Chapter 3 #2
If everyone thinks I’m the happiest and most cheerful, no one will know about the times my brain rebels against me.
The times before games where my hands shake and my stomach churns.
When I stand in a bathroom stall praying I don’t throw up or pass out.
The loneliness of keeping it a secret from everyone I love—even the people closest to me.
“Done!” I say, shoving my heavy thoughts away and flashing Cam my phone screen which now displays a completed VibeCheck profile for RenegadeRush.
Cam barks out a laugh. “RenegadeRush?” he asks. “I thought you didn’t want anyone to know you’re a football player.”
Seriously, if I roll my eyes one more time at this breakfast, they’re going to get permanently stuck in the back of my head.
“Why would anyone assume that? My profile clearly says I live in Pittsburgh. Everyone who lives in Pittsburgh is a Renegades fan, plus a ton of people who don’t.
For these purposes, I’m just a regular old football-liking guy. ”
Drew furrows his eyebrows. “And when you meet a woman in person and she realizes you are not, in fact, just a regular old football-liking guy?”
I shrug. “By then she’ll be so in love with me she won’t care that I’m kind of famous. I totally slap at witty text banter. Just ask Sophie.”
Drew and Cam exchange a look I can’t decipher before they both turn to me.
“You’ve really never met anyone in your everyday life you think you could see…more with?” Cam asks carefully.
I laugh. “If I had, do you think I would be creating a dating profile right now?”
Drew opens his mouth and then closes it before trying again. “I think what he means is, maybe take some time to think about whether you need to meet someone new, or if maybe there’s someone already in your life who could be that person for you.”
I shrug. “I have four sisters, a zillion female cousins and friends who are like cousins, and one of those people is my best friend in the world. If there was someone in my life like that, I think I would already know.”
Drew looks like he wants to say something, but before he can get the words out, he’s interrupted by my favorite voice.
“I’m not late!”
I look up and grin as Sophie strolls into the restaurant with Maddy, Riley, and Ethan, my parents following close behind them.
“Okay, fine, I’m kind of late, but so are they,” she says as she approaches the table, pointing at Maddy and my parents.
“Don’t look at me,” my mom says, bending to kiss my head. “Someone was a little indecisive over the T-shirts in the gift shop.” She gives my dad a meaningful look, but he just grins and hooks an arm around her neck, smacking a kiss to her cheek.
“It had to be the perfect one, Juliette. It’s not every day my kid wins a Super Bowl.
I needed the perfect souvenir to document the occasion and oh my god no fucking way!
” he exclaims suddenly, his grin widening when he takes me in.
Even in his fifties, my dad still looks so much like the Super Bowl winning quarterback he once was.
Sometimes looking at him is like a time warp, showing me a snapshot of what I’m going to look like thirty years from now, and it’s weird and also cool because man, the Hansley genes are stupendous.
“Looks like great minds think alike.” He reaches into the bag looped around his wrist and pulls out the exact same T-shirt I’m currently wearing.
“Two peas in a damn pod,” my mom mutters, but her eyes flash with amusement, lips curving up into a smile.
I snort out a laugh as my dad slides into the seat next to me and tugs my mom down on his other side. Then he wraps his arms around me and squeezes. “Proud of you, Ty. I’m so fucking proud of you.”
He has said those same words approximately a million times over the course of my life—a thousand times since the game last night alone—but my throat still tightens with emotion at the intensity in his voice.
My dad has always been my hero. And not because he’s Asher Hansley, one of the best quarterbacks the Renegades ever had and my role model in all things football, even though he is.
He’s my hero because he’s the best person I know, and I hope one day I can be even half the man he is.
He loves big and hard and way, way out loud, and he raised my sisters and me to do the same.
We never doubted for a second how much he loves us and, most of all, how much he loves my mom.
My dad basically used the story of the offseason cross-country road trip where he and my mom fell in love as a bedtime story, and one wall in the house I grew up in is dedicated to pictures memorializing the two weeks he said changed his entire life.
