Break In My Heart

12. Taking Chances

"You've changed, Addison," were the first words I heard as I walked into my fathers' joint office. My heart raced as I took a seat in the chair he'd pulled up for me. Every so often, Padre and I would have a writing session together, and with the messiness that was wreaking havoc in my brain, there was nothing that I needed more, especially before our big football game in the evening.

I didn't know that this would add to the stress though.

I swallowed. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean, Addison. You've been more reserved and on edge about everything. I can see it in your eyes, you're nervous about something, piccolo (baby), and I want to help you with whatever it is." He gently put his hand on my back.

I broke eye contact as I felt a surge of emotions rush through me. I had to keep the tears that were egging on at bay. "I don't know," I confessed, trying to figure out how to explain it without straight out telling him what my problem was. I knew he'd been in my shoes before, a questioning athlete who had someone they were falling head over heels for without meaning to (my heart squeezed as I thought those words for the first time), but the only difference was that I was in a relationship and Padre hadn't been. I just didn't want him to think any less of me, nor did I want to speak misfortune into existence.

"You know...I've liked football for a while now. I love it. It's brought me so many different memories and it's beautiful— I-I mean a beautiful game. It makes me feel things that I thought only football could make me feel, but then, uh, writing came along and completely flipped everything on its head. At first, it was just a small, innocent crush— like a crush on writing because it was fun, but then it turned into something way more, no matter how much I tried to stay focused on football. A-And now I think about him morning and evening, and it's making me feel things that it shouldn't. And it's not fair to football because we've put so much time and effort into each other just for me to bail for writing now. I'm just confused." I was breathing heavily by the time I was done, but the weight of those words had vacated my skull, alleviating some pressure.

Padre pitched a brow. "Him?"

My heart dropped. "W-What do you mean him?"

"You said him when you were talking about writing and thinking about it all the time."

"Oh, that was a slip of the tongue." I quickly covered. "You know, in psych, we learned that people can deal better with their emotions if they envision them as people. That's what I'm trying."

"Huh," Padre said, though the way he said that small three-lettered word told me he wasn't convinced. "Well, that's the nice thing about being young: you have so much time to figure everything out. You can figure out your way through football and writing. Maybe you'll like football more and drop writing completely, though I hope you don't, or you could end up liking writing a ton and completely forget about football. Or you could find a nice balance between the two."

"But what if I can't?" I softly asked. "What if trying to balance it makes things worse? It already has, and I don't want to let anyone down."

"I understand, son. Truly I do. But the most important thing is to make sure that you don't let yourself down. And even if you do, you need to learn how to pick yourself back up and learn from it, do you get what I'm saying?"

"Yeah," I said, though this conversation did little to answer the burning question within me: what do I do?

Padre clapped me on the shoulder. "Don't stress yourself too much over it. You'll naturally lean toward what you want to do. You have time, kiddo. Now come on, you don't have that much time before we need to head up to your school for the football game."