Chapter 5
Duffy
“Duff, will you answer the phone?” my dad yelled from the basement.
Yes, my father still had a landline and expected me to answer it as if this were the way life still worked.
Like I was a child, answering the phone for my parents.
I wrote it off as a side effect of having an older father. My mom and dad waited ten years before deciding they didn’t hate the idea of children, which led to them often behaving more like grandparents than parents to me and my brothers.
“Hello?” I asked, annoyed because the only people who called the house were spam callers and the occasional howdy from one of my dad’s buddies. So it was ridiculous that I was playing the part of his secretary.
“Can I please speak to Duffy?”
Okay, how on earth had a spam caller figured out my name and that I was living with my father again?
Good news travels fast.
“I think you have the wrong number,” I said, and I was about to hang up when the man’s voice cut in.
“Are you sure? I got this number from Kel on Twin Cities Live.”
“Who is this?” I asked, immediately suspicious.
“Duffy?” the man said my name again, his tone suggesting he knew me.
“Yes…?” I said slowly as my mind started to catch up, processing the voice and where he said he got my number, and holy shit—suddenly, I knew exactly who it was, but it was impossible that this could be happening.
It was unfathomable. My head felt like it was exploding.
I could feel it, bursting into a million pieces, splattering my shocked brain cells all over the wall.
Still, I had to make sure. “May I ask who’s calling? ”
“It’s Connor,” he said, as if we were on a first-name basis. “We met on the show…?”
“Yeah, um,” I managed, boosting myself up to sit on the kitchen counter because I was pretty sure my legs were incapable of holding me when such absurdities were afoot. “How are you?”
This is crazy this is crazy this is crazy.
“Good,” he said. “You?”
“Who is it, Duff?” I heard on the phone, wanting to die of mortification when I realized my father had picked up the extension in the basement and we were now in a three-way conversation.
Oh. My. God.
Kill me now.
“It’s for me, Dad,” I said, feeling like the world’s biggest loser.
“Who is it?” he asked again.
I sighed and was about to come up with some way to tell him to butt out when Connor spoke up. “It’s Connor Cunningham. Is this Tony?”
Oh no. He was engaging.
With. My. Father.
“Hey, what’s up, buddy?” my dad said, sounding thrilled that his pal Connor was calling.
“I got your number from the show because I wanted to talk to your daughter,” Connor said.
“Well, that’s nice because I thought she really screwed everything up when she gave you shit about the dropped pass,” my dad said with a laugh, like my behavior was some funny shit. “She was supposed to be nice, but you know girls.”
“Lovely, Dad,” I said through gritted teeth. “Yes, it’s definitely a failure of my gender, the way we tend to say the honest things that are on our mind.”
“This isn’t a feminist issue, Duff, so quit trying to—”
Connor cleared his throat. “Do you have a minute to talk, Duffy?” he asked, blessedly redirecting the conversation.
“She does and I’m gonna get off. Bye, Connor,” my dad said, and then I heard the telltale click of the downstairs phone.
This was unbelievable. Why on earth was Connor Cunningham calling me?
“I apologize,” I said, clearing my throat. “I moved in with my dad last year and he’s a bit insane about the way telephones work.”
“No, that’s hilarious. Does he seriously have a landline?” he asked.
“He does, and he makes me answer it for him even though no one ever calls for me.”
“Until now,” he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. “Now you’re going to have to answer it for the rest of your life because somebody actually called for you on this very landline.”
“Oh my God, you’re right,” I said, shaking my head. “You’ve ruined everything.”
“My apologies. And I hope you don’t think I’m a creep for getting your number from Kel, but it was really nice to meet you, and I thought maybe you’d want to grab a bite to eat tomorrow night.”
“What?” I asked, dumbfounded.
What the fucking—what?! I mouthed in a silent scream.
“I mean, you do eat food, right? As in, going to a restaurant and ingesting edible items?”
“Yeah, um,” I said, feeling like I was missing something. “You want to go eat…with me?”
Dale Earnhardt Junior—my dad’s cat—jumped onto the counter, and I picked him up and petted his head.
“I don’t know what I said to make this confusing,” Connor said in amusement. “Obviously I’m not very good at this. I’m trying to ask you out on a date. A date to eat dinner at a restaurant. With me.”
“You want to take me out on a date,” I repeated, unable to believe it. Not that I didn’t think I was worthy of being asked out—even though it’d been a really long time since someone had actually done that—but this was a superstar NFL player.
Who had entire TikTok accounts dedicated to lusting over him.
I watched one just this morning (I had my name filtered out on TikTok so I still occasionally wasted time on that platform), an entire montage of Connor—suited up on the sidelines, in slow motion—squirting water into his mouth and then swallowing while “Gimme More” by Britney Spears played.
Something about his throat…neck…Adam’s apple…was strangely appealing to thousands of content consumers like me.
Ahem.
Focus, Duff.
Bottom line was this phone call didn’t make any sense.
“Yes,” Connor said with a laugh. “Is this a possibility, or are you not interested or already in a relationship? I don’t want to be a creep or get in your business, but I just thought you—”
“Yeah, um,” I managed, still trying to make sense of this.
“Yeah, you’ll go out with me?” he asked.
“No, I meant yeah it’s possible but…” I stared out the window, trying to figure out what to do. The best course of action. My brain was too stuck in shock to be of any use in the What will happen if I? game.
