Damaged Petals.

[Soapy]

Season 8, Episode 8
"I don’t really know when it started. I just catch myself doing it all the time now."

He was in the middle of saying it before he had fully committed to saying it, which was happening more and more in this circle. They had a way of opening the room up like a window you forgot was there, and by the time you noticed the air moving through it you were already halfway out.

“It’s the only time I’m actually honest with somebody,” he continued. “Like, completely. No filter. No performance. I’ll be driving or I’ll be up at night with James and I’ll just start talking out loud and it’s…it helps me figure out what I actually think about something. Someone. Ain’t no point in lying to him, right?"

He looked up.

Tanner was nodding slow. Patricia had her hands folded in her lap.

"We were cool, close enough I guess,” Brice shrugged. "I don’t know, I guess with him being gone, we’re finally having the honest conversations we never got to have. I sometimes wonder what he would think of me. The real me. But maybe not knowing is better. I don’t know. In my mind, he’s perfect. No flaws. I’m not. I got a bunch of flaws. Half this room probably has seen them."

He stopped there because he felt the edges of something he wasn’t ready to walk into. Elaine closed them out the way she always did, unhurried, and the room started doing its slow exhale. Chairs scraping. People finding each other. Brice stood and stretched his back and looked at the table with the coffee setup and decided against a refill.

"The real you."

He turned around. Mel was standing a few feet away. Brice offered a small smile.

She looked at him for a second. “I did the same thing. After my sister.”

He waited.

"I thought I was going crazy for a minute," Mel shook her head. "I’d be in the middle of class, mumbling under my breath, having full blown debates like we used to about movies, music, boys."

“When did it stop?” he asked.

"Who said it didn’t?" she shrugged, "Not for my anyway. Honestly half my inner thoughts are just conversations with her. She’s still the one I’m arguing with when I’m trying to make a decision.”

Brice looked at his cup. He let out a small laugh.

“I kind of like that,” he said.

Mel tilted her head slightly.

“Like they’re still here. Not gone gone. Just…“ he gestured with the cup, vaguely, not having the right word for it. “Like they’re still in it with you.”

Mel nodded once, something settling in her face that wasn’t quite a smile but was close to it. Then she looked down at her own cup and the moment closed the way those moments did, quietly, without ceremony, and they went their separate ways through the thinning room.

…

Brice had James on the living room floor, both of them on the rug, James on his back with his legs kicking at nothing in particular and Brice dangling a plastic ring above him and making the kind of sounds you wouldn’t expect from Purdue’s starting quarterback. He stopped making them when he heard the bell.

He pulled the door open and Serena was standing on the front porch with a look on her face that was trying very hard to be casual.

“Hey,” she said. “Sorry, I know it’s early. I left my charger in here the other day.”

“It’s fine,” he said. He stepped back and let her in, "No such thing as early these days."

She came through the door and her eyes went straight to James on the rug.

“Oh my God,” she said, softer. “Look at him.”

“He’s been up since five,” Brice said, moving back to the rug and lowering himself down beside James. He picked the plastic ring back up. "I think it’s by the nightstand. Your charger."

She offered a smile towards James before disappearing down the hallway. Brice went back to the ring. James grabbed for it and missed and grabbed again and got a corner of it and immediately tried to put it in his mouth.

“We don’t do that,” Brice told him.

James looked up at him with those wide, unfocused eyes that were starting to look like Skylar’s and Brice looked back and kept his face easy.

Serena came back around the corner with the charger block in her hand, holding it up briefly like evidence. Then she came and sat cross-legged on the rug a few feet away.

“He’s getting so big,” she said.

“Yeah,” Brice agreed, "He is."

James kicked his legs again. Brice made the ring move in a slow arc and James tracked it with his eyes, his whole face working at the concentration of it.

“Brice,” Serena said.

He kept his eyes on James. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Again. For not telling you about Jo’Ziah. I should have just…I should have said something before the trip. Before any of this.”

He looked up at her then. He held it for a second and then he shrugged and looked back at the baby.

“It’s really not a big deal,” he said. “We all got a past. Lord knows I do.”

