Chapter 4: Emma

I kept tabs on her, saw her career blooming and I was proud to know that the shy girl who'd had such low self-esteem when it came to her academic studies had blossomed into one of the top reporters in New York.

"You know Sebastian has got a lot on his mind; you just have to give him a chance."

She nodded as if she was telling me, rather than asking me, to give him another try. I had already decided that I was going to tell Coach Thomas that Sebastian was jeopardizing his recovery by partying and then let him suffer the consequences. After all, I was his doctor, not his babysitter.

"I need this job," I pleaded with her, because I couldn't cover for him as it would be unethical. I had just reconnected with her. Now that we were in the same town. I didn't want us to fall apart again.

"So does he." She paused before continuing. "He's scared that this could be the end of the road for him. He's been under the doctor's knife so many times and he's taken more meds than candy at a candy store. He's just fucking scared Emma. You know what it's like to be scared? He may act all tough, but underneath it all he's a pussycat."

There were loads of players that had been retiring early over the last couple of years. I knew that the NFL was looking at ways of reducing it, but there was no way around it. Our bodies are delicate, no matter how much we train, and football was a high-contact sport. I'd seen the way the guys were so rough; it was part of the game. There was no way around it. Unless they got robots to play for them, guys would have to accept that three years was the average football career, and that was all they were going to get out of the game.

I didn't know what to tell her. Sebastian had every right to think that it was the end of the road. I just had to make sure that it was only the end of his career and not his life. There had been a couple of guys killed in a game lately; they hadn't admitted that they were in pain. A snap of a neck and they were leaving the field in a body bag.

"Mom's cancer could be back, and I think that's got a lot to do with it. He's dealing with a lot of things recently and that's another one on top of them. He may come across moody...he's my brother, and you know guys don't do well with emotional stuff. Just give him a break or at least try? Okay?"

I nodded, thinking about what she had just said. We both had problems, and maybe she was right. I was too harsh on Sebastian. Their mom had suffered breast cancer when Sophia was in high school, and as soon as Sophia said that her mom wasn't well, I felt a chill down my spine at the idea that it could be back.

"Yeah, I'm kind of going through problems with Dad too. Some scam artist managed to take money from him; I don't know all the details. Anyway, he's taken a third loan on the house, and the repayments are through the roof. I'm hoping this job will give me the extra need-ed to pay some of the money off that they owe on the house."

"Wow, I never knew banks did that. They're giv-ing out third loans now?"

She chewed on her fries as the food had been sit-ting in front of us untouched for a while now. I hadn't told her the complete story. She was right: it wasn't ex-actly that way. I had sold my apartment and was living in a shoe box, and a big chunk of my wages was being used to pay the loan. We both had issues with our par-ents, and the depressing path the conversation was taking kind of made the pair of us lose our appetite.

"We came here to reconnect and have fun. Not to eat and drown our sorrows," she reminded me. "God, if they could see us now. Freshman year, we were the party girls."

She laughed, "And by sophomore we were known as the boring girls."

I waved a finger at her, "But then we got our repu-tation back by senior year."

She nodded her head slightly. "Just because we did one too many dares at one party. That's when we started to drift apart, but we're not going to think about that now. We'll eat get a couple of cocktails and have some fun. What do you say?"

"Sophia, I say that you have a deal!"