For the first time, I understood football. Not as a spectacle, but as a puzzle. And I understood Marcus. He wasn’t boring. He was meticulous. He wasn’t untalented. He was strategic. He had accepted his role as the backup for three years without complaint. He had watched Dylan take the glory, the endorsements, the girl.
I thought I was the luckiest girl in the county.
The next game, I sat on Marcus’s side of the bleachers. I wore his number. The crowd noticed. The whispers were sharp as broken glass. Traitor. Groupie. She downgraded.