A short laugh. “I’m the last person that should be judging anybody for something that happened in high school.”

“I know but…“

“Serena,” he interjected, “It’s fine."

She nodded slowly. He could feel her watching him. He kept his attention on James, moving the ring again, letting the baby’s small fist close around it and pull.

“Little monster is strong as shit,” Brice said.

She laughed a little. “He really is.”

They sat there for a moment with the baby between them and the morning light coming through the front window in a pale, flat sheet.

“So what are you up to today?” she asked. “We could do something. Take him somewhere. There’s that little outdoor market thing on Fourth, I don’t know if it’s too much for him yet but—“

“I can’t today,” Brice said. He sat James up slightly, supporting his head, and James made a sound of vague protest. “Film crew’s coming. I got a sit-down.”

“Oh.” She looked at James. “When?”

“Afternoon. But I got some stuff to do before that.” He glanced toward the hallway. “Miss Lafitte’s got the day off normally but she’s coming in to cover while I shoot.”

Serena looked at him. Then at James. Then back at him.

“I could watch him,” she said.

He looked at her.

“I mean, I’m not doing anything,” she continued. “You said she’s got the day off. I’m already here. It’s not a big deal.”

He looked down at James, who was working very seriously on getting the plastic ring back into his mouth. Brice took it back. James made his feelings known.

Brice let out a short laugh.

“I don’t know about that,” he said.

…

This village was the one she liked best.

She hadn’t said that out loud to anyone because it felt like the wrong thing to say, like picking a favorite child or something, but it was true. There was something about the way the morning came in here, slower somehow, the light filtering through the trees at the edge of the square in long diagonal strips, the way the women who ran the community kitchen always had something already on when they arrived, the smell of it carrying across the courtyard before she was even through the gate.

Connie set her box down on the folding table and stood there for a second just breathing it in.

She looked out at the courtyard. People were already starting to filter in from the far end, the usual mix of families and older women coming in twos and threes. The children ran ahead of the adults the way they always did, like they had been storing up energy since the last time.

This was the last stop.

She knew it the same way she knew the last day of anything, that particular quality of awareness that crept in around the edges of a normal day and made everything slightly too vivid. The smell of the food, the sound of the children, the way the light was doing that thing through the trees. She was looking at it too hard, which meant she was already mourning it, which meant some part of her had already started the math on everything she was going back to.

She didn’t want to do that math.

She pulled the lid off the first container and got to work.

The session ran the way the sessions ran here. Pastor Herrera up front, the call and response portions coming to life before finding their rhythm. The kids who had been coming for weeks knew when to participate and when to sit still, and the newer ones watched the older ones and followed their lead, which was its own kind of beautiful thing, that quiet transmission of knowledge from one small person to another.

She was on the serving line when she thought about Valentina again.

It happened the same way it always happened. Not a full thought, just a flash. The back row chair. The serious eyes. The way she had taken the container with both hands.

She kept spooning rice.

She had done what Dr. Mendel said. She had told the mission, reported her absence through the right channels, asked the people who knew this community better than she did to keep an eye out. That was the appropriate thing. That was the responsible thing. That was the thing that a person who understood the difference between genuine concern and something else did.

She was still watching the gate.

The line moved. She smiled and said her words and watched the children carry their plates to the tables and the afternoon got long and warm and eventually the courtyard started to empty and she was at the wash station again, sponge in hand, water running cold over her wrists.

Pastor Herrera came to stand beside her.

“Last one,” he said.

“Yeah.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“You’ve done good work here,” he said.

She looked at the pot she was scrubbing. “I’m not sure how much of it was actually about the work.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“I think I needed this more than they needed me,” she said. “Which sounds terrible.”

“It doesn’t,” he said. “The best service comes from people who are also being filled. That’s what keeps us going. Servitude works both ways."

She rinsed the pot and set it on the drying rack.

"Looking forward to the amenities of home?" he asked, "I’m partial to central air myself."

She looked at the far wall of the courtyard, where the last of the plastic chairs were being stacked by two of the other missionaries.

“I guess,” she shrugged. "Semester’s starting back up soon."

