Not being with Ellie for over two years was a nightmare, but being in the same physical proximity and not being with her since she purposely ignored and avoided me hurt too. Ellie's silent treatment felt more like someone punched me repeatedly in the stomach, over and over until a dull pain resided in my gut.

For two days, she breezed by me in all four-hundred and ninety square feet of the apartment as if I didn't exist. Her eyes looked anywhere but at me, but by her purposeful, evasive body movements, she knew exactly where I was.

While her facial expressions were generally neutral, she'd also stopped smiling. Ellie not smiling cast a fog of gray clouds of uncertainty over me, like she was the only sunshine that parted them, and left me pissed off at the entire world.

Fuck, now I sound hormonal. It is contagious.

Emmitt's goofy, lovesick grins at Ellie during Anatomy class and our group project meet-up only magnified my bad mood, which I funneled into a week of intense, borderline punishing practices and workouts. Like he was supposed to, Emmitt traveled with us to Ann Arbor but I largely avoided him. With my earbuds wedged in place even when I left the music off, I opted for an 'I need space' vibe.

My elevated practice level was definitely noticed by a few of the guys but thankfully no one asked other than Coach Vaughn the quarterbacks coach. Yet, in the results-now world of college football, our hardened preparation paid off in the form of a complete ass-kicking over the University of Michigan.

"Fuck yeah!" In an unusual celebration moment, Wes ran up to me and crashed his helmet into mine.

Guess two TDs will do that to the guy.

"Told you." Once my brain felt less rattled, I grinned around my mouth guard at him.

In addition to the blow-out lead in the game's score, the most satisfying aspect of the game was the crowd's reaction. We'd taken the Wolverine fans out of the game within the first possession, when we took the lead, then control of both sides of the game.

While any football player will say a win is a win, any game where you have a scoring explosion blowout always eases some of the tension, or pressure, to perform. Some guys thought this type of game was fun, reassured their egos, or got them excited about the padded stats. I was satisfied because of the statement we'd made as a cohesive team - we came, we dominated, and never looked back.

Once I was benched in the fourth quarter along with most of the starters, I watched my backup Andrew Castle for a few plays, then used the opportunity and took in the stadium around me. A quiet sense of awe and humility filled me as I took in the more than one hundred and nine thousand fans, the biggest college football stadium, most of whom I'd silenced tonight but almost all of them stayed despite the blowout against their team.

Like in every game, the foundations that reversed time and reverted all of us men back into our childhood selves were all here. Overhead, lights illuminated the night sky with bright, white blankets that filtered through the near-black night sky. The green turf crumpled under the weight of my cleats, slightly stiff from the threatened upcoming Michigan winter. A crisp, chill air numbed my cheeks and the tip of my nose, neither of which I'd unnoticed until the cold metal bench pressed similar sensations into the back of my thighs.

I assumed from the bench lineup on either side of me that rolls of steam lifted off my head once I removed my helmet. The faint smell of greasy, processed concession stand foods lingered longer than the white puffs of recovered breaths I pumped into the sky between the hum of subdued conversations.

For all the similarities, the scale and magnitude of the game, even counted by the number of black-lensed sports photographers that lined up along the sidelines and endzone, made one distinction obvious.

This is the big stage.

"It's something, huh?" Wes croaked out from his seat on my left. I turned and the first thing I saw was the sweat that shone over his red cheeks and forehead.

"My favorite stadium when we win, obviously," he added.

"Obviously?" I echoed but his only response was he pointed one index finger upwards.

My eyes lifted up, across the sea of blue and yellow in the silver stadium seats until I came across a small and compact but definitely noticeable purple and white cluster of bodies huddled together.

"Family?" I turned my head toward the group, who I had noticed earlier from how their faint cheers stood out within the revered silence from the disappointed home team fans.

My favorite sound during an away game.

"Oh yeah." Wes' chuckle broke my stare off the roughly twenty to thirty Husky fans in the upper deck level.

