“I only brought him because…” There was no good reason, but I’d been sleeping with him lately instead of leaving him on my desk. “When I was a kid, I used to have a teddy bear but we lost it somewhere along the way. It’s kind of the same thing.”
“Yeah, I used to have a blanket.”
But he probably hadn’t slept with it past the age of five. “Are you allowed to be here in my room?” I asked.
“I don’t think the hotel has rules about coed visitors,” he answered, “and the coaches don’t care. The last time I had a bed check was in college but I’ll head up there soon, anyway. Some of the guys went out tonight but I wasn’t interested. I have to be at my best since I’m going to play tomorrow.”
“For sure?”
He nodded. “We’ll see how many minutes I get. I know that I won’t be a Woodsmen starter but this is also a way to show off to the rest of the league. Another team might be interested, too.”
Somehow, I hadn’t thought of him leaving. Why hadn’t I thought of that? It was pretty normal for a football player to move around and play for different teams all over the country. I tried not to assume the expression that I’d seen in the mirror this afternoon, when I’d looked terrified.
Ronan was back to talking about the game, but he was worrying more about me in the stadium. “Don’t wear anything orange,” he said. “I don’t want you to get harassed.”
“I thought you would beat people up for me.”
“Yeah, but I only have two fists.” He held them up. “Their stadium seats seventy-five thousand.”
“I’m definitely going to wear orange,” I said. I sat up and scooted around him so that I could go to the closet, where I’d hung up my shirt for the game. “See? I got a jersey.”
He took it from me. “I didn’t—wait, what?” He had turned it around. “Since when does the team sell jerseys with my name on them?”
“They don’t. Not yet,” I said. “I bought a blank one and got it printed.”
Ronan looked at me. “Really? You did that?”
“You’re my favorite player,” I explained. “I’m a big fan.”
“I’ll look up in the stands and see you,” he said. “I’ll see you wearing my jersey.”
“In the crowd of seventy-five thousand?”
“Yes,” he told me. He pulled me to him, hugging me. “I’ll know you’re there.”
I would be, I thought, as I patted his hair. I decided that I always would.
Chapter 12
She had cheerfully told me that it was no problem at all. No problem! She was happy to!
So here we were.
“I can’t believe this,” Ed said. He spoke loudly so I could hear and he turned around to gaze up at the rows behind us. There were a lot of them. Next he looked at me and I thought he might cry. “Thank you, Cate.”
“I owed you after saving me from the rats. I mean, the big mice,” I corrected myself. The exterminators who had come to clear out the Woodsmen practice facility hadn’t believed the story about the Affenpinschers, but I still did. “Anyway, these weren’t my seats.”
They were courtesy of Amy Gas—aka Annie Whitaker-Gassman, the incredibly nice woman who had also provided the basically free drapes for Mr. Gowan’s office. I had called her and asked for a big favor: better tickets for the opening game of the regular season. She had immediately said she would find some for me.Actually, she had dropped her phone and yelled for me to hold on, her dog Jory had just jumped into a pond and two of her sons had gone after him, and then I’d heard more splashing and thought that she had gone in, too. But when she’d gotten back on, she’d told me, “No problem! Somebody in my family is bound to have tickets lying around.”
“Tickets lying around” was not something that happened for Woodsmen football games. I thought that every orange seat here was filled and so were the boxes. The place was packed as the clock on the jumbotron counted down to game time, and the crowd was already rocking.
“You got me the jersey, too,” he said. “I love it.”
I had thought that he would. Now there were two people wearing Wilder jerseys, but I corrected myself again. We were thefirsttwo, and we wouldn’t be the last. The Community Relations department was a lot like Marketing in that they were always asking for input. I had suggested (several times) that there should have been greater representation of the roster in the team merch store—it would have increased community engagement, for sure. I hadn’t heard back yet.
The preseason had been exciting, very exciting—and it was nothing compared to this. It felt like a current of electricity had been turned on in the stadium and everything practically vibrated with it. I myself was shaking but I was aware that it was nerves, because Ronan was going to play tonight. He wasn’t going to start, but he was definitely getting in. The preseason had proven that he was ready to go, so we’d get to see him and I knew that he would be amazing.
He would be.