“You don’t sound excited,” he raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think I am,” she dried her hands on the towel hanging from the table. “I thought I’d be ready by now. To go back. I thought the trip would do whatever it was supposed to do and I’d feel finished. Complete. Ready to pick up where I left off.”

“And?”

She looked at him.

“And I don’t,” she said. “I feel like I’m in the middle of something. Like I figured out the question but not the answer. And now I have to go back and sit in a lecture hall and study for midterms and act like I know what I’m doing with my life.”

Pastor Herrera looked at the courtyard. The chairs were all stacked now. The tables folded. The other missionaries were gathering their things near the gate, talking quietly, someone laughing at something.

“The middle is not a bad place to be,” he said, "There’s always going to be another mission trip. And there’s ways to give back. Even at home."

She looked at the stacked chairs against the wall. Neat and ordinary, the same plastic chairs they used everywhere, nothing special about them except that she had sat in this courtyard and watched children carry their plates and felt, for the first time in a long time, like she was in exactly the right place doing exactly the right thing.

She was going to miss this. She was going to miss it in the specific way you miss something while it’s still happening, which was the worst kind of missing because there was nothing to do about it except stand there and feel it.

…

Dana settled into the chair across from him and nodded at the camera operator and the camera operator gave her the thumbs up.

“So,” Dana said, leaning forward. “Summer’s winding down. Fall camp is right around the corner. How are you feeling about where the team is right now?”

Brice sat back easy.

“Honestly?” he said. “I feel really good. Really good. I think this is the most connected group we’ve had in a while. And I’m not just saying that. You can feel it in the workouts, in the way guys are showing up every day, the energy out there.”

Dana nodded. “The summer workouts have been going well?”

“Exceptional,” he said. “Guys are locked in. The conditioning numbers are up across the board. Coach has been pushing us hard and the guys are responding. Nobody’s phoning it in. We understand that last year was last year. This is a whole different year, different team, different challenge.”

“How was the Bahamas? Got a chance to unwind a bit before camp?"

“Yeah,” Brice said. He let his own smile come up easy and slow. “That was a good time. That was a really good time, actually. I think sometimes you need something like that. Get out of the facility, out of the grind for a few days, get around your guys in a different environment. You find out a lot about people when you’re not in a football context.”

“And what did you find out?”

“That we’re a family,” he said. “I mean that. It’s one thing to say it in a locker room speech. It’s another thing to be sitting at dinner with these guys, no playbooks, no game film, and just be people together. That’s when you really build something.”

The word family tasted like shit. He kept his expression where it was.

"Who are some of the guys you’re viewing as the leaders of this team?"

"Jo’Ziah is definitely one of them," Brice quickly offered, "Obviously, as a transfer, he brings a different dynamic to the team. He was a talented recruit coming out of high school for a reason. Obviously, one of the top guys in the portal. He’s a dog, that’s for sure. He raises the level of competitiveness in the group, from the secondary to the defense and that just spreads through the team."

Dana tilted her head slightly, pen moving.

“I think what people don’t understand about a team like this is that the best thing that can happen to a defense is having a dominant offense to go against every single day in practice, and vice versa. We push each other. Me and Jo’Ziah, we both want to win every single rep. Every one. And that competitive edge, that refusal to let the other guy have anything easy, that’s what makes both of us better.”

He paused for just the right amount of time. “That’s what makes this team better.”

“So you’d say you two are the leaders of this team?”

“Offense and defense,” Brice ran his hand through his beard, suddenly aware that he hadn’t shaved in a few days. “Absolutely. That’s just the position we’re both in and the responsibility that comes with it. And I think we both understand that. We’ve talked about it.”

They had not talked about it.

He kept his eyes on Dana.

“The Bahamas trip was a big part of that,” he said. “Getting to be around each other outside the football context. I think we came back with a different understanding of each other.”

“That’s great,” Dana said. She glanced down at her notes and then back up. “You know, we’d love to get Jo’Ziah in here at some point. Do a sit-down with him. Hear his perspective on the dynamic, on the team, on how he’s settled in at Purdue.”

Brice smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “You should do that. He’d be great.”

