That’s the way I like it.
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 inperson 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 exclaimssuddenly, 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 andstudying 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.”