“Can I call you back?” I blurted out. “Someone’s at the door, um, let me go answer it and then I’ll call you back.”
I heard the stupidity of the lie as I said it. If someone were at the door, I could have Connor hold or have my dad answer it.
“Sure,” he said, definitely aware that I was lying.
I didn’t know what to do in this situation. He was a beautiful, talented athlete, a celebrity with millions of people who knew who he was. On one hand, a total no-brainer, right? Definitely go out with the superstar millionaire tight end.
But the thought of going out with him was a little overwhelming.
I didn’t feel equipped to handle someone like Connor.
And it also still felt like a trick, like I was missing something.
“Okay, I’ll call you right back. What’s your number?”
“What, the old-school house phone doesn’t have caller ID?”
“My dad likes the model with the chunky numbers he can see better, so no caller ID.”
“Tony is the king.” He laughed and gave me his number. “You better get that door before the Girl Scouts leave.”
“You think it’s the Girl Scouts?”
“I think it’s either Girl Scouts selling cookies, or you need a minute to figure out what you want your answer to be. Either way I’m cool, but Thin Mints are always a win so call me back in five minutes, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, smiling in spite of myself as I hung up the phone.
What the hell, what the hell? I sat there on the kitchen counter, gripping the cat, unable to believe what had just happened. Connor Cunningham had literally just called and asked me out. On a date.
Connor Fucking Cunningham.
I looked down at my fuzzy Coyote socks and tried wrapping my head around it. I mean, had I been charming on the show—was that it? Had I somehow managed to pass off my awkward personality as…flirtatious? It was possible, but I also fainted and mocked his butterfingers, so…incredibly unlikely.
“Duffy!” my dad yelled from the basement. “Get your ass down here before you call him back.”
I sighed and ran down the stairs. “Did you seriously listen after you said you were hanging up?”
“Of course I did!” The man was beaming. “Connor Cunningham was on the phone—like I was gonna miss the conversation.”
I barely blinked when I saw all three of my older brothers down there. They came and went as they pleased, and it never fazed me anymore.
“That’s kind of rude, don’t you think?” I asked.
“You’re going to go out with him, right?” he asked, completely ignoring what I said.
“Of course she is,” Joey, my oldest brother, said. He was just as big of a football fan as my dad and was currently on the couch, watching the Gophers game, two beers in.
He never tossed his empties until he was finished drinking, the wad, so I always knew how many in he was.
“Shut up, I just need to think,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Of course my brothers were available to weigh in when I didn’t want them to; that was their area of expertise. They were good at popping in when it was convenient for them, spewing opinions, then leaving me to deal with my father’s interpretations of their ideas.
All three of them lived in the Twin Cities, all three were single, and all three were total workaholics (which was strange when they’d been lazy pains in the asses when we were kids).
They were good about calling my dad every day and swinging by a couple times a week, but their devotion to the sixty-hour corporate workweek had left me as the default kid-in-attendance at things like games and Saturday-night Mass.
“I wouldn’t do it if I were you,” Tyler, the second oldest, said. He was sitting on the yoga ball they used as a chair when they played Xbox, bouncing on it idly. “I think he seems like a douche.”
“He does not,” I said in Connor’s defense, even though I didn’t know if I was going to go out with him or not.
I’d never seen Connor act douchey, and I’d been a casual observer of that man since he’d been drafted by the Coyotes. If he was douchey, surely I’d know.
“You’d become the chosen child, that’s for damn sure,” Matty said. He was the youngest of the three, but still a year older than me. “Everyone knows I’m the favorite, but if you start dating Cunningham, Dad will lose his shit.”
“I won’t lose my shit,” my dad said, shaking his head. “Unless Cunningham gets me in the owner’s suite. Then of course Duff will be my favorite forever.”
I looked at my dad, the way he was grinning, and I realized that I kind of had to say yes.
Because it really would make him so happy.
One date—I instinctively knew it would be only one—and he could tell his buddies that his Duff had actually done something cool.
Hopefully it’d offset the “trouble” I’d gotten into with Carl (insert a thousand eye rolls) that a few of them still weren’t over.
The mascot didn’t mean any harm, Duff.
He probably didn’t even know what he was grabbing, kid. You ever worn one of those suits?
God, I hated the old-man mentality.
“I might do it,” I said, “but you guys have to promise to get off my case. I don’t want to hear anything about this.”
“Like that’s going to happen,” Matty said with a smirk, gesturing at my father. “Do you think he’s ever going to shut up about this?”
“I’ll shut up about it,” Dad insisted. “Really.”
I knew he wouldn’t, but I figured it was the least I could do.
It was too nice to see him smiling like that again. Yes, he’d smiled since my mom died, but it’d been a long time since I’d seen that mischievous eye-twinkling side of him.
I texted Ellie. I need to borrow an outfit for an important date.
Ellie: HOLY SHIT HE CALLED??????
Me: I cannot believe it, but yes.
Then I texted him. Connor.
Also, how the hell was it reality that I had Connor Cunningham’s personal number?
Suddenly “Gimme More” was going through my head, complete with that ridiculous montage of CC throat-porn I’d watched three times on TikTok.
I texted Connor: I cannot bring myself to use the house phone twice in one day, so I’m responding via text like a normal human. Dinner sounds fun. Where and when?