Brice sat in the familiar chair across from LaPenna, his elbows resting on his knees as he stared at a spot on the carpet between his feet.
"What do you mean by that?" LaPenna asked, his voice neutral.
"The whole game. Leading up to it, during it, after it," Brice ran his hand through his beard. "Everyone wanted me to be this villain, you know? Everything leading up to it from my recruitment to the game last year to obviously what happened over the summer. Like the story was supposed to be about me being the bad guy."
LaPenna nodded but said nothing, waiting.
"I grew up going to those games," Brice continued, his throat tightening slightly. "Me and my dad, Jimmy. He would always want to wear my dad’s jersey when we went and that shit looked like a fucking dress on him when were kids. I don’t know, we fucking loved that place."
The memory pressed against his chest.
"So walking in there as the enemy, having people scream at me, hold up signs with my name on them telling me to fuck off..." Brice shook his head. "Part of me wanted to shut them all up, prove them wrong. And I did that. We won. I played well. But it felt..."
"Dirty?" LaPenna offered.
"Yeah." Brice looked up at him. "Like it should have been this perfect moment, you know? Coming back to where I grew up, playing in that stadium I dreamed about. Winning there. But instead it became this whole circus. This shouldn’t been about me not shaking Freeman’s hand or any of the other shit people on Twitter and shit keep talking about."
He leaned back in the chair, his shoulders dropping. "Like that shit wasn’t about him. Do I fuck with that guy? Obviously not but in that moment, I just wanted to get the fuck out of there before I broke down or some shit on national television and become a fucking meme."
LaPenna tilted his head slightly. "What would you have been breaking down about?"
"Because it should have been Jimmy's moment too," Brice admitted "We always talked about playing together at Notre Dame, always. It wasn’t even a question of where he was going, even if he had to walk-on. And then when everything went to shit, we joked about how I was going to have to beat his ass when he got to Notre Dame."
His voice caught and he cleared his throat.
"So I'm out there, and I'm winning, and the crowd is losing their minds, and all I can think about is how Jimmy will never get to be on that field. He’ll never get to have that feeling of scoring that touchdown. He should get to experience that shit, man but he won’t. Instead, he’s gone and I'm the center of attention over some bullshit. It became about me and my bullshit instead of..."
He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
"Instead of what?" LaPenna asked gently.
"Instead of being something bigger. For the program, for Jimmy's memory, for all of it," Brice's jaw tightened. "I made it smaller by making it about myself."
The silence stretched between them. Brice could hear the clock on the wall ticking, each second distinct and separate.
"It sounds like you're carrying a lot of guilt about how the game unfolded," LaPenna said.
"I just wanted it to be clean, you know? Win the game, honor my brother, move on. But I let my emotions take over. I let all that shit get to me, that I had to prove something, had to show everyone that I wasn’t this fucking fraud or spoiled brat that was overhyped and overrated and how Notre Dame is better off without me."
"Do you think Jimmy would have been upset with how you played?"
The question hit Brice in the chest. He sat with it for a moment, letting it settle.
"No," he said quietly. "I mean, Jimmy isn’t…wasn’t a shit talker but he always let me get my shit off. I think he lived through me a little bit, you know, or at least that’s what I tell myself. He’s such a sweetheart but whenever I would really get into it with someone, whether on the field or at the park playing hoops, he’d always be quietly laughing so I think he liked that shit. It just wasn’t for him, you know? That was my shit."
"So maybe it wasn't as dirty as you think."
Brice looked at LaPenna, then back down at the carpet. "I don't know. It just felt like there was all this noise around it. It made something that should have been pure feel complicated."
"Sports at that level are always complicated," LaPenna said. "There's always going to be noise, always going to be external factors you can't control. The question is whether the core of what you did, the core of that experience, still meant something to you despite all of that."
Brice thought about kneeling on the field after the final snap, the tears streaming down his face as he looked up at the sky. He thought about the tunnel, about whispering Jimmy's name before running onto the field. He thought about the weight of the ball in his hands as he walked off, laughing and crying at the same time.
