How are you? How’s Lucky?
She writes back within a minute.We’re both good! How do you like your place?
It’s nice. The view is amazing.
That’s great!
We text back and forth for a few more minutes, and then I say goodnight.
Good luck at your team meeting tomorrow.
She seems to be doing well.
And I need to let her go and get ready for football.
* * *
“Men, you may just be rookies now,” my new coach says to the group of us in the meeting room the following morning at the stadium. “But you’re also all professionals. And if you work hard this year, hopefully you’re going to be in this league for a long time. So let’s show up tomorrow ready to work.”
The next few hours are a blur of meeting one coach after another, getting a tour of the facility, and working out in the weight room with a few of the other rookies. My agent comes by to greet me and make sure I’m doing all right.
We go to lunch, and he tries to tell me about all the hot spots in Chicago.
But I can’t stop thinking about Hannah.
On my drive home, I stare at the Brady bobblehead, cursing Chance and his enthusiasm for me to find what he did with Aubrey.
I call him as I’m pulling onto my street.
“How are you, mate?” he asks right away.
“I think you cursed me,” I say in response. “That bobblehead was a bad idea.”
“How come?”
I tell him how Hannah and I split.
“Wasn’t that the plan?” he asks. “To have some fun on the trip and then go your separate ways?”
Yes.
“That’s not the fucking point,” I say.
“What is the point, Mav?”
I love her.
“I hear you,” Chance says even though I didn’t say anything out loud. “So make sure you tell her. Don’t sit on it.”
After we hang up, I call my dad and talk to him for a while. I’ve been texting him my whereabouts throughout the trip, and he says my brothers want photos of the different places I stopped.
“I’ll see what I’ve got,” I say, realizing most of the photos will give away the fact that I traveled with Hannah. And a kitten.
“You sound like you’ve got something on your mind,” Dad says after a moment.
“No. Not really. I’m just…”Screw it. “I met someone.”
“Oh.” He lets out a deep laugh. “You know you’ve never once said those words to me before? She must be something special.”
