Chapter 2
Two Weeks Later
Forty to seventeen.
Forty to seventeen.
The Conference game had been an embarrassment.
The Gladiators had made it past the Divisional round, and we should have made it past this one, too.
We were playing the Boston Navigators, and while they were one of the best teams in the ALF, we’d beat them easily during the regular season.
We should have been the team going onto the Championship game, but the Navigators had come out swinging and hadn’t let up once through four quarters of football.
I needed a drink.
I made my way to the Rusty Nail, planning to drink away my sorrows.
Maybe I’d catch the National Conference game on one of the big screens there.
I wasn’t nearly as invested in the matchup between the Portland Bears and Roswell Marauders.
The only reason I’d originally planned to watch it was to see who we’d be playing, but since it was the Navigators moving on? The investment was a lot lower.
It seemed like everyone in the bar felt the same.
The game was on, and there were a few people watching, but mostly it was background noise.
I got a beer and leaned against the perpetually sticky bar to drink it.
For a moment, I thought about texting one of my friends to see if they’d want to come and meet me at the bar.
It would be more fun than drinking alone, even if none of my friends were as into football as I was.
They would at least listen to me ramble about a game they didn’t care about in the slightest.
“You know, I really thought your guys might have it after last week’s game,” a man commented next to me.
The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Not right away. Not until I turned and saw a familiar pair of green eyes. The last time I’d seen them, they’d been surrounded in Foxes red. It was Mr. Chirpy.
“Don’t start,” I groaned.
Why, and how, the hell was this guy here?
“No, I mean it. I watched last week’s game, and they were really good.
Completely annihilated the Pirates. Which, honestly, almost made me like them.
” There was a long running rivalry between the Pirates and the Foxes, so it wasn’t unexpected that he’d be celebrating their downfall. “Anyway, buy you a sympathy drink?”
I was confused. Was this really the same man that had sat beside me during the Foxes game, turning my game day experience from something I’d been excited about into something I looked back on in some combination of happiness (from my team) and anger (from him)?
But then, maybe he owed me a drink. After all, he’d given me hell all the way until the final buzzer of the Foxes versus Gladiators game.
“I’ll take another beer.”
He signaled the bartender for another round, and a moment later, a new bottle of beer appeared in front of me. I thought that might be the end of it, but I could still feel his eyes on me. I shot a look over at him, just to make sure I wasn’t being paranoid. I wasn’t. He was still looking at me.
I cleared my throat. “May I help you?”
He grinned, and it wasn’t lost on me that he was an attractive man. It was infuriating, because why should someone this annoying be hot?
“Wondering why you’re drinking alone.”
“None of my friends are into football, and I didn’t really want to hear them tell me that it’s just a game,” I said with a shrug.
I mean, that wasn’t fully why I didn’t call them, but it did play a part.
They’d listen to me rant and ramble about the disappointment of the day, of watching my team get a beat down, but they wouldn’t understand.
And in the end, they’d tell me it was just a game, no need to get my blood pressure up.
“I’ve got a few friends like that,” he sympathized. “It really sucks after a loss.” He paused. “You need football friends.”
“Are you offering?” Somehow, I doubted it. He’d have to listen to me talk about the Gladiators, and he’d made it very clear where his loyalties lied.
“I am.”
Wait, what?
“You realize that means you’d have to listen to a lot of talk about a team you clearly hate.”
“I don’t hate the Gladiators. Unless they’re playing the Foxes, but I hate anyone playing the Foxes. Surely you can understand that.”
“Not really,” I admitted, shrugging. “There’s only like two teams I hate.” Granted, they both had deep-seated rivalries with the Gladiators, but that was neither here nor there.
The man looked shocked. “Even when a team’s playing yours, you don’t kind of hate them? Not even a little bit?”
“No.”
He blinked those dark green eyes of his. I couldn’t believe how baffled he looked. I finally understood why my friends told me that it was just a game, because, clearly, he was one of those ALF fans that took it all too seriously. “But that’s part of the fun.”
“Hating other teams?” Call me old-fashioned, but I found cheering on my team a lot more fun than praying on the downfall of their opponents. “How is hating on other teams part of the fun?” Maybe if I understood that, I could understand why he’d decided to ruin my day a few weeks ago.
“It’s all about the shit talk. The competition. It’s in good fun.”
“You’re one of those guys that flip the board when you’re losing at Monopoly, aren’t you?”
He laughed, and just like his grin, it was transformative.
It took his already handsome face and multiplied it by ten, fifty, a hundred.
I noticed that his top lip was narrower than his bottom lip and his front teeth were uneven, and it made him that much cuter.
Fuck. That was not what I needed to think about with this obnoxious sports bro.
And that’s what he was: just another obnoxious sports bro.
I’d seen more than my fair share of them in my life, especially when I played.
“No. Believe it or not, I’m not competitive when it’s a game I’m playing.”
Not. I did not believe that. It was just the vibe he gave off.
I took a sip of the beer he’d bought me and angled my body toward him a little more. It was clear that I was no longer drinking alone. He’d decided that when he joined me, bought me a beer, and kept the conversation going. “Somehow, I don’t believe it.”
