For the Right Reasons (6 page)

But after giving up my last year of eligibility at Kansas State, I had to face it: my football career was over.

It was a little disorienting. After all, I’d played football since I could read books without pictures. Come to think of it, a large part of my identity growing up was found in football.

Who was I now?

The advice I have always heard is “do what you know” and “do what you love.” I definitely knew two things. First, I didn’t want to be an insurance agent. Though the business had served my grandfather and father well, I didn’t want to spend all day in an office. Second, I felt at home when I was at the gym. I loved the gigantic exercise balls, the hum of the treadmills, the
clank of weights dropping on the padded ground, the climate-controlled air, the rows of televisions all tuned to different channels, the yoga mats rolled tightly on the shelves.

So after college, I became a sports performance trainer who helped athletes increase their speed and power through customized personal training sessions. I quickly developed a pretty good clientele—athletes from junior high to the NFL.

One day, I was training a group of high school basketball players, a mouthy bunch. I loved trash-talking them as I absolutely wore them out. I started them out jogging for about fifteen minutes, then worked their abdominals and lower backs. We were doing medicine-ball drills when one of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders walked by. The gym gave free memberships to the cheerleaders, a deal that worked both ways: the cheerleaders got a free place to work out, and the gym magically ended up with a higher male membership.

Needless to say, I completely lost my group’s attention when the cheerleader walked by. “Okay, guys,” I said. “You gotta concentrate on
your
glutes—not hers.”

“Sean,” said one of the guys who’d just taken a swig of water from his bottle, “a few minutes ago she told me she thought you were cute.”

“Lying won’t get you out of squats,” I said.

“I’m not making it up,” he said. “She wanted me to give you that message.”

The guys laughed as I looked in her direction. Was I imagining it, or did she smile at me? I had a hard time concentrating on the rest of the workout.

After class, I made my way over to her group of friends, who were finishing up on the ellipticals.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m Sean.”

“So you got my message?” She smiled.

I started training—and dating—Brooke almost immediately. I loved
everything about her: how she would spend hours watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, how she went out of her way to do things for me, and how silly she was. She got along with my family really well, and they loved her back. We had an absolute blast.

I trained her—and other athletes in the gym—and my practice grew. However, I always had an itch to do something more.

That “something more” presented itself mainly as a fluke of geography. In certain parts of Texas, pump jacks dot the landscape, bobbing rhythmically for the black gold lurking beneath the surface. The oil and gas industry is big in Texas and creates some of the wealthiest people in the world. I wanted to be a part of it.

After taking a few months off from my athletic training job, I was hired to solicit investors for oil and gas ventures. That meant I’d approach wealthy individuals and talk to them about why they should put their money into drilling, mineral leases, or fracking. These investments are notoriously risky—boom or bust—but they have proven over and over to be great long-term investments. After all, the whole world operates on oil.

Brooke was always supportive of me—not only of every new business idea I concocted, but in life. Her encouragement and affection made me also want to support her in her endeavors.

When she came to me and told me she wanted to get a puppy, I went with her to find the right one.

“Look at this one,” I said, instinctively reaching for the velvet head of an adorable brown-eyed boxer.

“Oh,” Brooke purred. “She’s beautiful. What should I name her?”

“What about . . . Lola?” I offered. It seemed to fit.

“Lola?” Brooke said the word and thought about it for a few seconds. “Perfect!”

We watched as the newly named Lola scampered across the floor, her tail wagging so hard it moved half her body.

Normally, dogs are wary of newcomers, but Lola took to Brooke and me within seconds. This, incidentally, was about how much time it took me to fall in love with this silly, sweet, and mischievous puppy.

“I’ve got to get me one of these,” I said as Lola ran around.

“You should do it!” Brooke said. “Get Lola a best friend.”

It wasn’t hard to convince me. When I saw an ad in the paper for Labrador retriever puppies, I went to see the litter full of yellow labs. Right there in the middle was a single chocolate one.

I had to have her.

“Look at her paws!” Brooke said, gently picking up the puppy and admiring her features. “They’re gigantic!”

“It helps them swim,” said the breeder.

“We have to take her to the beach!” she exclaimed. Brooke was originally from Florida, and I suspected sand ran through her veins instead of blood.