The way he loves my mom is legendary, and watching them together, still crazy in love after so many years together, makes me even more determined to find that kind of love for myself.
It makes settling for anything less entirely unacceptable.
“You okay, Ty?” my mom asks, leaning over my dad and studying me with the expression she usually saves for sizing up her opposing counsel.
“He’s fine, Aunt Jules,” Sophie says, sliding into the chair on my other side and giving me a wicked grin.
My mom isn’t Sophie’s actual aunt, but she, Sophie’s mom Molly, Maddy’s mom Emma, and my cousins Caitlin and Jack’s mom Hallie have been best friends for years and own a law firm together, so we all grew up as friends who became family and all that.
“He just had a long night and an…unexpectedly early morning.”
“Ew, why an early morning?” Cam’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Riley, makes a face as she flops down next to her dad. “Super Bowl winners deserve to sleep in.”
Drew smothers a grin, and I kick him under the table at the same time as Cam shoots him a warning look. Drew loves Cam’s kids like his own, but he’s also the most likely person at this table to say something inappropriate for teenage ears.
“Couldn’t sleep, Ry. All the excitement, you know?”
Sophie covers her laugh with a cough, and I open my mouth to say something snarky but before I can, Soph’s phone chimes with a notification I’ve never heard before, three times in rapid succession. She glances warily at her phone that sits face down on the table but doesn’t pick it up.
“Do you have to get that?” I ask.
Sophie’s head snaps up, and for the second time in less than six hours, there’s a look on her face I can’t decipher. Weird. “Nah,” she says casually. “It’s probably just work stuff.”
My dad makes a face. “You need me to tell your dad to tell those people you work with to cut you some slack and let you rest on the weekends?”
Sophie is a computer genius and is the executive director of InspireSTEM, the women in STEM foundation her dad started years ago when he sold his company.
She recently pivoted the foundation to focusing primarily on elementary school STEM education, and I may be smart, but Sophie is on another level entirely.
“Nah,” Sophie says quickly, slipping her phone into the bag slung over the back of her chair.
“This is a problem entirely of my own making. We’ve got that elementary school robotics competition coming up, and my team had to find another venue when the one we booked had a burst pipe and tons of water damage it’s going to take weeks to fix.
I procrastinated until last week because I was hoping they would fix the pipes in time, but of course they didn’t.
That’s probably someone from my team telling me they found a new place. ”
Huh. I’m almost positive she told me a few days ago they booked a new venue and everything was finalized. Also weird.
“I love what you’re doing with these competitions, Soph,” my mom says, taking a sip of her coffee. “Your mom, Hallie, Emma, and I are serious about the firm sponsoring the spring competition. I can’t believe you didn’t come to us for this one.”
“You’re on,” Sophie says with a grin. “The next one is a better fit for you guys anyway. It’s an all-girls competition, and the teams are seriously badass. I shouldn’t play favorites with my competitions, but as a woman in STEM, I love this one the most.”
“Can we eat?” Cam’s son, Ethan, asks. “I’m starving.”
Maddy laughs and runs a hand over his hair. “You ate two bagels like an hour ago.”
Ethan shrugs. “That was then. This is now, and now I need pancakes. And probably a bunch of other stuff too.”
“Hot damn, me too,” Sophie says with a grin. Then she nudges my foot under the table. “You’re buying. All the pancakes I want, right?”
I grin back at her, just happy to be here with her and with so many of my most important people. “Anything you want, Soph. It’s on me.”
“No way,” my dad says, bumping my shoulder with his. “It’s on me. We’re buying breakfast for everyone. Anything you want,” he says with a wink at Ethan.
“This is my favorite day,” Ethan says with a grin, and everyone laughs.
I’m wearing clothes I bought from a gift shop, and there may or may not still be two strange women in my room, but I got to hold the Lombardi Trophy last night and all my favorite people are here, and as I look around the table, my eyes landing on Sophie, I know for sure this is my favorite day too.