The air over Tad Gormley felt thin and loud, brass cutting through November cold while purple and gold thumped their feet in time. Alexandria’s sideline popped with hand signals. Karr’s bench leaned into the white like they could shorten the field with bodies.
Caine stood in the gun, breath tight in his mask. He saw the backers creeping and changed it with his voice.
“Kill, kill… Vegas… Vegas!” He set his feet and brought his hands.
He rode the ball into Jayden’s belly and held it long enough to make the mike stick, then yanked it back to his chest.
Eyes up. Laces right. He snapped his hips and drove a low, hard shot across the middle. Matt came flat under the safeties and smothered it against his pads, and dragged a shoulder through a grab to fall over the line to gain.
First down.
Caine slapped Jayden’s helmet and gave him a quick nod, no smile, just business. The ball hit the umpire’s hands and came right back. Karr hurried to the spot.
…
Caine sat in shotgun, toes even, eyes cutting to the edge.
“Set, go!”
He slid right with Jayden riding his hip.
The end widened and chased, greedy for the TFL.
Caine kept it just long enough to make him commit, shoulders square, feet light. He snapped his wrist and let the pitch fly flat and tight. Jayden caught it in stride and bent the corner, pads low, knees chewing up green.
He slipped past a reach at the thigh and out-ran the next angle, breath white as he hit the numbers. A safety screamed downhill and dove across his shins. Jayden tumbled forward on contact and skidded to a stop under the lights.
…
Caine felt the pocket breathe wrong and climbed, chin quiet, eyes steady downfield. A rusher scraped his back plate and he slid again, hitching without giving the ball up.
Nowhere to step. He kept his base and let his arm do the work, hips snapping, laces ripping loose on a long throw he couldn’t drive. It came out flat and mean, cutting the night.
Corey ate the cushion. He ran through the corner’s grab, leaned past him, and caught it in stride with the ball pulling him forward. Two more steps and the safety’s angle died. Corey opened up, legs long, and the grass fell away under him.
He crossed into the endzone untouched, hands to the sky, and the place blew open with brass and boots and noise.
Caine turned, found the big man who almost got him, and flexed his bicep once as he jogged by. No words. Just the look. Then he headed downfield to join the celebrations, breath thin in the cold, teammates already jumping into him.
…
Caine stepped up to the line, pointing out the mike before jogging back and getting set.
He clapped once. Waited a beat. Then clapped twice in quick succession.
The ball came in hot on the snap. He managed to bring it in, sticking the ball in Jayden’s belly, pulling it and spinning out to his right on a rollout.
The defense followed, flowing toward the sideline. He stopped. Threw the ball back across the field to Jay, standing behind Tyron to block the corner who’d stayed home. Jay took a hard step forward, selling the screen.
He stepped back then arced a pass high through the night sky.
Matt caught it, a hair behind him. Wide open. He stumbled when he turned to run, but kept his balance. Burning the safety to the endzone, a hand trailing behind him to throw the peace sign toward the Alexandria defender.
Coach Joseph punched the air and threw an arm around Coach Smith as the sideline exploded in celebration.
Caine looked up at the scoreboard, chest heaving: Karr 37, Alexandria 10.
~~~
Mireya lay on her side with the curtains pulled tight and the room gone blue with late afternoon. The fan in the corner ticked every few seconds like it had a rock in its throat. She had shoved her phone under the pillow so the light wouldn’t catch her face if it lit again. Even with the blankets up to her chin, the chill from the window glass found its way in.
She had dropped Camila at Elena’s an hour ago with a kiss on the forehead and a bag of extra clothes.
“Solo por un ratito,” she’d told her, trying to make her smile when the little mouth dipped. The quiet that followed felt wrong. It made the air bigger. It left too much space for anger.
Floorboards creaked down the hall. Maria’s door opened. A pause. Another step, then the tilt of a head into the room. Mireya watched the shadow before she looked at her mother. Maria stood with the hall light behind her like a border. Her eyes held steady on her. No softness. No surprise.