“What are you going to name her?” she asked as she nuzzled the dog’s neck.

Lola walked over to the puppy so they could do the dog equivalent of a handshake—they sniffed each other out.

“What about Ellie?”

Immediately, Ellie and Lola became inseparable. Anytime we went to the dog park, they would run and play together—no matter how many other dogs were there. If I needed to know where Ellie was, all I had to do was find Lola, and vice versa. We would take turns having both dogs sleep at each other’s house. We even crate-trained them together, so they slept in the same space as puppies. They were so close.

Ellie’s intelligence and eagerness to please made her very easy to train. Within three weeks, she was housebroken because she couldn’t bear to disappoint me. Over the months, she became strong, agile, enthusiastic, and—best of all—glued to my hip.

Lola and Ellie became “our dogs,” and having them made us feel—just a little—like a family.

Things were very comfortable with Brooke, except when it came to one thing.

Marriage.

Whenever the subject came up, things got awkward really fast for me. I loved her. Brooke was funny, playful, compassionate, and always going out of her way to surprise me or to help me out in some way. She was my best friend, and I could definitely see marrying her. However, I was far, far away from wanting to walk down the aisle.

“You tensed up when I brought up our future,” Brooke said one night. “I just don’t get it.”

There comes a time when honesty is the only policy left.

“It’s just that I’m doing all kinds of different things right now,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “I’m pursuing different career options and trying to figure out where life will take me.”

“Where it will take
us
, you mean?” she said softly.

I grew quiet.

She cleared her throat, pushing back emotion, and said, “We’ve been together for three years, Sean. Three! That’s a long time for you not to know how you feel about me.”

“Don’t you know I love you?” I asked.

There’s something that happens when one half of the couple is ready to tie the knot and the other isn’t. My unwillingness to make a lifelong commitment made me treat Brooke differently, maybe a little more distantly. Of course, she picked up on that. I looked into her green eyes, which now had tears streaming from them.

“You’re my best friend,” I said. “We’re as close as family.”

I definitely didn’t want her out of my life. Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, it seemed so final. Instead of breaking up, I suggested a less-final version.

“I think we need some time apart,” I said.

She started crying. For the past three years, she had assumed we were on the path to marriage. However, I just couldn’t get there at that time in my life.

“No, no,” I said. I loved her so much that I couldn’t bear the sound of her crying. My strongest desire at that moment was to console her. “Let’s just see how it goes and reexamine it in a few weeks.”

We sat next to each other on the couch, a million miles of expectations separating us.

For the next few weeks, we were technically on a break.

She went out of town to sort through her feelings about our relationship and called me one afternoon.

“Are you okay?” I asked when I picked up the phone.

“I’m great, actually,” she said. The tremor in her voice I heard during our last conversation was completely gone. “I just wanted you to know that I understand where you’re coming from about our breakup.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Sean, I’ll always love you, but I think you’re right. We
should
break up.”

I knew in my head this was good, but this turnaround—and her confidence—surprised me.

“Really?” I said. “Oh, okay. Great. I’m glad. Really.” I wanted what was best for Brooke, but I wasn’t ready to let her go. “Well, I hope everything goes well for you.”

And so a new phase of life began.

After work, I’d go out with my guy friends. Or, even better, I’d go out on dates with women I met at the gym, at church, or through friends. After three years of seriously dating the same woman, it was pretty exhilarating. Honestly, I didn’t give Brooke much thought, except when I saw her to let the dogs visit. Even though we’d broken up, we couldn’t simply yank the dogs from each other. Ellie, the sensitive chocolate lab, was technically mine, and Lola, the happy-go-lucky boxer, was technically hers.

“We’ve gotta figure out what to do,” Brooke said. “We can’t just keep going back and forth like this.”

“But we can’t separate them forever,” I said. “It’s not fair.”

“I know,” she said thoughtfully, biting her lip. “But what can we do?”

Absent an obvious solution, we’d take them back and forth, from my place to hers. I’d have the dogs for several days, and then we’d switch, like divorced parents trying to juggle custody of children.

One night when she came over to get Ellie and Lola, she noticed I was dressed up to go out. “You’re not going on a date, are you?” She looked away from me and down at Lola.