Page 27 of The Progressions

“Booty hole,” I muttered to myself. I was upset and worried and I should have been excited and happy today, since tonight was the first Woodsmen preseason game. They were playing on the East Coast against a team, the Nautilus, which had been bad the previous year. Very bad. But they’d made some great changes in the off-season, as had the Woodsmen. They’d managed to get ahold of Tyler Hennessy, after all, and it would be his first game in the orange uniform.

I had seen him since he’d gotten back from the team trip to the island. He’d stopped by the office on his way home from their morning practice, the day after he’d returned.

“You didn’t capsize,” I had greeted him when he came in, but he’d been in no mood for my hilarious banter. He had wanted to tell me that he and Shay Galton were talking again.

“Texting,” he’d specified. “I’m writing and she’s reading it, then having her assistant answer me from her own phone.”

“Whatever works, I guess,” I’d said.

“She’s sorry,” he told me, but she hadn’t conveyed that to the rest of the world, only to him.

“Can I see what she says about it?” I had asked, and he’d blushed, a faint raspberry-colored wash over his high cheekbones.

“It’s, uh, personal.”

I stared for a moment before I understood. “Ugh, do you mean that she’s having her assistant write sexy stuff to you? Some poor girl has to transcribe it?”

That was correct, as far as I could tell, but he wouldn’t discuss it any further. He had wanted to know if the harassment by her fans was continuing and that really was getting better, since they did seem to have the attention spans of aphids (and that was probably disparaging to aphids). There were still problems, like the guy screaming insults at me, but I didn’t bother to relay that information. After all, as I’d asked Iva—what was he supposed to do about it?

In the few days since he’d been back, Tyler had been visiting fairly regularly. He would knock, since I was locking the office door now, and hang out for a while, or he’d invite me to come up to his condo instead, where he generally liked to be barefoot, shirtless, and often bottomless (just underwear). We didn’t do a whole heck of a lot, like, we weren’t involved in deep conversations about world issues. We talked about his practices,the guys on the team, the upcoming season. He asked a lot of questions about my dad, about my classes, and about law school. He was always interested in discussions about cooking. I also tried to bring up his family and his relationship with Shay Galton, but he was very close-mouthed about those topics. I knew that he had grown up with his mom and that her name was Gail, but I had already learned those things months before when I’d researched him as news of the impending signing got leaked.

Once, he’d even asked me about my own mom. “How did she die?”

“She had an accident.”

“Driving?”

“No, with taking too much medicine,” I’d said. “An accidental overdose.”

He had looked exactly like everyone else did when they heard those words: entirely disbelieving.

“It’s true,” I insisted, because I had never been able to let this go. I always had to convince everyone. “She had a chronic back problem from an actual car accident when she was a kid, and she took pain medication for it. She had stopped when she was pregnant with me but her old injury felt worse, and afterwards, when she started taking it again, her body didn’t react the same. She overdosed.”

“That’s what your dad told you.”

“That’s the truth,” I had responded, my voice brittle. “He doesn’t lie, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

It was exactly what he had been insinuating, because it was what everyone insinuated. “I can’t imagine having the picture of my dead wife hanging across from my bed,” Tyler had commented next, and it made me even angrier.

“He misses her!” I’d exploded, and his eyes had widened and then we’d talked about something else.

I went home that night after Iva’s visit in a terrible mood, worried about her and upset about the guy yelling names in the parking lot. As much as I tried not to let that stuff get to me, it wasn’t fun. No, it was nothing like fun, and I was glad to be home. “Daddy?” I called as I went inside, and I always had a moment where my heart didn’t quite beat before he answered.

“I’ve got the pregame on,” he said, and I smiled. The radio already sat on the table to broadcast Herb and Buzz, the Woodsmen announcers. It would stay there until the end of the season, and hearing their voices was like meeting up with old friends. We ate dinner as they chatted and as soon as they pivoted to their pregame TV show, we turned to that. They did interviews and stood on the sideline as the guys did their warmup, so you could usually get glimpses of a lot of the players in the background.

I watched as they talked with the Woodsmen quarterback, who looked relaxed and excited. That was a good sign. We listened carefully and I took some notes on my phone, as I did during every game. I liked to monitor improvements throughout the season, to see how players progressed.

I glanced across the couch. “Daddy? You ok?” I asked. His eyes had been closing.

“I’m awake,” he told me, and when I looked at the screen again, I saw that they were now panning along the sidelines. During the actual game, there were strict rules about who could hang out there, but before the real action started, you could often glimpse the players’ friends and family, former Woodsmen, and celebrities, especially at home games. And there was someone I definitely recognized.

“That’s Shay Galton,” I announced. “There, behind Herb and Buzz.” She stood with her hip cocked forward, her shoulder back so that her breasts extended, and her chin tilted down. It was a pose I would try later when my dad was asleep in the bedroom and I had the living room to myself.

I’d had to tell him a little bit of the story of what had happened between her, Tyler, and me, because Dad looked at the different websites dedicated to the Woodsmen. There was definitely information about the trouble between the new tight end and his girlfriend, and my name got thrown around a lot. But in my retelling, I had downplayed the situation by saying that it was just preseason nonsense, that people were looking to stir things up to distract the Woodsmen, and that the two of them were a solid couple. My father had been very mad about the names that some people had called me but the Woodsmen fans weren’t as bad as Shay Galton’s crowd, so he hadn’t read the worst of it. Despite that, he hadn’t been totally convinced by my explanation that it wasn’t anything and it didn’t matter. He was concerned about my feelings and very sure about Tyler’s.

“I’m not surprised that he fell in love with you,” Dad had told me. “I know you wouldn’t act on it, not when he has another girl. No matter what people said.”

No, I wouldn’t ever behave that way, and of course Tyler wouldn’t be acting on anything himself. He did have a girl, one who was as stunningly beautiful as he was handsome. Despite what my dad thought about me and my own attractions—

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