[djp73]

“The best service comes from people who are also being filled.

[Captain Canada]

I see the play Serena is running. It's nasty work, but I still see it.

[Caesar]

Man I know Mel ain't so weak-minded she falling for that bullshit again.

[redsox907]

Man I know Mel ain't so weak-minded she falling for that bullshit again.

you know damn right soapy perry gonna have her fiending for the white boy again

finally caught back up

kinda expect Connie to stay in Bolivia tbqh

Serena definitely should have played that off better. Brice definitely going to hold a grudge lol

[Soapy]

“The best service comes from people who are also being filled.

I see the play Serena is running. It's nasty work, but I still see it.

she's not the step mom, she's the mom that stepped up type beat?

Man I know Mel ain't so weak-minded she falling for that bullshit again.

you know damn right soapy perry gonna have her fiending for the white boy again

finally caught back up

kinda expect Connie to stay in Bolivia tbqh

Serena definitely should have played that off better. Brice definitely going to hold a grudge lol

They can't conversate and talk about their shared experiences (grief)? cold world

That would be a drastic life decision for Connie. maybe its what she needs though

Serena tried to lead with honesty (sort of) and getting blitzed for it. We killed [redacted] for not being honest

[Soapy]

Season 8, Episode 9
The heat had been sitting on the field since eight in the morning and by the time they got to 7-on-7, it had nowhere else to go.

The film crew had set up along the sideline, one camera on a tripod, one handheld floating around the perimeter, Ilyssa with her tablet and that look she had where she was watching everything and registering none of it, or registering all of it and showing none of it. He couldn’t always tell.

Brice didn’t think about them. He thought about the defense lined up across from him. They ran the drag to Corey first. Corey hauled it in and turned upfield before Jo’Ziah got hands on him. Brice looked at Jo’Ziah. Jo’Ziah looked back.

Next play, hitch to Jesse on the right side. Jesse caught it for five and Brice clapped his hands twice coming back to the huddle.

“Let’s keep it rolling,” he said, to nobody in particular, loud enough for the sideline.

They went back and forth like that for a while. Brice working the short stuff, hitting his check-downs, something they’d work on throughout the spring. Make your layups. Take a profit. All that cliched shit that got boring after a while.

It got real boring.

The play was initially intended to be a mesh concept with the young freshman tight end settling into the middle of the field. Corey’s route, a deep post, was really meant to just take the boundary corner, Jo’Ziah, away from the play. A clean release had given Corey a few steps on him and the consistent check-downs had brought the safety shallower than they should have been. It was there.

Brice opened up for the first time since warm ups and put his all into the throw.

"Touchdown," he muttered to himself.

Jo’Ziah made up half a yard. Then a quarter. Then a tenth.

He didn’t intercept it. He broke it up clean, one hand reaching across Corey’s body and knocking it skyward before it got there. Corey pulled up short with his hands out and looked at the ball bouncing in the grass.

"Fuck," Brice muttered to himself, ignoring the whooping and hollering of the defense as he looked behind him for the next play.

"Good read," Coach Hinshaw nodded. Brice nodded back.

"Tiger!" one of the assistants signaled in, sending the offensive players in their designated spots. Corey had stepped out, needing to take a breather. Jesse was now lined up against Jo’Ziah whose chest was still rising and falling, that smile still plastered on his face.

He took the snap and watched Jesse release downfield, a go route, straight and clean. Brice eyed him the entire way, releasing the ball as soon as they were even.

Jo’Ziah got there first. Again.

He didn’t catch it, not quite, but his hands were on it before Jesse’s were and the ball came loose and hit the ground. The defense erupted.

"Fuck nigga, stop playing with me!" Jo’Ziah yelled towards the offense although it felt directed at one man in particular.

Brice looked at Jesse as the receiver was jogging back to the huddle.

"What the fuck was that?" he said.

Jesse held his hands out. "He was in phase. Throw that shit back shoulder."

"He just ran fucking 100 yards in two plays and you can’t beat him?"

"Fuck out of here," Jesse waved him off, sucking his teeth as he tried to collect his breath.

