Forget Me Not. Crystal B. Bright

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СКАЧАТЬ him going to play for the Wolves, not because the team made Virginia Beach their home and he could still be close to his family, but because they wore her favorite colors. Recalling his mother’s almost regal voice forced him to smile.

      Gideon took a deep breath on the third ring. The great thing about being a Super Bowl team had to be the way people catered to them. This locker room in Pasadena, California had been repainted with their colors and had their emblem over each wall. The fresh-paint smell still lingered in their air. Between the paint and the new carpet, the place had a new feel even though the stadium itself had been around for decades.

      In his white tights, he didn’t want to think about the confining feeling constricting his legs and waist. The armbands he wore compressed his limbs from his wrists to the middle of his biceps.

      The cleats on his shoes sank into the plush carpeting. He wanted to wait before suiting up with the full shoulder pads. He found it necessary to wear knee pads right now. He tugged on the side of one as he lifted his leg. At that point, he heard a click on the other line.

      “Hey, Gid! Getting your mind right?”

      Gideon smiled when he heard Gunnar answer the phone, until it hit him why his professional-athlete brother had had to stop his career to go back home. As a champion mixed martial artist, Gunnar understood what it took to get prepared. Gunnar had had an MMA championship fight right when their mother had gotten sick. Gideon had this game, this one life-changing, dream-come-true game.

      Standing in an area between the chaotic locker room and the shower area, the quietest area there, he leaned against a nearby wall. “The mind is right. Hyped up to play, you know.”

      “I know. I get it.” Gunnar kept his voice low and even, as though Gideon had planned on leaping from a plane without a parachute and Gunnar had to talk him out of the act.

      The shorthand way of talking about their professions worked for Gideon. The same went for his younger brother, Thane, another professional athlete, who also understood the importance of pregame rituals.

      “Congrats on your match. You took your opponent out in, what, ten minutes?” Gideon scratched the back of his head as he imagined his older brother’s serious countenance cracking.

      “Seven, but who’s counting.” Gunnar laughed.

      The sound brought him back home, back to a time when the two of them used to wrestle until one submitted or they got tired, whichever came first. Only one thing would have truly transported him to his childhood home in Virginia Beach. If he could see his composed mother, not in a hospital, but in her beloved flower shop where he used to help her, he would feel better.

      “Good luck today. I’m sure you’re going to kick ass,” Gunnar exclaimed.

      “Gunnar Wells.”

      Gideon beamed as soon as he heard their mother in the background, the true reason for his call. Her calming voice and soothing nature always centered him. He could never figure out how he and his brothers had gotten so lucky to be adopted by a caring and compassionate woman.

      He never saw himself and his African-American mother as being different. He saw himself as being Elizabeth Sommerville’s son. Full flesh and blood. She never treated him or his brothers any differently.

      “Sorry, Ma,” Gunnar said to their mother. “Gid, I’m going to hand you over to Mom. I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”

      “Love you, bro.” Gideon looked toward the locker-room area. He spotted one of his wide receivers shrugging his shoulders and pointing to his wrist, pantomiming that Gideon would need to hurry up and get ready.

      Gideon nodded and turned his back on his teammate to give his full concentration to his mother.

      “Darling, how are you doing?” Elizabeth’s words dripped with her trademark grace and elegance.

      Gideon couldn’t help but smile.

      “I’m fine, Mom, except I have this little thing I’m doing later.” He laughed.

      “Cute.” She laughed and then got silent for a moment before she spoke again. “Ah, my baby.” She sighed.

      “Thane’s your baby.”

      “All of you are my babies. I worry about each and every one of you.” Elizabeth sighed, the sound audible through the phone.

      Gideon remembered the nights she’d stay up staring out the living room window during Gunnar’s rebellious phase. She’d kept vigil by Thane’s bed, a particularly sickly child who’d grew out of that as soon as he’d hit puberty and discovered the opposite sex. Gideon had recognized his mother being pulled in different directions and had been determined, even as a snot-nosed kid, to be the least of his mother’s worries.

      “I’m more concerned about you. How are you doing?” Elizabeth’s struggles with her health plagued his thoughts.

      “Don’t worry about me. I’m doing okay. Gunnar and Eboni are taking great care of me.”

      Gideon blinked. “Eboni? Eboni Danielson? Really?” He remembered Gunnar had gotten on that Greyhound bus years ago right after he’d graduated high school, leaving Eboni, his high school sweetheart and professed love of his life, behind to pursue his mixed martial arts fighting dream. “Are they—”

      “Together…for now.” The lightness that filled his mother’s voice became heavy by the end of her statement.

      At least Gunnar had someone by his side. After this game, Gideon would be rushing back home to take care of his mother. He’d learned from her to put family first.

      “I’m glad he’s there for you. Right after the Super Bowl, I’ll come home to be with you all when you have your surgery.”

      “Oh, darling, won’t you have press to do and have sponsors to please?”

      “Come on. You don’t think I’ll do any of that with you having heart surgery. Hell—”

      Queen Elizabeth, as her friends so dubbed her, cleared her throat.

      Gideon stood up straighter. He’d forgotten to keep his locker-room talk segregated to his teammates. “Excuse me. I mean, I’m fighting staying here instead of coming home now.”

      “Only playing in the Super Bowl has been your dream since I put a football in your tiny hands. Do you remember that?”

      Remember it? He still kept that same dirty, deflated, misshapen football in his home. To tease his mother, he said, “I barely remember that thing.”

      “Again, you are so cute.” Queen Elizabeth laughed a little but completed the light expression with a slight cough.

      An uncomfortable ripple slithered over his gut and up to his heart, where it constricted it from pumping for a hot second. He couldn’t let her feel his worry. He continued smiling to maintain the lightness in his tone.

      “Some new magazines came into the salon,” she said with a playful lilt to her tone.

      Gideon heard the joy in his mother’s voice. He ran his hand over his head, knowing she would bring up some aspect of his personal life as only the tabloids could capture. СКАЧАТЬ