The first line read:Dear Mr. McBride, We are pleased to inform you?—
I stopped reading.
“Tanner.” Seth’s arms tightened. “What does it say?”
“I got in.” The words didn’t sound real. “I got in. Full funding. Research assistantship. I got in.”
Seth spun me around and kissed me hard enough that I stumbled back against the sink. When he pulled away, his face was split into the biggest grin I’d ever seen.
“I knew it,” he said. “I fucking knew it.”
“You didn’t know anything. You’re not on the admissions committee.”
“I knew.” He kissed me again, softer this time. “Your work is too good. Anyone who looked at it would be an idiot not to want you.”
The praise landed somewhere beneath my sternum, warm and unexpected. I wasn’t used to people believing in me like this—not since Dad, and even then, by the end, he couldn’t remember what I was working on from one conversation to the next.
“I need to call Lincoln,” I said. “He wanted to know as soon as I heard.”
“Call him. I’ll make coffee.”
Seth disappeared down the hall, and I sank onto the edge of the bathtub, phone clutched in both hands. The email was still open, the words still there.We are pleased to inform you.I read them three more times before I believed them.
Lincoln answered on the second ring.
“Tanner. Tell me good news.”
“I got in. Wilmington. Full funding.”
The whoop that came through the speaker made me pull the phone away from my ear. In the background, I heard Nixon’s voice asking what happened, then Lincoln’s muffled response, then what sounded like actual cheering.
“I knew it,” Lincoln said when he came back on. “Didn’t I tell you? Your father would be—” He stopped, the way people always stopped when they remembered. “He’d be proud, Tanner. So damn proud.”
My throat closed. I pressed my free hand against my eyes and breathed through it.
“There’s something else,” Lincoln continued, his voice shifting into something more businesslike. “I talked to my contact at Riddell. David Holloway— He’s their head of R&D.”
I sat up straighter. “You mentioned him in Wilmington.”
“He’s interested. Saw the data I forwarded and wants to meet with you. Talk about your research, see if there’s potential for collaboration.”
“Collaboration?” The word felt foreign in my mouth. “Like…they’d want to use my designs?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. I’m working with him now to figure out how to get the two of you in the same room. I think you’d do better with that than meeting over Zoom.”
My brain was struggling to keep up. Grad school acceptance and a meeting with Riddell’s R&D department in the same morning. Three months ago, I’d been sitting on my kitchen floor, unable to move. Now people were flying across the country to talk about my work.
“Lincoln, I don’t—” I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes. And, Tanner?” His voice gentled. “This isn’t charity. Your work has merit. David wouldn’t waste his time if he didn’t see potential. But I want to make sure you’re protected. If they’re interested in licensing anything, you need to be compensated. That’s why I want to be in the room.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to.” A pause. “Patrick was my best friend for fifteen years. He’d haunt me if I let his son get taken advantage of by corporate lawyers.”
The laugh that escaped me was wet around the edges. “He probably would.”
“Damn right. Now go celebrate. You’ve earned it.”
