Nope, not even a little. At any given time, my brain had 172 open tabs, and the local sports drama had not earned one of those spots. But my child’s room was covered in posters and flags and pennants from the Buffalo teams. The Buffalo Storm was his absolute favorite. He idolized the entire roster, but the quarterback most of all.
So no doubt he’d told me. Multiple times, probably.
“Sort of,” I hedged. “It’s been a while. He didn’t play last season either, did he?”
Gavin shook his head, his eyes locked on the jersey. The way it was lying in my lap, the number 9 was visible, as was the last name. I smoothed my hand over the letters, folding it just a little bit more neatly.
“He was supposed to have, um, an epic comeback, they said. But he tore his ACL during preseason. Carson did good as the backup, though. We went to the playoffs, and they hadn’t done that in years. They still lost, though. I think they would’ve won if Archer was playing.”
“That’s too bad,” I murmured, watching the flush on his cheeks fade as the tears did. He’d done that since he was a baby, his cheeks reddening instantly when he cried. Something he got from his father, no doubt, because it wasn’t a trait of mine. In fact, Gavin didn’t share many of his physical traits with me. Not the nose or the smile. Not his height, or his love of science, or his dimpled smile. He didn’t have the light dusting of freckles across his nose like me. But I saw myself in the strawberry-blond locks and the color of his eyes.
Sometimes blue. Sometimes gray. Even green, depending on what we were wearing. Chameleon eyes, Pops called them. Those came straight from me.
“He threw for over thirty-seven hundred yards in the last season he played,” Gavin continued. “Thirty touchdowns, and five of them were rushing touchdowns.” He blinked up at me, his eyes dry and earnest now. “He’s really strong. Stronger than most quarterbacks. Taller too.”
I’d heard this before, of course. Much of it against my will, and I usually forgot it shortly after he told me. This, though, I remembered. Archer Evans stood six feet, four-and-a-half inches tall, which was taller than the average quarterback. Which, according to my stat-obsessed child, was six foot three.
“But we don’t want his jersey anymore?” I asked gently.
“No.” Gavin wrinkled his nose, face scrunched in deep thought. “Because DUIs are, like, bad, right?”
My eyebrows popped up. “Um, yeah. Was anyone hurt?”
“I don’t think so. But he ran into the outside of a building.” His fingers reached over to the jersey and touched the edge of one of the numbers along the back of the deep-red material. “I saw it online.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And how did you get online?”
Gavin gave me a sheepish look. “You left your laptop out, and I googled his name.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” I said. “But if you want to stop wearing his jersey because of this, I completely understand. Sometimes the people we admire make stupid decisions. Thoughtless ones that can hurt people, or worse.”
“It said the accident was in the same neighborhood as the shelter. There was a picture of it on the article.”
My brows furrowed. “Really?”
He nodded. “I didn’t read very much of the article. I think I hate him now.”
“Oh, honey,hate’s a really strong word. It’s important not to judge people too quickly, and hope that he makes some changes now that he’s made this really big mistake. But I don’t want to hear that youhateanyone, okay?”
“I wanted to be him when I grew up.” His eyes were so big, so sad. “Not anymore.”
There was a part of me that wanted to believe my son bore no scars from not having a father around because I’d done a damn good job raising him. He knew what it meant to work hard for something important. He was kind and thoughtful, his teachers always raving about how friendly he was to all his classmates. He was loved and supported and encouraged, and it didn’t matter if our house was small and worn and didn’t have the most stylish furniture—I’d built us a home where he felt safe.
But sometimes, in moments like this, when I saw the absence of something in his life, my heart ached with such deep, bruising force that it was hard to breathe.
“I know, buddy. It’s hard to feel disappointment, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he replied sadly. “But it’s just a feeling.”
“Not a fact,” I added. “What else?”
“And it won’t last forever,” he finished.
I kissed him on the top of his head. “That’s right. Now, can you hand me my phone? Maybe I can post this online and see if we can sell it.”
Gavin hopped off the bed. “Where’d you leave it?”
I speared my hands through my hair and sighed. “I don’t know. I think I set my purse down on the kitchen counter when we got home from soccer. It’s probably still in there.”