One of the coaching assistants was already sorting through their laminated sheets, trying to find the next play that the sideline was signaling in.

He turned to Corey. “And you. Stop being a bitch at the top of your route. Stick your fucking foot in the ground and wall him off."

Corey shook his head.

"I can’t believe I took a pay cut for y’all sorry asses," Brice said and he heard it come out louder than he meant it to.

He turned around and saw the lens pointed directly at him. The handheld guy was maybe ten feet away. He turned back to the field.

Ilyssa was already moving toward the camera operator. She raised two fingers and made a small circling motion and then pointed down. The camera operator lowered the lens slightly and gave her a barely perceptible nod.

"Second unit!" the assistant called out.

Brice walked to the sideline and grabbed a bottle and put it to his face for a few seconds. He didn’t drink. He just stood there with the cold plastic against his lips and his jaw tight and the heat pressing down on the top of his head.

The second team offense took the field. He heard the shuffle of it behind him, the different voices, the adjustment in rhythm. He didn’t turn around. He worked on his breathing and looked at the tree line past the far end zone and told himself this was nothing. This was July. This was a non-padded practice in the heat and nobody was keeping score.

His gaze still found Jo’Ziah, still on the field, except at nickel now. He looked away, back at the water bottle, pouring some on his head. The heat was brutal. Miami was liable to be near the top of the draft. So was Arizona. Carolina. Or even worse, New Orleans. He’d need to get used to this.

Brice didn’t really see the play but he didn’t need to. He had heard it. First, it was the audible "fuck" that Shaun had let out, that all too familiar feeling that came when you made a mistake a knew it before anyone else did. The next was the sound of the ball hitting Jo’Ziah’s gloves, just as Brice turned around to face the field.

The whistle blew but Jo’Ziah didn’t stop, running full speed down the sideline as the rest of the defense joined him. Brice watched as the avalanche of players kept coming towards them, hooting and hollering as Jo’Ziah held the ball over his head. The whistle was blown again. They still didn’t stop.

Not until they reached the far end of the field, posing for the film crew which had caught up to them. The whistle blew again and the coaches began barking, sending the defense into a slight job as they moved back to the practice area.

Jo’Ziah lagged behind, partly because he was tired, partly because his destination differed. He moved towards the sideline where Brice and the rest of the offense was and tossed them the football. One of the lineman caught it.

"Hold that L, fuck nigga!"

"Shut your bitch ass up!" shouted another lineman.

"Do that shit with the first team offense out there, bitch ass nigga!" barked Corey.

Jo’Ziah slowed his jog to a walking pace as he neared Brice, "Your bitch ass quarterback know better than to try me like that. Ain’t that right, Bricey-poo?"

Brice shoved him. Jo’Ziah shoved him back. The offense swarmed around Jo’Ziah. The defense came running back. The sidelines cleared. Brice tried to grab Jo’Ziah’s jersey but he was soon pulled away, getting lost in the melee of bodies. He tried to wrestle away and couldn’t before turning around and realizing that Abdul had practically wrapped him and carried him away like a newborn baby.

"Fuck off me!" Brice finally managed to free himself from Abdul who was now standing between him and the mass of bodies that had gathered.

"Chill out, five!"

He couldn’t see Jo’Ziah among the chaos anymore. Whistles were being blown. Coaches were shouting. The cameras were still rolling until Ilyssa did that thing with her fingers again.

…

The laptop was open on the kitchen table between them, the college search website pulled up with its clean grid of campus photos and acceptance rate statistics and student-to-faculty ratios, all that information lined up neatly like it could actually tell you anything real about a place.

Sophie had her legs folded under her in the chair and the spaghetti Bolognese Tom had made was sitting in the pot on the stove going cold because neither of them had remembered to eat it. Her phone was face-down beside the laptop. His was in his pocket.

Liz had texted at six-fifteen. Working late. Don’t wait on me.

He hadn’t texted back yet.

“Okay so this one,” Sophie said, pulling the laptop toward her and pointing at a campus shot, “has like a really good communications program but it’s in the middle of nowhere, like genuinely, there’s nothing around it.”

