I looked down at the cards and then threw them on the table. “He’s declaring.”
Part of me couldn’t blame Ty. Not only had our defensive line sucked this year, but our offensive line was all seniors, and the crew coming up behind them weren’t that hot. Ty was worried his stats would take a hit that would impact his draft spot if next season was as shitty as we both suspected it would be. Dropping out of college now and declaring he was entering the pro football draft was a smart play even if it was life-changing for all of us.
“I knew he was invited. He’s been invited every year,” Dad said with a sigh. “He’s really considering it?”
I didn’t have to answer.
Dad’s cards joined mine on the table, and he went to the liquor cabinet. He poured himself a drink, downed it, and then poured another. “You think there’s any chance I can convince him to stay?”
I shook my head.
“Any chance you can convince him to stay?” Dad asked.
“Me? No.”
“But you could…you know…use your feminine wiles on him.”
“Walter!” Mom exclaimed.
“I’m not saying to have sex with him, Carla. Maleena is the only one who’s ever been able to talk sense into him. He’s like a rock nailed to a mountain.”
Bess busted out laughing, throwing herself back on the couch and holding her stomach. I tried to frown at her, but her giggles were too much for me.
“This is your fault.” I reached over, smiling, and tickled her until she was crying and turning blue.
♫ ♫ ♫
The next morning, when I went downstairs, Dad had a bowl with brownies and milk in it. I smirked because he could only do it because Mom was still sleeping. Since his heart attack, five years ago, she kept his food clean and healthy.
“Don’t tell,” he whispered.
“Your secret is safe with me—unlike some secrets.”
“If you had wanted to keep you and Ty a secret, you shouldn’t have been seen together so often.”
“We’re friends.”
“I’m married and in my fifties, I’m not dead. I know how these things work. Doesn’t mean I want to think about it. You. Him.” Dad shuddered. “Not things I want anyone to think about my daughter. But you’re a grown-ass woman. I get that.”
Which was a really nice thing to say in some ways. Mom hated when he cussed around me, but I’d been in and out of the locker room with him my whole life. I’d seen boy body parts before I’d even known the names for all of them. Dad had treated me…not quite like a son, but not quite like a daughter. Some strange mix of in-between.
I poured coffee from the pot my dad insisted on using because he drank the stuff by the gallon, before grabbing a piece of pumpkin bread and sitting next to him at the table.
“If he doesn’t come back, my whole offense is doomed on top of our shitty defense. I’ll be royally screwed. Could mean my job in addition to Edgars’.”
Dad had done his best to shield Coach Edgars in the last couple of years. He’d tried to help him with the defensive line, but Edgars was old-school. He hadn’t changed with the times, and the UTK board had demanded his head after the season’s glorious losses.
“The board loves you,” I said. “They aren’t going to let you go.”
“If I lose my entire offense and defense in one go…” He trailed off, putting down the spoon and looking out the window.
“They’ll give you a chance to prove yourself with a new team,” I said, but a piece of me started to panic. The thought of Dad losing his job had never even entered my brain when Ty had talked about leaving.
“You have more faith in them than I do,” Dad said, pushing away his bowl of brownie, half-uneaten. He pulled at the collar on his Vols polo shirt. “I’m too old for this―”
“No, you’re not. You’re good at this.”
“High compliment from my skeptical daughter,” he said with a grimace.
Dad looked more tired than I’d seen him in a really long time. Like, suddenly, the years he’d been holding off for a century had caught up to him. Some black hole of time had coalesced into this moment, hitting him like a stone marker.
“I shouldn’t have said anything about it. Ty may still change his mind. He was going to tell his family over break. Maybe they’ll talk him out of it.”
“He’s as stubborn as you are. If he’s got it in his head that this is what he wants, I doubt his family is going to change it.”
The few bites of pumpkin bread I’d taken turned into sludge in my stomach. I didn’t want Dad to lose his job because of one arrogant asshole. The asshole who needed to brush the chip off his shoulder and take one for the team.
I knew what I had to do. I also knew what it meant for me. Because if I did it, I’d get sucked back into the vortex that was Ty Waters. But staring at my dad’s face, dejected and tired, I couldn’t not do it. I had to at least try.
“I think I might head out to Ty’s after all,” I told him after a minute.
Dad’s whole face lit up. “Really?”
I nodded.
“You’d do that for me?”
“I’m not having sex with him to win him over, Dad. Jeez. Most dads are telling their daughters not to have sex, and here you are, all, ‘Let him use your body if it gets him to come back,’” I teased.
“I do not want you to barter your body for an agreement! But if you can kiss him into insanity and then get him to agree? I’m all for that.”
I laughed.
I wasn’t anywhere near ready to see Ty again. I hadn’t put up enough guardrails. I hadn’t built up my playbook. And the thing about Ty was, he’d know it. He could read me as easily as he could read the field, which just meant I was his touchdown waiting to happen.
Ty
IT’S FINALLY CHRISTMAS
“There's mistletoe,
Don't you know,
That I'm gonna kiss you.”
Performed by 33 Miles
Written by Lockwood / Cartee / Stoddard
I woke to someone pounding on my bedroom door. It wasn’t Ginny because she would have just stormed in, and even if she was home, Eliza avoided my room like the plague. Mom never ventured this way since the one time she’d come in when I was thirteen and had found me mid-stroke. She’d turned a thousand shades of red and green at the same time and ran.
Dad might knock, but I was pretty sure he was already in the studio. He, Uncle Lonnie, and Mayson had been working hard on the new album. It meant they were up before the ass-crack of dawn and were still awake long after midnight. Dad’s focus, when he was working on an album, was all one-way. It never seemed to bother Mom. It had never really bothered any of us, because we had enough grandparents, siblings, and cousins crawling around all the time if we needed someone’s attention.