Wrong Jacket, Right Girl

Wrong Jacket, Right Girl

I put a love note in a jacket pocket at a party. Wrong jacket. It belonged to Logan McCallahan — captain of the Black Bears, the most photographed woman in the X League, and the one person at that party who could have read it out loud. So she did. To everyone. And then she said: "I've liked you too." She's lying. She'd just been dumped in front of four hundred people and needed a story, and I'm a walk-on receiver who has never taken a snap and waits tables until midnight. Three months. Fake. She makes her ex jealous, I get close to the woman I actually wrote the note for. Nobody gets hurt. Except her father has her whole life planned down to the week. Except her ex is on my roster and knows which locker is mine. Except a magazine has decided what I am, and printed it under a photograph of me in my kit. And except that when her shoulder went, she signed away the only future she had left — so that I could keep mine. We agreed on three months. Nobody agreed on this.