Mireya rolled onto her back. Her eyes burned raw. “I don’t need this right now,” she said, voice cracked thin.
Maria came in anyway, three steps, the way someone did when they weren’t going to be kept out.
“Te lo dije,” she said. “I told you. I saw this coming months ago.”
Mireya stared at the ceiling, tracking the line where paint had bubbled and never got fixed. A leak from last spring, still waiting. “Can we not?”
“He was always going to leave,” Maria went on. “You were stupid to think different. He told you. He showed you. Tú no quisiste ver.”
Heat rose in Mireya’s neck. She pushed the blanket down and sat up slow. “Not too long ago you said you understood why I stuck by him.”
Maria’s mouth twisted. “Eso fue cuando pensé que iba a prisión de por vida. When I thought he couldn’t ruin you or my granddaughter any more than he already had. When he was a ghost. Not a boy playing family on weekdays and dreams on the weekend.”
Mireya’s hands went to the edge of the mattress. She gripped until the sheet wrinkled. “Stop.”
“He walks in here and you forget yourself,” Maria said, taking another step. She looked around the small room, at the dresser with the sticky drawer, the makeup case knocked half-shut on the nightstand. “Traerlo de vuelta fue tu segundo peor error.”
Mireya’s heart thudded once in her throat. She knew what was coming before it landed.
“El primero,” Maria said, eyes cutting back, “was getting pregnant.”
The sting cracked through. Mireya shot to her feet. The bed frame squealed against the wall. “Fuck you,” she said, chest tight. “I’m your fucking daughter.”
Maria didn’t flinch. “Exactly. And look at how you speak to me. You spend too much time with him and with that woman. You forget your place. You don’t respect me or yourself.”
She reached past Mireya and picked up the makeup palette, thumb pressing the hinge. Mireya’s stomach dropped at the sight of it in her mother’s hand. She saw herself a few months back in this same spot, sliding folded bills behind the stained mirror.
“You think I don’t know about the money he gives you?” Maria said. “Que lo escondes.”
“It’s from his job,” Mireya snapped, grabbing for the palette, not quite touching it. “From his fucking job.”
Maria arched a brow. “Sí. The one on the corner. ¿Qué eres La Chapa now?” Her voice had teeth. “You like how that sounds? You like what that means when they come knock, when the paperwork gets put on your name?”
“Better than broke,” Mireya said. The words came fast and clean. She swallowed the tremble. The room seemed smaller after she said it. The fan ticked. A siren stitched itself faint through the window glass. Someone argued in the courtyard, a man’s voice dragging a woman’s name out too long.
Maria set the palette back down, slow and careful, then reached for the keys on the nightstand. The ring chimed soft in her hand. “Vete,” she started, and stopped. She stared at the keys like they could carry the rest of the sentence on their own. Her jaw worked once, the muscle jumping. She put them back where they were, metal against wood.
“You want me out?” Mireya asked. The question came out smaller than she meant. She hated that. Hated that it had a child’s shape. “Say it.”
“You think you know more than you,” Maria said. “You think he’s going to change his mind? Más lejos se va, más rápido te deja.” She shook her head. “You will end up in jail right along with him. ¿Y Camila? I won’t let you sink her.”
Mireya kept her eyes on the wall. The pencil marks for Camila’s height ran in a little ladder by the chair. Three notches. Three mornings when she’d stood the girl straight and pressed the line and told herself they were moving. Her chest felt scraped raw. The quiet in the apartment had teeth now.
Mireya blinked hard. She tasted the salt she refused to let fall. The window leaked a strip of light along the floor. It touched the pile of laundry by the chair and turned the edge of a shirt to a tired gray. The day outside kept moving like none of this mattered. The courtyard gate clacking as someone came in with a bag of groceries that wouldn’t last the week.
The silence after was wide. It answered nothing. Somewhere a neighbor’s TV carried a preacher through the wall, his rhythm steady, his promises cheap. The cold off the glass kept finding skin even with the blanket close by.
