Because it turns out—because he’s a Virgo, because he’s young and earnest, because he’s just a man of his word—Esau doesn’t say s**t he doesn’t mean. “If you really don’t want me, I’ll have to find a way to live with that,” he told me. “I’ll leave tonight and be gone.” And if Gunther didn’t see him five days a week, I’d have no way of knowing if he was even still alive. He hasn’t called to beg me to reconsider; he hasn’t begged his Coach to ask me to give him another chance; he hasn’t texted me a big fat “f**k off.” He hasn’t so much as strolled past the window of the Olympic, and Gunther says this Michael Finney kid lives three blocks from me. I wouldn’t have thought Denver was a big enough city for him to be this gone, but it’s been six months, and if I didn’t lay awake thinking about hi