“That’s because you don’t know me.”
“You’re not wrong. I don’t even know your name.” He was just Mr. Chirpy, the obnoxious Foxes fan.
“Jason,” he introduced. He extended one hand toward me, and I took it. His hand was cold from the bottle of beer he’d been holding, damp from the condensation on the glass. “And I promise, when my team’s not playing, I’m not a complete asshole.” I raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “You’ll learn.”
“Oh, will I?”
“Maybe. I hope so.” He took another sip from his bottle. “You know, I told you my name. You haven’t told me yours yet.”
“Vic. Vic Summers.”
His eyes widened at the sound of my name. “Wait, you used to play for the Royals, right? You were on the D-Line. About ten years ago?”
It had been a long time since I played football.
Long enough that my legacy for the local college team had been wiped away.
I’d been good, but I hadn’t been good enough to be drafted into the league.
I’d not been good enough to leave my name on any of the record books.
I wasn’t used to most people recognizing my name.
Clearly, this guy wasn’t just most people.
I confirmed that I used to play, and he rattled off a few of my stat lines that I’d forgotten about with time. “Are you some kind of football robot?”
His cheeks flushed pink, and I couldn’t help grinning at the reaction. “No, I was just a big fan. You were playing when I was in school, and I never missed a home game.”
That explained why he knew my name, why it had stood the testament of time.
I still remembered the quarterback I played with and the other men in the secondary.
Only one person I’d played with had been drafted, and he’d never seen any real game time.
He’d stayed third string for his entire short career.
The last I’d heard, he’d taken on a coaching role for the Youngstown Crows in Ohio.
We talked football a little longer before the conversation began to evolve into our other interests.
Outside of sports, he liked to cook. He laughed when I told him a story about accidentally starting a small fire in my microwave a few years ago.
I’d attempted to heat up some leftovers on a party plate, not realizing that the plates weren’t meant to be in the microwave.
My apartment filled with smoke. The fire alarms went off, and the neighbors called the fire department. It had been humiliating.
The worst part was that a former student was on the team that responded.
“Student? Are you a teacher?”
“I teach History at King’s Bay High.” I also coached the football team, but I had a feeling that if I brought the topic back to football, he’d start annoying me again.
It turned out when we weren’t talking about football, he was actually a pretty cool guy.
Okay, when we weren’t specifically talking about the one game we’d been at together.
The beer hadn’t quite rinsed the bad taste left from that game out of my mouth.
“I teach third grade.”
That was something of a surprise. Jason didn’t give off the vibes of someone who should be teaching small children.
What happened when one of his students wore a shirt for any team other than the Foxes, especially if they played the Foxes that week?
Did he give them the same kind of hell he’d given me, or was he able to control himself?
I decided it would be nicer not to ask. “Do you like it?”
“I love it. I don’t think I’d love it if I were teaching high schoolers though.”
It was my turn to laugh, because teaching high school students was not for the faint of heart.
They had an insane amount of attitude, and it showed in everything they did.
On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine teaching third graders.
They were loud, and the level of energy it must take to stay where they were?
It was insane. “I don’t think I’d love teaching third graders. ”
“It takes a special kind of person,” he agreed. “Probably the same to teach high school though.”
“Doesn’t the noise get to you?”
“Nah.” He brushed the comment off with a wave of his hand.
I was starting to notice that he was a very expressive man.
It probably helped in the classroom. In my limited experience with elementary school kids, they tended to be expressive.
They probably responded better to people who could match that energy.
I knew that my high school students did, and they were just kids in larger bodies. “Believe it or not, I like the noise.”
That was something I could believe.
I waved the bartender over for a third beer. “Another?” I offered Jason. If anyone had told me an hour ago that I’d be buying Mr. Chirpy another beer, I’d have laughed in their faces.
He nodded, and our conversation continued.
We talked about our classes. We talked about hobbies other than cooking.
When the conversation inevitably circled back to football, thanks to something happening in the game on the television, I realized that he was really only obnoxious about his team.
His commentary on the game in front of us was great.
He pointed out things I didn’t notice, and I coached the high school team.
Some of the things he noticed went completely over my head.
“You’re really into football, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Always have been. I grew up in a house full of boys. My dad and three older brothers, and we were all into football. My oldest brother took me to my first Foxes game. Right after I came out. I’d been scared that my dad and my brothers would have issue with it.
Dave had gotten really quiet when I told everyone.
My other brothers and my dad? They weren’t bothered, but Dave?
” He sighed, shaking his head. “I thought I lost my big brother. Then a few days later, he showed up and told me that he wanted to take me out to celebrate. We were all Foxes fans, so it was a big deal.”
It was strange how those moments, seemingly insignificant, could shape an entire life.
His story with his brother was just like mine with my stepdad.
Sure, the motivations had been different, but the love?
It was the same. It was the pulsing heartbeat behind the loyalty we’d felt for our teams. So, I told him my story, and we kept talking until the game ended.
At the end of the night, I decided to take a chance. I wrote my phone number down on a bar napkin and passed it to him.
I didn’t know if I’d hear from him again, but I really hoped I would.