The Brotherly Shove

12. Breaker

CHAPTER 12

brEAKER

Now

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I drag my carry on bag behind me as I weave through the crowds at Philadelphia International Airport, pushing through the terminal and trying to ignore the pangs of hunger in my stomach as I'm overwhelmed by the smell of greasy, overpriced fast food being shelled out all around me. I should've eaten on the flight, but the only snacks they had available were those weird Biscoff cookies, and as disgusting as those things are, I know if I took a bite I'd fall victim to a cookie coma 30,000 feet over the Midwest. I pass through security exit and make a beeline to the escalator that will lead me to the SEPTA regional rail train station.

Yup, even a man who is just secured his first win in the NFL has to take public transportation sometimes. The price of an Uber from the airport to my childhood home in DelCo is highway robbery, and Ma says she would rather drink a gallon of ocean water on the Jersey shore than deal with the traffic on I-95 on a Friday morning to pick me up.

So, yeah. SEPTA it is for this guy.

By some miracle, the trains are running on time and one is set to arrive just moments after I step on to the platform. That literally never happens.

Bless the little victories in life.

I grab a seat and tuck my bag between my legs, thankful that I packed light as I watch people heave their luggage onto racks above our heads. The conductor swings by and I hand him a ten dollar bill, and in exchange he tucks a hole punched yellow slip into the slot in front of my seat. I gotta say, ten bucks feels like a real swindle on the part of the city. My student pass in college cost me $250 for the year and gave me unlimited trips on the regional rail. These single tickets are how they get ya.

I bury my face into my phone until the train reaches Center City, where I take my ticket and transfer to the West Trenton line headed towards my stop at Philmont. My lucky streak keeps going, as this train is one of the newer models with individual seats and very few knife holes in the upholstered seat. The train car is relatively empty considering the mid morning time. Had I landed a few hours earlier, I'd probably be packed in with commuters heading across the Delaware River for work.

Even still, with only a handful of other passengers, some dude gets up and plants himself next to me. He clearly doesn't understand the universal sign of 'my headphones are on and my eyes are down, do not interact', because he starts poking at my shoulder. I don't want to be rude or get murdered, so I push my headphones down off my head and around my neck.

"Sup," I ask the guy with a polite head nod. He's visibly excited about something, practically bouncing in his seat next to me.

"That's you, isn't it?" He asks, pointing to the small screen by the door that shows advertisements and news highlights. I glance up at the screen, and sure enough the damn thing is showing footage of the press conference where Lennon and I spoke about the winning play last night. I can barely wrap my head around the fact that a train in Philly is showing press highlights from a California team, let alone that my face is on each and every one of the tiny screens in the train car.

"I saw the game last night. Electric, man. Sucks you're not playing for the Bruisers but shit, two Philly boys showing off on the stage like that? Yous guys did us proud. Hey, can you sign this for me?" He retrieves a crumpled receipt and pen from his jean's pocket and shoves it towards me. I'm completely dazed as I take the scrap of paper, smoothing it out on my thigh and scribbling out my signature on the back as best as I can without putting a whole in the paper. I hand it back to the man and he claps me on the back as he pulls out a phone. He snaps a selfie of us without asking. I wish he had, I would've said yes and he'd have a picture where I at least bothered to look towards the camera.

I make a mental note to geek out about signing my first autograph later. I'm too stunned to squeal right now.

My eyes are glued to the tiny television screen. There's no sound, but the closed captioning at the bottom of the screen tells me everything I need to know.

"Hometown heros, Breaker Lawson and Lennon Griffith…"

"The unstoppable duo from Pennbrook University…"

"Third string Redwoods quarterback. Mr. Irrelevant himself…"

And finally, the screen switches from Lennon and me to a familiar pot bellied, gray haired sportscaster I grew up watching, and the words he says appear on the screen.

I hold my breath. This old cuckoo bird rarely has anything kind to say about anyone, even the guys on our home teams.

"Griffith and Lawson have brought their notorious quarterback sneak from their Division I days to the San Francisco Redwoods. These boys might be playing in California, but Philadelphia is claiming these local guys as our own. Fans of the former Pennbrook Panthers took to the internet last night after the duo secured a win in Knoxville, officially dubbing the piggyback play 'The Brotherly Shove', a nod to the city that raised Griffith and Lawson."

The screen changes, switching to a swirl of fall colors advertising the return of the Gobbler hoagie at Wawa, but still I stare.

The Brotherly Shove.

That's goddamn clever. That's gonna catch on like wildfire.

Just fucking great.

I swear to all that is holy, my life is one big cosmic joke at this point. I mean seriously, is it because I didn't forward a chain email my weird aunt sent to me in the eighth grade to twelve people? Did I walk under a ladder or accidentally cross a black cat on Friday the 13th? Is that karmic injustice finally catching up to me? It has to be, because how the hell else do you explain the fact that amongst everything else—the crush, the distance, the fight, the forced proximity, all of it—the universe decides to fan the flames of the dumpster fire that is my heart.

The play that Len and I were known for in college. The one that won us the game last night, that managed to make national news in the span of one cross country flight. The one that will likely be talked about on every damn sports podcast until something more interesting comes along.

Naturally, that play would be nicknamed after the word that broke my heart into a million pieces. The Brotherly Shove.

That's what Len and I are to the world. What we were to him.