Maria looked at the keys one more time. She didn’t pick them up. She stepped back to the doorway and stood there like a rule written on a doorframe. Her eyes flicked to the bed, then to Mireya’s hands before walking away.
Mireya put those hands in her hair. She hooked her fingers at the root and pulled until her scalp burned. Her fingers tightened. The ache lingered across her scalp in a dull ring. She sat back down on the edge of the bed, heart thudding in her ears.
~~~
Caine dipped his shoulder to avoid an edge rusher. He stepped up into the pocket but had to squeeze out between two of his linemen as it collapsed around him.
He sprinted toward the sideline, eyes downfield.
All he saw was white flashing in front of him as Catholic defenders rumbled toward him. Seeing the sideline rushing to meet him, he tucked the ball and turned upfield, getting a few yards before being shoved out of bounds on the Bears’ sideline.
One of their receivers pushed him away, jumping up and down and shouting yeah as his teammates joined in on the taunting.
Darnell and a couple others ran over to usher Caine back to safer territory as the referees rushed over to prevent any fisticuffs breaking out.
Caine shook his head, spitting his mouthpiece out into his hand and looking up at the scoreboard as it read zero a piece midway through the second quarter.
…
“Black 80! Black 80!”
Caine stepped up to the offensive line, shouting adjustments, pointing and gesturing to defenders. He stepped back, glancing at Matt and giving him a signal.
Getting set once again, Caine called for the snap.
He dropped back. One, two, three. Jayden cut a pass rusher down, the Catholic defender’s hands swiping at Caine’s feet as he shuffled to the side to keep his base and avoid him.
Caine dovetailed to his right, pump faked toward Matt. The safety bit.
Moving all the way back to his left in one smooth motion, Caine stepped up and launched the ball down the field, hitting Corey in stride with a step on his man. Corey bore down on the endzone, a last ditch effort to bring him down only swinging him over the goal line.
Caine threw his hands up, then punched the air.
The scoreboard finally lit up in Karr’s column. Catholic 10, Karr 6.
…
Caine looked toward the sideline, waiting as Coach Joseph signaled an audible. Caine nodded then shouted to the offense, voice cutting through the din of the stadium.
He crouched low, one foot in front of the other.
“Go… go… go!”
The snap was clean. Caine caught it and took a step back, head popping up briefly. Then he tucked the ball and plunged toward the line of scrimmage. He bounced into the gap, hands grabbing at his jersey.
He got into some day light and chewed up the turf before sliding down before a safety could lower his shoulder.
The umpire signaled first down. Caine popped up and tossed the ball toward him. Coach Joseph spun his hands one over the other, a signal that had become rarer as the season—and especially the playoffs—had progressed.
Caine jogged toward the sideline as Jay swapped with him at quarterback.
Caine stayed on Coach Joseph’s hip, mouthpiece dangling from his teeth, prepared to go back in at a moment’s notice.
…
Caine brought his gloved hands up, rubbing them in front of his face as he settled into his stance. He hazarded a glance toward the scoreboard, far at the back of the endzone. Time running out, Catholic up 24-20 a quarter of the way through the fourth.
He signaled to Jayden, lifted a foot and sent Corey in motion.
The ball came fast from the snap. He stuck the ball in Jayden’s belly, eyes glued to the edge rusher.
He crashed toward the center of the field. Caine pulled the ball and sprinted toward the outside. He shoved Tyron toward a corner, all but stiff-arming him into the block.
He pointed at the safety as Jay ran to get in his way. The pylon rumbled closer, Caine angling his run toward it. The safety ran to cut him off at the goal line.
Caine kept pumping his feet, narrowing his angle to make sure he stayed in bounds when he reached the corner of the endzone. The safety closed quickly, diving lower at Caine’s legs.
Caine jumped at the last second. He felt the safety pass under him, helmet clipping cleats. He fell into the endzone, clutching the ball to his chest.
He rolled over, seeing the line judge’s arms shoot up. He slammed the ball on the turf a few times, shouting into the night.
