12. Bree #2
“Good for him,” Dad said. “He deserves that.” Then he softened. “But if you actually want to go, I’ll go with you.”
I could hear the excitement creeping into his voice. My dad has never once said no to an impromptu plan in his entire life, and just the idea of going to that game today had him lighting up like a kid.
I looked over at Mom. “What do you think?”
“In Pucking Crazy for You,” Mom said, “the heroine goes to the hero’s hockey game in disguise. You could try that.”
“And what am I supposed to disguise myself as?” Dad asked. “A hippo?”
“She doesn’t have to steal the whole plot,” Mom said. “All I’m saying is, if her heart’s telling her to be there, she can be there without anyone seeing her. Especially Gavin.”
Dad tilted his head. “Hmm. That’s a great idea, honey. I married a genius!”
“Actually,” Mom said, “Ree is the genius.”
She turned back to me. “So? What do you think, honey?”
Here’s a fun fact about buying last-minute tickets when you want to sneak into a stadium unnoticed to watch your husband play. You end up paying almost double, and you still end up with the worst seats in the entire building.
Dad and I were tucked behind a support pillar, having to lean all the way to one side just to see the field whenever the ball got run toward the left.
But honestly, the seats were so bad, so unflattering, that I was fairly confident nobody would bother glancing our way even once.
My heart had been telling me I needed to be here today, and now, finally, sitting there, I understood exactly why.
Because even from such a distance I could see how miserable Gavin looked.
He didn’t look like a man who wanted to be playing this game at all.
He was late on every read, throwing behind receivers who should’ve been easy completions, taking sacks he should’ve thrown the ball away from instead.
He kept scanning the crowd after every single play, eyes sweeping the front row over and over.
Even the commentators noticed.
“Something’s just off with him today,” the first one said. “He’s completely lost his rhythm out there.”
“Yeah, he looks like he’s somewhere else entirely,” the second one said. “Somewhere a long way from this football field.”
“I’ve been covering this guy for six seasons,” the first one said. “I have never once seen him play like this.”
Dad’s face stayed sullen the entire first half, like he was physically absorbing every ounce of Gavin’s misery and wearing it himself.
I wasn’t enjoying watching him suffer. Not even a little.
Every ball he dropped, every pass that sailed wide of an open man, my stomach sank a little further, until at some point I realized I’d started talking to him, quietly, under my breath, like he could somehow hear me from three hundred feet away.
Come on, Gavin. You can do this.
No, Gavin. Nooooo.
I’m right here, Gavin. You can do this.
I kept it up the whole first half, honestly kind of surprising myself with how badly I wanted him to turn it around.
By halftime, the scoreboard read Redcoats 3, Wildcats 24. It wasn’t even close.
During the halftime break, I glanced over at Dad. His face still looked heavy.
“You don’t think this is my fault, do you?” I asked him.
“That’s you!” he said.
“What?”
He grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward the big screen at the far end of the stadium.
“You’re up there!”
I looked up, and there was my own face, huge, projected on the jumbotron.
The commentator’s voice came through the speakers. “And it looks like we’ve spotted a doppelganger of Gavin Blakley’s wife, Bree Blakley, up in the stands today.”
“Actually,” the other commentator said, laughing, “I think that might genuinely be Bree, and Gavin’s dad, up there. Looks like they wanted to catch the game like regular fans today.”
I stared up at my own giant face on the screen. Dad, next to me, gave a huge wave.
I looked out toward the field, right at Gavin, and I watched his whole expression shift in real time.
Complete shock. His eyes locked onto the camera, then started scanning the stadium, searching, desperate, hopeful.
I watched him scan pillar after pillar, still walking back toward the huddle the whole time, until finally, his eyes landed right on ours.
The camera cut back to him. “Looks like Gavin Blakley had no idea his wife was in the building today,” the commentator said.
His eyes met mine. His whole face just transformed.
He gave me this huge, gorgeous, million-dollar smile, blew me a kiss with both hands, then made a big heart shape in the air with his fingers.
He brought his fingers together at his chin, the tips touching his lips, and then moved his hand forward and down toward me, palm up, like he was blowing the words straight to me.
It was American Sign Language for thank you.
“What a sweet moment,” the commentator said. “Gavin Blakley, communicating with his wife right there in the stands.”
I smiled back at him. Just a teeny weenie smile. I couldn’t help it.
He put his helmet back on and jogged back onto the field, and I watched something transform in him. It was like watching a totally different player step onto that field.
“Looks like the old Gavin is back,” the commentator said.
He played the rest of that half with this laser focus I hadn’t seen from him since the game had started. He threw two touchdowns, back to back, all on his own, in the second half alone. They still lost the game in the end. But he walked off that field like a man who’d won.
And the whole way back to the edge of the field, his eyes never left our section. He watched Dad and me get up out of our seats and head for the exit. I looked back before I stepped out of the door, and saw him still looking towards the exit.