“Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions during the time-out?” she asked.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone at the moment, but she’d been nice enough to give me an update on Connor’s prognosis, so I could at least give her that.
“Sure,” I said. “But make it quick.”
“For sure,” she said with a smile. She turned to the cameraman a few feet away from us. “Hi, I’m here with Duffy Distefano. I’m sure most of us remember her from the Coyote Carl incident, but, well…we just caughtanothermascot incident on-camera. This time it was with Carly, Carl’s replacement.”
“Oh my God, that was a total accident,” I blurted out defensively, shaking my head. “I swear to God I didn’t mean to knock her down and I yelled for that guy to see if she was okay and—”
“No, no—she’s fine,” Erin interrupted, smiling. “But our cameraman caught a really impressive display of speed that’s causing some speculation about you and your relationship with Connor Cunningham.”
“What?” I had no idea what she was referring to.
“Let’s watch, shall we?”
“Um…okay…?”
She touched her earpiece and said, “Coach Cowher’s in the studio, and he’s interested in hearing what kind of training you’ve undergone for that kind of rush.”
“I’m sorry, I have no idea what you mean,” I said.
“Here’s the replay.”
She held out a tablet, and I watched a video of myself running down the stadium stairs.
“We all saw Connor get hurt,” Erin said, “and then you proceeded to run across the entire stadium in under a minute’s time to get closer to the sidelines.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling my face get warm. “I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed or proud of my time.”
“Does this mean you’re still officially a couple?” Erin asked, leaning closer.
“Hang on, I have to watch this play,” I said, turning my attention away from her tablet and toward the field as the teams lined up.
The ball was snapped and Josh ran with it, gaining only two yards before being tackled.
“Sorry, go ahead,” I said with a sigh, turning my attention back to Erin.
“Are you and Connor together, Duffy?”
“Um, definitely not,” I admitted, wondering why it hurt so much to say that out loud when I thought I’d come to terms with it. “We were until a week ago, but things didn’t work out, as everyone saw, and I—”
“You’re considering forgiving him, though, Duff, right?” my dad interrupted, popping up beside me, wearing a bizarrely huge—and fake—grin. I narrowed my eyes at him in suspicion. “Even after the lover’s spat, you’re probably going to stay together.”
“What are you doing?” I whispered as I leaned toward him, wondering where the hell he’d even come from.
“Say it,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
“No,” I said through gritted teeth, clueless as to what the man was up to. Maybe he’d had more beer than I’d thought. “I’m definitelynotgoing to—”
“Because first and foremost, you are a Coyote diehard,” he interrupted, looking at me intently with wide eyes that threatened to pop out of their sockets. “And you’dneverconsider jinxing a good season with romantic bullshit. You two kids are going to power through this for the good of Coyote Nation.”
“Are you insane?” I whispered again, and then my dad yanked me toward him and pulled me in for a weird hug.
“Nope, and neither are you,” he whispered, turning a little so Erin and the cameraman couldn’t hear him. “Just imagine how much the entire city will hate you for jinxing the first good season we’ve had in a decade.”
I pulled back, looked at my dad, who was eyeballing me emphatically, and holy shit—I realized what he was doing.
He was protecting me from another Carl situation.