…
“Alamo, Alamo, Alamo!” Caine shouted.
Caine got set again, called for the snap. He spun the ball in his hands as he dropped back. The nose tackle tore through the offensive line and flushed Caine out of the pocket.
He ran to his right, ball hanging from one hand. He pointed at Corey, waving for him to run toward the sideline.
The cornerback slipped when Corey turned around.
Side-arming the pass, Caine zipped it through the defense, hard and low.
Corey slid to his knees, watching the ball into his stomach as he flew across the turf. There was a momentary pause as the referees looked toward one another. Then arms went up.
The stadium exploded.
Caine ran to the endzone, hauling Corey to his feet before the toe of them broke out a little New Orleans footwork in celebration.
…
The band was in full throat as the clock ticked down. The scoreboard reading Edna Karr 34, Catholic High 31. Caine stood on the sideline, arms thrown over Matt and Corey’s shoulders as the three of them bounced on the balls of their feet.
Jay stood under center, Jayden 15 yards behind him. He called for the snap and knelt down.
The referees signaled the end of the game and Karr’s sideline emptied out onto the field, a second straight state championship one game away.
…
The band’s last note bled into the chatter of people filing down the bleachers. Breath smoked under the lights. Karr colors flashed in the aisle, drums thudding in stray hands. Caine scanned the faces at the rail, phone warm in his palm. He checked the student section, then the far bleachers where Mireya usually stood with Camila. Nothing.
He opened her name. Text. Another. He hit call, eyes still raking the steps. Voicemail. He stood a beat longer, jaw set, and slid the phone away.
“Good game,” Janae said at his shoulder, bright and easy. Cropped hoodie, nails like little stars catching the light. “You coming or you gonna pretend you don’t hear me?”
He looked over, gave her a small nod. “I hear you.”
“My mama not home.” It landed between them. “Come through.”
He checked his phone again. Delivered. No answer. He breathed in slow. He scanned the crowd again.
“She not here?” Janae asked, looking up in the crowd.
Caine didn’t answer that. Instead, he just said:
“Aight.”
They cut through the thinning crowd, past aunties with hot plates, past a cop with arms folded under his vest. November air pressed cool and wet. Janae talked about drivers who never found her street.
…
Her room smelled like coconut oil and a vanilla candle pinched out. Posters layered the walls. A thin draft tickled the blinds. The door clicked shut and the house shrank to the sounds inside it—a TV low somewhere, pipes knocking once and going quiet.
Covers were already pulled up over their waists. Heat still lived under the quilt. Caine lay on his back, bare to the shoulder, skin cooling. Janae pressed into him on her side, hair messy across her cheek, one leg thrown over his shin. Her nails traced a slow line where his chest rose and fell.
“I been bored as hell,” she said. “Everybody messy. School messy. Home messy. I told my mama I’m not taking her boyfriend to work no more. He be watching me in the mirror.”
He watched the ceiling. “Yeah?”
“She said I was being dramatic.” Janae’s mouth twisted. “So now I don’t be home.” She shifted closer, blanket rustling. “You ever think about leaving all this?”
“I am.”
“You a quiet thinker.” She tilted her head up. “What you thinking right now?”
He slid his phone from the pillow and checked it without meaning to. Still delivered. He set it face down on the quilt between them. “Food,” he said. “I ain’t ate since lunch.”
She laughed low and nudged his ribs with her knee. “You thinking about me.” Then, softer, “Or her.”
He didn’t answer. Janae let the silence sit. She adjusted the chain at his neck and looked at her nails again, the tiny stars at each cuticle.
“You like these?”
“They straight.”
“I know.” A small smile. “I want to go to Dallas. My cousin say they got a rink inside the mall. I wanna see it.”
“Never been. I ain’t never really been out Louisiana.”
“You will.” She said it like a promise. “You gonna take me.”
Footsteps came and went down the hall. A door opened, laughter slid out, then the latch caught. The house settled again.
Janae tucked her face against his shoulder. “You look tired,” she said.
“Because I am.”