"Yeah," he said finally. "It still meant something. It meant everything, actually. I just wish I could have kept all the other bullshit separate from it."
"But that's not how life works," LaPenna said. "We don't get to compartmentalize our experiences into neat little boxes. Your relationships, your grief over Jimmy, your complicated feelings about Notre Dame, the place you’re from, all of that was there with you on that field. You can't separate those things from who you are."
Brice nodded slowly. "I guess I just wanted it to be about Jimmy."
"And was it?"
He thought about it. Really thought about it. When he closed his eyes and stripped away everything else, what was left?
"Yeah," he said, his voice softer now. "When I was in that tunnel, right before we took the field, I was by myself. Everyone else had already run out and I swear I don’t even believe in ghosts or spirits or any of that shit but I felt like he was with me. The whole game, I felt like he was watching but like not looking down on some shit but like right next to me if that makes sense."
"That sounds like it was about Jimmy to me."
…
Liz swirled the wine in her glass, watching the burgundy liquid catch the candlelight. The restaurant was exactly the kind of place she'd forgotten existed in their hometown with white tablecloths, real silverware, servers who knew when to hover and when to disappear. Tom sat across from her, his shirt collar open at the neck, sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He looked relaxed in a way she hadn't seen in months, maybe years.
"You were totally looking to fight that guy."
Tom groaned, but the corners of his mouth twitched. "I wasn't going to fight him."
"You were screaming in his direction after every today," Liz said, unable to suppress her smile.
"I was celebrating," Tom protested, but his grin broke through.
"You were absolutely unhinged," Liz laughed, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep in her chest. "I had to physically pull on your shirt to get you to sit down."
Tom reached across the table and took her hand, his thumb tracing circles on her palm. "Okay, maybe I got a little carried away."
"A little?"
"Fine. A lot," he admitted. "But come on, you have to admit that felt good."
Liz's smile softened. She squeezed his hand. "It did feel good."
They sat like that for a moment, hands joined across the white tablecloth. The server appeared, refilled their water glasses, and vanished again.
"Can you imagine if Jimmy had been out there?" Tom said quietly, his voice losing some of its earlier lightness. "I tell you what, Brice doesn’t score if it’s Jimmy meeting him at the goalline instead."
The name settled between them like something physical.
"He couldn’t let it happen," she said. "He’d near hear the end of it from Brice."
"You know how competitive he gets, especially with Brice," Tom agreed. "Can you picture that? Jimmy and Brice coming together head on at the goal line with the game on the line at Notre fucking Dame Stadim?"
Liz could picture it. Too easily.
"Brice would have talked so much shit," she smiled.
"Jimmy would have barked back," Tom said, and for the first time in a long time, there was something like joy in the way he spoke Jimmy's name. "He’s got some edge to him when he feels pushed into a corner."
"And Brice would have loved every minute of it," Liz added. "He would have targeted whoever Jimmy was covering just to prove a point."
They both smiled, but the smiles felt fragile. The server returned with their entrees and they released each other's hands to make room for the plates.
"You know what's fucked up?" Tom said after the server left. He cut into his steak without looking at her. "I think about that game all the time. The one they never got to play. I have this whole version of it in my head. Jimmy makes a pick in the fourth quarter, runs it back to like the twenty. Brice is pissed but also happy for him. After the game, they meet at midfield, and Jimmy gives him shit about the interception."
Liz's throat felt tight. "I do the same thing. Different scenarios, but yeah. I think about it constantly."
Tom looked up at her. "You do?"
"Of course I do," she said. "I think about all the things they never got to do together, that he never got to experience by himself. Breaking up with a girl, getting into a fight, the good things, the bad things, all of it. Just life."
The words hung between them, heavier than anything they'd said all night. Tom set down his fork and knife. He reached for his glass, then seemed to think better of it and just left his hands on the table.