“Middle of nowhere isn’t the worst thing,” Tom said.

“For you maybe.”

“For anybody who actually wants to focus.”

“There’s also Maryland,” she said, stopping the scroll, "One of the girls in my class has a brother that goes there. He liked it."

Tom looked at the screen. The campus shot was familiar. He had been there to watch Brice play. Four touchdowns. A blowout victory. But the game wasn’t the most memorable part of that weekend. He thought about St. Frances. Walking through that campus with Liz. Thinking of what might have been. What could have been. What should have been.

"Near a major city so more job opportunities," Sophie was saying, "The campus looks nice."

“Yeah,” Tom said.

His voice came out a little flat.

She looked at him for a second and then looked back at the screen. She clicked on the campus tour link and a video started playing, some student ambassador walking backwards through a courtyard while talking about dining options.

Tom looked at the table.

He would have liked it there.

The thought arrived the same way it always did, without invitation.

“Dad.”

He looked up. Sophie had paused the video.

“Sorry,” he said. He cleared his throat. “What?”

“Are you okay?"

He put his hand to his face. His jaw was tight and his eyes were wet and he hadn’t noticed either of those things happening.

“Sorry,” he looked at the ceiling for a moment, pressing the heel of his hand against his eye, and then he gave up on that and just let it be what it was.

Sophie didn’t say anything. She just pulled her legs tighter under her and turned in her chair slightly toward him and waited. He sat with it for a minute.

“I took Jimmy to look at a school in Maryland once,” he said finally. "He was thinking about transferring there."

Sophie reached over and closed the laptop gently. He looked at her.

She had her hands folded on top of the closed laptop and she was just looking at him with those green eyes that were her mother’s eyes but at the same time weren’t. She just sat there and let him be in it.

He was in it for another minute. Maybe two.

Then he exhaled, long and slow, and put both hands flat on the table.

“You’re a good kid,” he said.

Sophie blinked. “What?”

“Don’t change who you are.” He looked at her directly. “Whatever happens, wherever you end up, whatever school you pick or don’t pick. Don’t change this.”

She looked slightly uncomfortable. She shifted in her chair. “Dad.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay,” she said, drawing the word out in that teenage way that meant she wasn’t sure whether to take him seriously.

“You’re my proudest achievement,” he said. “You know that?”

She let out a short laugh. Not unkind, just reflexive. “Okay, now I know you’re being weird.”

“I’m not being weird.”

“Come on Dad, I’m not stupid. Me? Really? You expect me to believe that?"

“Brice is Brice,” Tom said. “I’m proud of Brice. Of course I am. He worked for everything he has.”

He paused, finding the right way into it. "I look at Brice and I see a lot of myself in there. And a lot of your mother. And I’m proud of all of it. I am. But you?"

Sophie was quiet now.

"I can’t explain it," he let out an awkward laugh, "You’re your own person. I can’t take credit for it. Your mom can’t either. You have your own way of seeing things. You have your own way of being yourself. Some people go through their entire lives never figuring that out."

Sophie looked at the table.

“That’s what I want for you,” Tom said. “I want you to go somewhere that’s yours. Not ours. Not the legacy or the plan or whatever someone has mapped out in their head for you. Yours.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Even if it’s not in the middle of nowhere?” she said.

“Even if it’s not in the middle of nowhere,” he smiled.

…

"It’s practice. It’s hot. Shit happens."

“Okay,” LaPenna said. “Then why are we talking about it?”

Brice looked at the window.

“Because you’re going to ask about it anyway,” he said.

“I’m asking because you brought it up,” LaPenna said.

"If I didn’t bring it up, then it’d be something too."

“Is it?”

“Obviously, there’s history there. Every time I look at him, I think about it."

“Think about what, specifically?”

“You know what.”

“I want you to say it.”

He pressed his thumbnail into the pad of his finger. “I think about him and Serena. I think about him knowing. I think about him looking at me on that field and laughing and having this thing over me that I can’t do anything about.”

LaPenna nodded once but didn’t immediately respond.