Goddamn brothers.

"Out of all the places we could've gone for your birthday dinner, this is where you choose?" I ask Ma as I hold open the door to Buds, a local spot with standard dark and tattered mahogany booths, a token old white guy with a beard drinking Miller Lites at the corner of the bar at any given time of a day, and the best cheesesteaks I've ever eaten in my life.

Word to the wise, when visiting Philly, skip the gimmicky 'rival' cheesesteak shops down in South Philly. They're trash. You want a good cheesesteak? You find yourself a corner pizza joint where the counter is manned by an eighty year old Italian man wearing a white t-shirt stained with marinara and grease.

Hands down, it'll be the most delicious sandwich you ever eat.

"Booger, it's Friday!" Ma exclaims, her accent making it sound more like 'Fry-dee'. "I don't care if it's my birthday. It's not a Friday night without $2 Yuenglings and the Buds prime rib special."

Like clockwork, Sam the bartender is crossing the bar to the stool I pull out for Ma to sit at, placing two bottles of Yuengling Lager in front of us and popping the top off with a bottle opener she pulls from her back pocket. When I sit, she reaches across the bar and squishes my cheeks between her fingers.

"My little baby, all grown up and winning NFL games! You shoulda heard the guys grumbling away last night when I had the Redwoods game on all the TV's in here instead of the Flyers game, but boy did they change their tune when our little Breaky-poo ran out onto the field. I haven't heard this room cheer for any one football team that wasn't the Bruisers since Dallas lost to Kansas City in the Big Game a few years back." Sam smacks her hand on the bar like she can't believe what she's saying, and I only curl in on myself a teeny tiny bit at her praise. I've known Sam my whole life. Her parents own Buds and befriended Ma way back in the day when they first opened. Sam is ten years older than me and used to babysit me when I was little, a fact that she loves to remind me of at every chance she gets.

The night I was drafted, she got drunk and told everyone who would listen about the time I cried for thirty minutes after she sprayed me right in the face with a hose, thinking it would be a fun summer activity to play in the water. I swear I was sneezing out hose water for days.

As she was telling the story, she picked up the hose, pointed it at me and asked me if hoses still make me cry before soaking me with the spray.

She's a bitch and I love her so much.

"You're not gonna beg me to sign something for you? You wound me, Sammy," I clutch at my heart, and then brace for impact as the whack I was expecting hits me upside the head. All three of us laugh as Sam turns to the POS, opening a ticket that I can see from here is labeled 'Ma&SmartAss'.

"The usual, guys?" she asks, though I can already see her ringing in Ma's prime rib and my cheesesteak with provolone cheese, mayo, and two orders of fries so that I have extra to shove into the sandwich.

Twenty minutes later, half my cheesesteak has been consumed and the fries have been annihilated. Though to be fair, half of those were eaten by Sam, stolen out of my basket as she ran back and forth behind the bar, mixing and serving drinks to the Friday night crowd.

"Hey Ma," I say as she polishes off her second beer. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure, but it'll cost you another lager," she says as she lifts the empty bottle in Sam's direction and I chuckle at her. As if she doesn't already know that this whole meal is my treat. I would've taken her somewhere nice and expensive if she'd allowed it, but Ma loves her Friday traditions, birthday or otherwise. She'll drink two more Yuenglings and then go to bed with a scoop of chocolate ice cream and Dateline on TV.

"You know how I told you about the things I said to Lennon back at camp?" I say softly, reliving the verbal ass whooping she so rightfully gave me for treating someone so poorly when I'd admitted it to her a few weeks ago.

"Oh yes. My proudest moment as a mother, learning that all those 'treat people with kindness' lessons I gave you growing up went in one ear and right out the other." She rolls her eyes sarcastically and I wince.

"Yeah I know, Ma. I was a dick. I just…" I trail off, trying to find the words for how I'm feeling. "I don't know where to go next. When we won last night, it felt like old times. Like that horrible fight I instigated never happened. He was so happy and he was sharing that joy with me, but I don't deserve it. I don't know how to apologize to him when I don't deserve his forgiveness."

I sip my water while Ma mulls my words over. I switched after my first beer. I gotta make sure I can drive us home safely.

"Are you really sorry?" she asks me after a moment.

"Yes. I regretted the whole interaction immediately. I hate that I hurt him."

"Well, if that's the case, I think Lennon might already know. That kid feels his feelings out loud. If he still held your words against you, he wouldn't have been so cheerful with you last night. Maybe instead of trying to figure out how to apologize with words, do it with actions. You two are going to be playing together every week for the foreseeable future. Stop trying to avoid him. Hang out. Talk football. Bring up fun memories from your college days. Just talk to him again, and if it feels right, maybe then apologize with your words. It's all about opening the doors of communication."

I nod.

God. How do moms make everything seem so simple?

"Now I have a question for you, son of mine," she says, bumping my shoulder.

"What's that?" I ask.

"Do you still have feelings for Lennon? Romantic ones?" She looks at me in a way that tells me she already knows the answer.

Fortunately, my answer is cut short by Sam carrying a vanilla buttercream iced cake blazing with candles and the entire Buds wait staff singing 'Happy Birthday' to Ma as she turns a bright shade of red. I don't have it in me to explain to my mother why the word 'brother' has become my least favorite word in the English language.

Not today, at least.