The floor outside creaked once, then stilled. A soft scrape like a sock against wood. The hallway light bled through the thin crack of the door where it didn’t quite meet the frame.
Janae shifted and pulled the covers higher, cheek brushing his shoulder. “You cold?” she asked.
“Nah, y’all heater work,” he said, voice even.
…
A shadow eased into that sliver and went still. Jay’s profile was only a shape on the edge of the light, a shoulder and a cap, a hush of breath that didn’t belong to the room. He didn’t speak. He didn’t step in. He stayed to the hinge side where a mirror on the dresser threw back a slice of the bed and the two bodies under the covers.
His phone was already in his hand. He lifted it slow, thumb on the screen, the lens angled off the mirror so no flash fired and no sound gave him away. One frame. Then a second, tighter. He checked what he had with the screen cupped to his chest and slid the phone down again, quiet as a thought. The shadow thinned. The light at the crack went empty. The house took its breath back.
Down the hall, Jay leaned against the wall where no one would see him. He opened IG, searched, found Mireya, and slid into the message screen. He added the last picture, added “ain’t this yo man?” as a caption. He watched the blue bar crawl across, then tapped send.
~~~
The door caught on the swollen frame before it gave. Sara leaned in with her shoulder, the deadbolt slip clicked, and she stepped into the narrow hall with two duffels cutting into her palms. Night air trailed in behind her, smelling like damp leaves and the metal of the stadium rails that still rang in her ears.
The living room lights were on. The TV washed a cheap blue across the wall. A blanket lay folded on the back of the couch like a held breath.
Hector looked up from the armchair, one boot planted on an ottoman that wasn’t built for it.
“What you doing?” His voice carried without volume. “He still can’t come back.”
Sara set the first bag by the end table. The second landed on the cushions with a soft thump. Her wrists hummed with ache. She shook the blanket loose, snapped creases out, and spread it flat, corners squared with quick, practiced tugs.
“I’m talking to you,” Hector said. He stood, the chair complaining under him. “You hear me? He not staying here.”
She drew a sheet from the duffel and tucked it under the cushion in two tight pulls. The room held the bite of bleach and yesterday’s fried shrimp. A bottle cap winked from the rug. Pipes clicked somewhere down the hall, then went quiet.
Sara smoothed the blanket with her palm until the fabric lay still. She lifted a pillow, beat it twice with the heel of her hand, slid it into place where a head would go.
“That girl kick him out huh?” Hector asked. “First smart thing she’s ever done then.”
She opened the second duffel. A folded hoodie. A towel. A pair of socks rolled tight. She stacked them on the crate beside the couch, edges aligned. Her thumb rested a second on the hoodie’s sleeve hem, then moved on.
“You hear me?” Hector said, voice tightening. “Say something.”
She didn’t.
The front door scraped again. Saul shouldered it open with a shove and Zoe slipped in behind him, arms folded against the night, laugh still on her face until she saw the room. Saul’s eyes flicked from the bags to the blanket to Hector, reading the temperature before he spoke.
Zoe leaned toward him. “What’s going on?”
Saul stayed by the wall, chin up a notch. Sara tucked the sheet tighter at the corner, then squared the second pillow. The couch took the shape she wanted. She made the little stack on the crate neat as a list.
Sara zipped the empty duffel and placed it by the crate. The TV audience clapped for nothing. A neighbor’s car door thudded outside. The house felt crowded with things unsaid.
Zoe looked between faces. “Is this about Caine?”
Sara reached for the edges of the blanket, pulled them once more. The fabric lay tight as a thought she wouldn’t speak. She set the last pillow, then pressed her knuckles into the cushion to test the give. Good enough.
Hector stepped until his boot toe nudged the rug’s fringe. “You don’t run this house.” He gestured at the couch. “It’s on you if something happens when you bring him back, Sara.”
Sara lifted the hoodie from the stack, folded it one more time, and put it down cleaner. Her face didn’t change. Her silence worked harder than anything he was saying.
