Beside her is Allison, holding the hand of Renee and the both of them look freshly sunned even in the garish orange fabric that settles looser without all the padding.
Nicky is bouncing on the balls of his feet beside Kevin, one arm slung around his waist and the other gripping Erik, who seems to have adorned Nicky’s away shirt in solidarity. Even Aaron is there, looking almost comically small beside all six feet and five inches of Erik Klose, Katelyn at his hip with her old Vixens’ bomber and a gift bag.
“I,” Neil says, and then he stops, voice coming out wobbly and choked. “What are – what…God. This would have been really embarrassing if we lost”
“Good thing you didn’t, then” Kevin quips. All of the startled quiet leaves the room at once and Matt loses any semblance of control – the banner almost takes the cake out with it when he drops it and barrels at Neil, scooping him up with such force that Neil has to clamp a knee either side of Matt’s waist to stay upright. His team – his family - swarm him all at once, then. A delicate hand on his ankle – Renee – and a clutching hug against his left arm; Nicky. Kevin shakes his shoulder so hard it nearly pops and even Aaron slaps his back in elation.
Dan mindfully keeps her bump out of the fray but she grins at Neil, all teeth. “Good fucking game, captain”
“I learned from the best” Neil tells her honestly. Matt jostles Neil up in the air for a little longer before finally setting him on his feet and Neil looks at all of their faces, one by one, startled and elated and exuberant beyond belief. Every single one of them had flown out here for Neil. Once upon a time Neil Josten had been a fleeting pseudonym on a badly faked drivers license and now he’s here, a hairs breadth from graduating with a handful of championship trophies under his belt and a family who had dropped everything to be here with him.
Neil darts a quick, surreptitious glance around the rest of the space. Wymack is sitting on one of the sofas with Betsy, his arm slung jovially across her shoulders. Abby is nowhere in sight but Neil assumes that she’s heading home in preparation for an undoubtedly rowdy celebration at her house.
The lounge has always been a small space but it seems vast and empty when Neil notices who isn’t here.
The thing is that he hadn’t expected to see any of his family and now he’s faced with all but one of them, and that should be enough. It is enough, it is, but Renee must read something on his face because she says, “he really tried to be here, Neil” and something hot and insistent crawls up Neil’s throat unbidden.
Almost the second Andrew realised he wouldn’t be able to make the finals he had called Neil, wondering how difficult it would be to feign a bad wrist. Neil had convinced him to book a flight over to South Carolina a few days after the game, instead, and so he had known for months now that a skype call would have to suffice until then. He had known..
But he hadn’t anticipated this.
Still, he nods. Resituates his smile. Says, “I know, I know. It’s fine. I have…I wasn’t expecting any of you.”
“Like we’d miss your last game as a Fox?” Matt asks him, ruffling Neil’s damp curls with a firm hand and steering the conversation to a lighter topic. “You’re the last one standing, we had to see you bring home the trophy one more time.”
Now that Neil is firmly on his feet, Dan takes the opportunity to sidle in for a hug, her bump nudging at Neil’s own tummy in a way that makes her seem strangely fragile. She must notice his downward glance because she says, “baby was kicking, earlier. I think they’re a Fox fan.”
Behind her, Matt grins again. “That’s my girl”
“Or boy,” Allison insists. That particular betting pool is one of the bigger ones, only increasing when Dan had announced that she didn’t want to know until the birth. Gender is a social construct, Matt had explained sagely. The nursery is going to be neutral because I don’t want to throw pink or blue at the walls until my kid is old enough to have a favourite colour, so doing a gender reveal is pointless. I’m gonna love that baby to death either way. It was a lovely sentiment; Neil was certain Dan and Matt would be the best parents in the whole world, but Allison had gotten that glint in her eye and no amount of reasoning would make her back out of such a lucrative pot.
Neil shakes his head again. “I didn’t even see you – I was up in the family box. Were you watching?”
“You think I’d leave Hawaii to come here and not even watch?” asks Allison, haughty as ever. “We got Betsy to distract you so we could sneak in at the top of the south stand”
The photograph, Neil thinks wryly. It makes his eyes burn hot when he realises that the only person who would have realised he’d go up to sit with Betsy in the first place is Andrew. Andrew, who had asked Betsy to take a photo with Neil before the game, who knew Neil wouldn’t say no to her. It isn’t that Neil hadn’t believed Renee but his heart hurts when he understands that Andrew had a hand in organising this whole thing – he really had tried to be here, regardless of the circumstances.
“Andrew knew I would go and see you,” Neil murmurs, sparing a glance for Betsy. She looks quietly pleased, shrugging almost nonchalantly beneath Wymack’s arm.
“You have always been predictable,” says Andrew. For the second time that night Neil’s heart stops dead in his chest. Someone laughs when he spins so fast he almost loses his footing but Neil doesn’t have it in himself to care, not when Andrew is leaning against the door to the lounge with a travel bag at his feet and an amused glimmer in his eyes.
All of the breath leaves Neil’s lungs when he says, “Andrew” and then his feet are carrying him across the room almost unbidden. He narrowly avoids tripping head-first over someone’s backpack and he hurtles to a stop just inches from the door, belatedly considering that Andrew might not be in a hugging mood after a two-hour flight and surrounded by their friends and family.
Andrew has a hand at the back of his neck before Neil can even open his mouth to ask, though, tugging Neil’s head toward his right shoulder and bringing his other arm up to fist in the fabric of Neil’s hoodie. Only the fierce clutch of his fingers around the material there shows Neil just how much Andrew is feeling, whatever emotion that might be. He smells like cigarettes and mint gum and musky, sweet cologne and Neil wants to drown in it, settles for hooking his hands up under Andrew’s arms to rest his palms flat at the back of his shoulders instead.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t come?”
“Shut up,” Neil tells him. “I didn’t…I thought maybe you would have called me, after”
“You’re so stupid” Andrew tsks. Neil mumbles assent into the fabric of Andrew’s shirt; he is stupid, but he’s also never been surprised quite like this and he feels overcome with it. The two of them are in tune enough that Andrew senses this, as he always does, and he uses the hand at Neil’s nape to pull his face up and look him in the eye. “Are you going to have a breakdown?”
“No,” Neil tells him. At Andrew’s raised brow, he adds, “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier”
“Neil, you’re gonna make me cry” says Nicky, the soft lilt of his voice indicating that he already has. The hand Andrew has at the nape of Neil’s neck slips around to rest over his chest when Neil turns in the circle of his arms to look back at his family.
“I am, though. I’m happy. I never thought I’d be here. I wasn’t even supposed to live past high school and now I’m about to graduate college and play professionally, and I have the weirdest family in the whole world but I wouldn’t ask for anything else”
“Like anyone else would put up with you,” Andrew murmurs, mouth warm against the curve of Neil’s jaw where he’s tucked his face over Neil’s shoulder. He follows it up with the smallest ghost of a kiss, so Neil can’t be too mad.
“We love you, kiddo” Dan adds, voice soft.
“Yeah,” says Neil. “Yeah. I love you guys, too”