“Part of what’s interesting to me,” he said after a moment, “is that you already understand this intellectually. We’ve talked through discomfort before. You have the tools for it. So the fact that this still has such a grip on you tells me there’s something deeper attached to it.”

“I know,” Brice said.

“And yet.”

“And yet,” Brice confirmed.

“So what’s actually happening?” LaPenna picked his cup back up. “Because it’s not about Jo’Ziah. It’s not even really about what happened in high school."

Brice said nothing.

“What is it about?” LaPenna asked.

He sat with the question for a moment. He turned it over the way he’d learned to, not rushing toward the first answer that came up, which was usually the wrong one, or at least the incomplete one.

“We spoke about control last time," Brice shrugged.

“We did. Keep going.”

"I think every guy, or at least I think every guy, wants something that is theirs. Especially not something their friend has had."

"I can see that,” LaPenna agreed. "I think it’s more than that. I think you know it’s more than that. You have the answers, Brice. Not me.”

Brice looked at the floor.

“What do you actually feel for Serena?” LaPenna asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean when you picture her. When she’s not there. When something happens during your day and you want to tell someone about it.” LaPenna held his gaze steady. “Do you think about her?”

Brice opened his mouth and closed it.

“I care about her,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

He looked at the window again.

“I like being around her,” he said carefully.

LaPenna didn’t say anything.

“She makes things easier,” Brice continued, slower now. “She’s easy to be around. She doesn’t ask too much. She knows how to be in my life without making it complicated.”

“When you learned of her history with Jo’Ziah,” LaPenna said quietly, “What changed?”

Brice pressed his palms together between his knees.

“She wasn’t just mine anymore,” he said, "I guess."

“In your mind.”

“In my mind,” he agreed. “I know it’s stupid. I know that. She didn’t do anything wrong. But in my head, something shifted. Like something got taken off the table.”

“What got taken off the table?”

He didn’t answer right away.

“She’s not just mine,” he said finally. "She’s a person. With her own life. Her own history. Her own experience."

LaPenna set his cup down very deliberately on the side table.

“What do you know about Serena?” LaPenna asked. “Tell me something real. Something that has nothing to do with how she fits into your life.”

The question sat there and he reached for an answer the way you reach for something in a dark room, hand out, moving slow.

He knew she liked nice things. He knew she had friends that she was close with, Sabrina, Kennedi, others, but he couldn’t always remember their names without prompting. He knew she was from Indianapolis and came from a big family but he had never asked much about them and she had never offered much and that had always felt like an unspoken agreement that suited them both.

“She’s good company,” he said.

LaPenna let that sit.

“Is that enough?” he asked.

Brice looked at his hands. He turned them over, palms up, and looked at them.

“It’s been enough,” he said.

“Has it?”

He pressed his hands flat on his thighs.

“I don’t know,” he said. And then, quieter, “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about whether it was enough. She was there when nobody was. I just thought about that."

“Whether she was yours,” LaPenna offered.

“Yeah.” He said it to the floor. “Whether she was mine.”

The room was very quiet.

“The moment it looked like she wasn’t just yours,” LaPenna said, “the math changed.”

Brice didn’t answer.

“Not because you were hurt,” LaPenna continued. “Not because you’re grieving something you lost with her. Because the thing that made her useful to you, in your mind, was the certainty of possession. And when that got complicated, she got complicated. And now you’re on a football field trying to fight your teammate because the situation got complicated.”

Brice scoffed.

“I’m not saying that to indict you,” LaPenna said. “I’m saying it because I think some part of you already knows it and that’s why you brought it up."

He looked at the window.

“That’s a fucked up thing to hear about yourself,” he said.

“Most true things are.”

[djp73]

Ilyssa earning that check

[Captain Canada]

Brice being so obsessed with this Jo'Ziah/Serena trope is nauseating

Shout out to Tom trying to show up for at least one of his children.

[Caesar]

So Brice wasn't this torn up about dudes cracking his eventual baby mama but is about Serena getting cracked years ago? I think we know why Brice Colton, son of Liz "you're not in the NBA" and "Blacks" Colton, is upset about Jo'Ziah cracking Serena.

This man keep putting them little jabs at New Orleans in here.