The room held still. The TV murmured. A car rolled past, bass low, then faded. Zoe touched Saul’s arm.
“So… he’s staying?”
Saul glanced at the couch, at the neat stack, at Sara’s set shoulders. He lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “Guess he coming back.”
~~~
The ceiling had hairline cracks that ran like dried riverbeds. Mireya lay flat and counted the turns where they split, then lost the number and started again. The room held the kind of quiet that made small sounds bigger. Crayon on paper. The wet click of the heater trying to matter. A car down the block easing to a stop and idling with a soft throat.
Camila lay on her belly on the floor, elbows planted, feet crossed in the air. She had dragged a thin blanket over the rug like a picnic and spread a coloring book open to a page already crowded with a storm of pink and purple. The little girl hummed to herself, not a song, just a line of sound that kept her company.
Light from the window came in thin and gray from streetlights. The air held a cool that slipped under the door and lifted the tiny hairs on Mireya’s forearms. She pulled the comforter tighter and tried to make her chest feel less hollow.
Her phone dinged on the pillow near her ear. The sound felt too bright for the room. She didn’t move at first. Then she rolled to her side and slid the phone close, thumb dragging hesitantly across the screen. A message preview sat there with a name she didn’t know. No mutuals in the bubble. No face in the profile. Just a handle that read like nothing.
She opened it.
A single photo filled the screen. Caine and Janae in a bed. Rumpled sheets. A headboard she didn’t recognize. A bedside lamp throwing a warm circle against a wall the wrong color for this house. Janae’s hair spread across a pillow, her mouth tilted at the edge like she had just laughed. Caine lay close, shoulder bare to the collarbone, his head tipped back against the pillow. It was enough. It was more than enough.
Mireya didn’t blink. She didn’t let the room back in until her thumb found the side button and shut the screen to black. She set the phone face down on the bed. The cotton under her cheek smelled faintly like the cheap detergent Maria bought when the better one ran out. The scent caught in her throat.
She took a breath she could feel all the way down. Then another. She let them both go slow so they wouldn’t sound like anything.
On the floor, Camila’s crayon rolled and bumped the base of the dresser before she caught it. “Oh no,” she said, soft, the words barely shaped.
Mireya swallowed. “Ven aquí, mi amor,” she said, voice low. “Come lay with me.”
Camila pushed up to her knees, palms smudged with wax color, and looked over like she needed to be sure. Then she smiled a small smile, the kind that showed only in her eyes, and launched toward the bed with both hands first. Her socks slipped on the blanket but she scrambled and made it, knee up, foot up, a little grunt when she hauled herself the rest of the way.
She collapsed into Mireya’s side in a loose sprawl, warm and heavy for such a small body. Her hair was wild from static, fine strands sticking to Mireya’s chin. Mireya adjusted the comforter with one hand and tucked it around them until it made a tent that held their heat. Camila pressed her face into her mother’s shoulder and made a satisfied sound that was almost a purr.
The heater clicked again and gave them nothing. A neighbor’s radio bled a low gospel through the wall like someone praying under their breath. Outside, a gate clacked twice and stopped.
Mireya’s eyes found the ceiling again. The cracks still ran the way they had. She slipped her palm over Camila’s back and felt the length of her ribcage in tiny rises. The girl’s breath was warm and even. It marked time better than anything else in the room.
“Te amo,” Mireya whispered into Camila’s hair. The child’s hand opened and closed against her shirt, a slow clutching like she was testing if it would stay. Mireya closed her own hand over that small hand. She held it until her fingers stopped shaking.
The phone stayed dark on the bed beside them.
Camila shifted and wedged herself closer, knee over Mireya’s stomach now, one heel kicking a little as she settled.
They breathed together. The room cooled around the edges. The crayon on the floor lay uncapped and would leave a smear but that was a problem for later. Mireya pressed her lips to the top of Camila’s head, the warm spot where the hair parted. She stayed like that and counted the breaths until number lost meaning and only the weight of her daughter and the hush of the room remained.
The phone didn’t light again.