"I grew up an hour from here, straight up ninety-six, outside Lansing." Wes flashed his right palm up, ripped off his left hand's glove, and pointed with his left hand's index finger into the center of his other palm.

"Did you just use your right hand as a map?" I exhaled out a laugh mixed in a white cloud of breath.

"Only in Michigan." His grin faded as he dropped his hand. "Big family, small town, expectations that I should play hockey but can't skate for shit."

"Big family," I reiterated.

"Four younger sisters," he replied before he chugged a few gulps of water. "Two older brothers. And before you ask, I'm the only athlete."

"Wasn't going to ask that." I chuckled quietly. "Why didn't you play for MSU or here?"

"Scholarship was better." At this point Wes' eyes shifted down the field to the blonde in a purple polo shirt, black puffy coat, and tan pants. Charlie's head was bent down as she knelt over and worked on one of the defensive lineman's hamstrings. "Hindsight's better too."

"I get it." I looked back up at Wes' cheering section. "Can I meet them after?"

"Of course." He gave me a crooked grin and exhaled sharply, like he had an inside joke. "Just expect a lot of fangirling."

"Why don't you and Charlie stay, catch a flight back tomorrow?"

Wes didn't answer, only clammed up completely silent and shifted his eyes back to the field, where six minutes flashed on the game clock. Whatever bothered him wasn't my business, so the two of us fell into a comfortable silence and watched the rest of the game as spectators.

"Wes! Wes!" Shrill shrieks rang out across the parking lot at us.

In most likely a dick move, I brushed off Rachel Sorenson's specific post-game questions and instead gave her blanket praises to the whole team's efforts tonight, then dressed quickly. The woman had an exclusive interview with me, Ellie, and Jake the next week.

Wes had the same leave-early idea and met me outside the bus. His normal stoic expression softened at the small, brown-eyed, brown-haired mob that converged on us.

"Oh my Weston!" A short, thin woman, who I assumed was his Mom, flung herself onto Wes and hugged him tightly. "So proud. Where's Charlie?"

"Wrapping a sprained ankle," Wes answered the question I'd wondered too. "But she sends her love."

"Ahh." The woman's smile faded slightly but she hugged Wes again then stepped back until she stood next to a tall, stiff-spined man in a light jean jacket and Huskies' baseball cap.

"Decent game," the man gritted out.

His two words, along with the unusually sharp glare he shot Wes, stiffened Wes' relaxed posture and his smile faded. "Thanks, Dad."

"Gettin' faster, eh?" His dad's eyes, the same color brown as Wes' and their only noticeably shared feature, shifted towards me. "Guess we have you to thank for pushing my son's ass closer to his potential."

Wow. Just wow.

"Wes is my go-to receiver for a reason, Sir." I extended one hand towards him. "Logan Hightower."

"Earl Brown," he said quietly with a hard squeeze of my hand. "I know who you are. Amazing game, son. Completely schooled Michigan, thanks for that."

"Thanks. Wes played a big part in it, last game too," I replied because now Wes' gaze was fixed on the ground between us. "Not easy to force receivers to block."

"Blocks don't help his draft ranking stats," Mr. Brown scoffed, then lit up a cigarette with a small spark. "Boy always slacked off his true potential."

At those words, Wes' chin dipped down. An uncomfortable silence enveloped us to where I was surprised I couldn't hear as Wes' jaw clenched tighter the longer we stood there.

"But did good tonight," Wes' Dad finally relented before he stepped away for his smoke break.

"Always something, never enough," Wes grumbled quietly.

The way Wes closed his eyes, I wasn't sure he knew I'd heard him, but my sympathy went out to him. My only link with my Dad was football and several days he was anything but impressed with my performance on the field.

It sucks when you did try your hardest but still wasn't good enough.

