Page 98 of Colliding with Ten

“With your parents?”

“They’re good people. You’d like them.”

“Umm—”

“It’s just dinner, Callahan.”

She hesitated. If she came, she’d miss the team bus and the flight back to New York.

She checked her watch. “The team bus leaves in forty minutes.”

“I can get you home.”

I said it as if it would be a quick ride in my car, not a three-thousand-mile flight. Even if I had to charter a private jet, I would. She furrowed her brows. The corridor around us was busy with players and staff moving both ways, but the noise felt distant while I waited.

“Just dinner?”

“Dinner. That’s it. Please stop begging for more,” I said, grinning.

She smiled, pulled out her phone, typed something, and pocketed it again. She approached another nearby trainer, a woman zipping up a duffel, and whispered in her ear. The woman glanced at me, then back at Ayla, and her expression went through about four stages of understanding in two seconds. She nodded, squeezed Ayla’s arm, and walked away.

Ayla turned back to me. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Just dinner.”

I nodded, keeping my expression even. She had no idea how much her answer rearranged my evening.

We walked to the parking lot, where the post-game tailgate was still happening. The warm LA evening glowed amber in the dying sun. Families lingered around grills and coolers in the private players’ lot, reliving the game.

My parents were near the corner lot with folding chairs and a canopy my father had used since I got drafted. The grill was still smoking as my mother organized food containers. She was a small woman with a big career in marketing, specializing in making people want things they didn’t need. She’d retired two years ago, but the instincts remained. She could assess an outfit in three seconds and a person in five.

She looked at Ayla. Then at me. Then, back at Ayla, smiling. “Oh!” She crossed the distance and took Ayla’s hands before I could make an introduction. “You must be Ayla.”

Ayla’s eyes widened. “You know who I am?”

My mother looked at me, communicating several things at once. Clearly, I had talked about Ayla more than I realized.

“Sweetheart,” she said to Ayla. “I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things.”

My father came from behind the grill, tongs in one hand, wearing an apron that said “HEAD COACH”. He was tall, with the build of a defensive lineman, and served as a college defensive coordinator for twenty-two years. I first learned to read every scheme I'd face at his kitchen table. He diagrammed coverages on napkins while my mother warned us dinner was getting cold. He taught me how defenses thought and where the weaknesses lived. It was an education no coaching staff could replicate, the reason I saw things before the snap that other quarterbacks couldn’t.

He looked at Ayla and pulled out her chair. “Have a seat. You hungry?”

“Starving,” she said.

He smiled. “Great.”

They loved her. I’d expected them to like her. My parents were warm and made everyone feel welcome. But this was beyond that. My mother asked her about dancing and listened with genuine fascination. My father talked to her about the fellowship and about the mechanics of injury and recovery. When she started explaining the biomechanics of a quarterback’s throwing, he mouthed, “Where did you find this woman?”

Then, Dad told the billboard story. “Sophomore year.” He pointed a rib bone at me. “This one breaks several bones in his throwing hand, which required surgery. Every analyst in the country writes him off. ESPN talked about him sitting out the season. His own teammates weren’t sure he’d come back.”

Ayla looked at me. I shook my head, trying to tell her, Don’t encourage him. But she was already leaning in.

“So what happened?” she asked.

Dad grinned. “I bought a billboard.”