"I don't think we've ever really talked about it," he said.
Liz's pulse quickened. They'd skirted around this conversation for nearly a year, both of them dancing at the edges of it but never quite stepping into the center. She picked up her wine glass, took a long sip, then set it back down.
"No," she said quietly. "We haven't."
"I know how I dealt with it," Tom continued. "I threw myself into everything else. The house, taking care of Sophie, making sure life kept moving. Anything to stay busy, to not have to sit with it."
Liz nodded. She'd watched him do it. Watched him rebuild the deck, repaint the garage, reorganize the basement. Watched him check on Sophie's homework, cooking dinner every night. Constant motion, constant activity, never stopping long enough for the grief to catch up.
"It was work for me," she said, the words coming out flat. "I took on more cases. Stayed late at the office. Brought work home. Fuck, it was more like bringing home to work. I just... I couldn't be there. Not for you, not for Sophie, especially not for Brice."
"I was a bad mom and a bad wife," Liz continued, surprised by the steadiness in her voice. "I was so fucking scared of feeling everything that I just shut down. I made myself unavailable because being available meant having to face what we'd lost. It was easier to focus on briefs and depositions and billable hours than to sit in our house and acknowledge that one of our fucking kids was gone."
She paused, her fingers finding the stem of her wine glass again but not lifting it.
"I left you," she said, looking directly at him now. "You were dealing with your own grief, trying to hold everything together, and I just... checked out. I made you carry all of it alone."
Tom's jaw tightened. He didn't speak immediately, and in the silence, Liz felt the weight of every missed dinner, every night she'd stayed overnight at the office, every conversation she'd cut short because she couldn't handle the intimacy of it.
"You didn't leave me," Tom said finally. "You were surviving. We both were. Just in different ways."
"That's generous," Liz said, her voice sharpening slightly. "But it's not true. You were taking care of our family. I was surviving and avoiding our family. There's a difference."
Tom reached across the table again, but this time she pulled her hand back before he could take it.
"I need to say this," she said. "I need you to hear it. I was wrong. The way I handled everything, the way I pulled away from you, from Sophie. It was wrong, and I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."
The apology settled between them, raw and unpolished. Tom's hand remained on the table, palm up, waiting.
"I understand why you did it," he said. "I get it. Everyone processes grief differently. You needed space, needed to lose yourself in something you could control."
"That doesn't make it okay," Liz said.
"No," Tom agreed. "But doing things that are not okay is part of life. Me of all people understands that."
Liz finally let him take her hand.
"We both fucked up," Tom said softly.
"Yeah," Liz agreed. "We really did."
The server appeared again, asking if everything was okay with their meals. They both nodded, and he disappeared. Liz realized she'd barely touched her salmon. Tom's steak sat half-eaten on his plate.
"I don't want to do that again," Liz said. "Whatever happens next with Brice, with this Skylar situation, with Sophie, with anything, I don't want to pull away. I don't want to make you carry everything alone."
"I don't want to let you," Tom said. "I should have fought harder to keep you close. Should have made you talk to me instead of just accepting the distance."
"We're talking now," Liz said.
"We are," Tom smiled, but there was sadness in it. "Only took us a year."
"Better late than never?"
"Something like that."
They sat in the comfortable weight of honesty.
"I miss him," she said, the words simple yet devastating. "Every single day."
"I know," Tom said.
"He was going to be such a great person," Liz said, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. "He was kind and thoughtful and so fucking smart. And he's just... gone."
Tom's grip tightened on her hand. His eyes were red-rimmed now, his composure cracking.
"I keep waiting for it to get easier," he said. "Everyone says it gets easier with time. But it doesn't. It just gets different. The pain is still there, just as sharp, just in different moments."
"Yeah," Liz whispered. "It's still there."
They sat like that, hands joined, both of them crying quietly in the middle of the restaurant. The other diners seemed far away, their conversations muted and unimportant. This moment, this honesty, this shared grief, it was all that mattered.