"Reminds me of my dad," I started when I looked around and saw we had quite an audience. In particular, ten eyes stared up at me wide and surprised. Within a blink, I faced a semi-circle of giggling high school-aged girls. They all wore Husky jerseys over their coats and I grinned at the number tens until I realized they were Wes' old number.

"Oh gosh," one of them squealed out as her hair piled high in a ponytail flipped up a few times in the cold wind. "You're Logan Hightower!"

"I am." I smiled down at them, which released bubbles of giggles and hands clamped on their mouths around me.

"You're so much bigger in person!" She exclaimed behind her hands.

"And you're wearing the wrong name on the back of your jerseys," I teased her.

"Oh no," another girl spoke up, hands on her hips and eyes blazed up at me. "Wes is family."

"We'll have to fix that," I replied to her but looked sideways at Wes. The tension hadn't left his jaw or the strain from his eyes but he nodded silently. "Email the Huskies your addresses and we'll send you some upgrades."

After a few random conversations about Wes and the game, some pictures, and tears in Wes' family - for saying goodbye to him, not me - he and I got called over to the bus. We took the last two seats together, next to each other, and waved out the window at his small crowd of a family. They seemed polite yet outgoing, although definitely once we got to the picture part I was grabbed all over more than Ellie man-handled the produce she bought at the grocery store.

What a night.

Every bounce, every step, nearly every play had gone our way, and fuck I felt good like I had anything to do with that. Tonight's redemption game silenced, at least for this week, the news outlet and college sports TV and radio deejays' criticisms over the offensive drought we apparently rode out. More importantly, tonight's win cemented us tied at the top of the PAC-12 conference with none other than the University of Southern California.

If the game with USC in two weeks isn't circled on Husky fans' calendars before, it is now.

Not even Emmitt's presence in the post-game locker room celebration dampened my mood after the game. I knew the game must've been difficult for him to watch and frankly he was a good hype-speech giver, so I was more than happy when he took over and pumped up the guys. In my mind, the team really still was his, I was there just to help win as many games as I could.

The offensive line, who'd kept my ass well protected while I did pretty much whatever I wanted the whole time I played, won the game ball and the bus and plane rides back to Husky Stadium felt like a silent powder keg of excitement that waited for the right spark.

The only two people on the flight back who weren't asleep or in quiet celebration mode were Wes and I. He and I didn't talk, shared nothing about what we now shared in common, but we had no reason to. Instead, we just sat in comfortable silence and let the acknowledgment of similarly tough fathers hang in the background.

Bro code.

Even though I got home after eleven pm, Ellie was still up. She was obviously ready for bed by how she wore her pajamas and brushed her teeth. With as few words as possible, she slipped in between the sheets and was curled up with her back towards me by the time I was ready for bed.

I'd already tagged the post-game stuff in my social media and answered some texts from Mom on the plane ride back. One message in particular I hadn't answered but lingered in the back of my head ever since I saw the words.

Dad: Liv and I are coming up in three weeks, for the Arkansas St game. We'll stay in a hotel but want to take you and your girlfriend out to dinner after.

We had an early afternoon home game, 1pm, that day, so dinner afterwards wasn't the issue. I wasn't sure how Dad knew about Ellie other than Mom or Brody must've told him. In the past he wasn't supportive of our relationship and there was no way I'd have told him she was the biggest reason I was at UW because in his mind, football was always my only priority.

And knowing him, he's coming up here for a selfish reason. Maybe Brody or Mom has the info.

As quietly as I could, I charged my phone on the dresser, removed my clothes, hung up the suit for dry cleaning in the closet, and stepped out in just my underwear. Ellie's back and shoulders lifted with soft, even breaths, so I just shut out the light and slid into the bed next to her.

Like the last two nights, I stayed a few inches away from her, both out of uncertainty and respect because I didn't know how she felt physically. Emotionally, she was still closed off and irritated at me, both of which I deserved for my overreaction. While I'd apologized the next morning, obviously it wasn't enough.

"Sorry Ellie," I whispered softly then closed my eyes. "Good night."