“Yeah, you are, and no questions about it,” he barked, sounding like the man who’d woken me up every day in high school by snapping open my shades and yelling. “I’m sick of going with your brothers—they always go to the wrong beer stand. You’re comin’.”
I dragged my hands through my hair. “You can’t make me go to a football game, especially when we got four inches of snow last night.”
“For God’s sake, Duff—how goddamn soft are you now? My youngest is my diehard; it’s what I always tell everyone,” Dad said. “Who gives a crap about snow or that idiot you dated? The team is bigger than that bastard.”
“I just prefer to watch from home—”
“And I prefer not to have this fucking tube in my nose,” he interrupted. “You keep telling me to be an adult and deal with it—well, it’s your turn.”
“Football and oxygen are not the same things,” I said.
“No shit, Sherlock,” he said. “Come on. Go take a shower. You’ve been pouting the entire week and it’s time to nut up.”
“Lovely,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Well, we aren’t sitting in any suites, old man.”
“I’d spit before I’d sit with his friends again,” he said, tilting his head and giving me a look so…understandingthat it made me want to cry. “But the Distefanos love the Coyotes, so we turn out.”
“Yeah,” I agreed begrudgingly. “We do.”
I got up and trudged to the shower, ultimately deciding my dad was right. The Coyotes were more important than just a guy I dated, even if that guy was the star tight end of said team, so I needed to get back to normal life. Besides, now that my dad didn’t have the distraction of Connor Cunningham being his daughter’s boyfriend, the least I could do was give him a good game, right?
We went hours early because that’s what we did, pulling into our parking spot and walking over to the area where his buddies had their grills lined up, sausages and hamburgers and hot dogs sizzling though it wasn’t even noon yet. It wasfreezing, even with my long johns and scarf and gloves, so I chugged my first Bloody Mary, thirsty for some warmth.
“Hey, lookee here, it’s the celebrity girlfriend,” Ricky said with a grin. He was one of my dad’s best friends, an honorary uncle.
“She’s not the girlfriend anymore,” my dad said tersely.
“Good riddance to stinky trash, then,” he said with a shrug. “He wasn’t good enough for you, anyway.”
“I don’t think that’s the expression,” I said with a laugh, loving him for acting like there was any scenario where I’d controlled the end of that relationship, when it was obvious to the world that he’d been way out of my league.
“Well, it should be,” he said. “Grab a hot dog, Duffer.”
Eventually my brothers showed up, and I was grateful they didn’t say anything to me at all about Connor. We talked about the game and that was kind of it. I pounded beers with them, keeping up at their breakneck pace, but even a buzz couldn’t take away the lead in my stomach when we finally walked into the stadium and took our seats.
The team was out on the field warming up, and I couldn’t stop thinking about watching warmups from the suite, thinking I belonged there when the entire thing had been a stunt.
Knock it off, I told myself.I was fine before him and I’ll be fine now.
But before I could give it another second of thought, the teams lined up for kickoff.
Game time.
I put my phone away and grabbed my beer, hating the way Connor ruined Coyotes football for me. I didn’t feel the same way about it anymore. But despite everything, I was still worried for Connor. Even though he didn’t necessarily deserve it, I was worried about him having a good game.
But we were down the entire first half.
Our defense couldn’t seem to stop them, and our offensecouldn’t make anything happen, either. We went into the second half down six-zip and I didn’t have a good feeling about it. It felt like our game to lose.
But as soon as halftime ended, we received the ball and actually started to make progress down the field.Finallywe were converting downs and taking care of the ball.
But then everything changed when Connor went up to catch a pass and got slammed in between two defenders. He went down hard, andfuck—he didn’t pop right back up.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, staring down at the field.
“Oh shit,” my dad said, and we were all on our feet. They replayed the hit and the crowd groaned in unison at the impact, but my heart felt like it was beating out of my chest.
“Get up, get up, get up,” I muttered, shaking out my hands and trying to will him to be okay. I let out a breath when he finally climbed to his feet, but he looked unsteady as the trainers led him off the field.