“Friends, can we give it up for Tony Distefano?”
My mouth dropped wide open—I caught a glimpse of it on one of the many monitors mounted around the studio—as the crowd went wild and my dad ran out onto the stage. He was wearing his favorite Coyotes jersey and grinning as he jogged out like some celebrity.
“Dad? What are you doing here?” I asked, shocked as hell to see him.
“The Kells said you couldn’t come back without me,” he said, plopping down in the stool beside me. “And who am I to argue with them?”
Everyone laughed at that, like he was the most charming man on the planet, and they probably weren’t wrong. I mean, he’d always been my favorite human, but my appreciation for him had grown exponentially since the lung transplant.
Things had quickly gone south with his health last year, and there had been a lot of days where we didn’t think we were going to get a happy ending, but then—praise God—a donor showed up.
Looking at my dad now, you’d never imagine how bad it’d been because he was a freak of nature and was now thriving at a ridiculous level.
He looked ten years younger.
He walked to work on nice days.
He’d become a “cat foster,” which meant at any given time he had a plethora of cats wreaking havoc in his house.
Which was partly why I was back with the Kells.
“I can’t believe you didn’t mention you were coming,” I said, and he just smiled and shrugged.
“So Duffy,” Kel said, clasping his hands together. “You’ve gone viral yet again, but this time it’s for a good reason. Instead of bullying coyotes, you’ve moved on to saving kittens. Why don’t you tell us what happened on that fateful night?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’ve ever ‘bullied’ coyotes, Kel,” I clarified, because the comment definitely felt like shade, right? “If you remember, Carl was the one who inappropriately touchedme—”
“Yes, of course,” he said with a quick nod, and I swear to God the man rolled his eyes.
What. A. Jerk.
“Who cares about Carl anyway?” my dad said with a scoff, obviously trying to keep me out of trouble but still on my side. “That guy, right?”
But I wasn’t finished.
I added emphatically, “Andmultipleother women—”
“And got what he deserved, that punk,” Dad said, patting my arm. “But wanna get on with the story, Batman? Give the people what they want.” The audience laughed.
“I told you not to call me that,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “But fine.”
In a shocking twist, I came in last in the fantasy football league I had with my brothers and their friends. (Only because they’d insisted it was a conflict of interest for me to have my boyfriendas a player, and after bullying me into trading him, he went on to have a record-breaking season, that talented ass.)
As the loser, I’d been required to wear a Batman costume every day for a week. My boss had been cool with it, and I’d gone in to work super early and super late to try to avoid people with eyeballs who weren’t in on the bit, but the public still noticed when Batman was milling about among them.
One night during that week, I stopped by my dad’s house when the carbon monoxide detector was going off. It ended up being because of a furnace issue (he wasn’t home, thank God), but my neighbor’s Ring camera captured fifteen minutes of me evacuating foster kittens.
Foster kittens who scaled Batman’s body, who bit Batman, who caused Batman to trip on the porch and face-plant right into the snow.
I’d been a hero to those asshole cats, saving their lives, but I’d gone viral as #klutzybatman, then twice as viral when I blamed it on Connor for being “so damn good at football that he ruined my life.”
After the Kells finished interviewing me, Connor came out.
“Were you surprised when you saw the footage?” Kel asked him. “Did you recognize the viral Batman as your girlfriend?”
“I wasn’t surprised at all, and of course I did,” he said, giving me the full-wattage smile that’d become my happy place. “Not only did she look good in the suit, but who else but my Duffy could manage to dive headfirst into the snow without dropping the cat?”
I rolled my eyes, but it was impossible not to laugh. “Someone’s jealous of my ball control after their drop against the Eagles.”