Page 8 of Faking the Pass
“Lowe has been miraculously injury-free during his twelve seasons in the NFL, but unfortunately it only takes one sometimes,” one of them said.
The other nodded. “Especially for a quarterback whose arm is his calling card. And it’s his throwing shoulder. I guess only time will tell if he can overcome it and play at his former level again. At his age—”
“Change that channel, would you baby?” Mom asked Dylan in a loud but pleasant voice. “We’ll all get plenty of football later today.”
Still trying to protect me.
My brother immediately picked up the remote, and the image on the screen changed to an aerial shot of Eastport Bay’s coastline, Oceanview Avenue in particular—Rhode Island’s version of Billionaire Row
Several of the famous Gilded Age mansions with their expansive green lawns and sweeping Atlantic Ocean views could be seen from above.
The camera’s perspective switched to a street view of one of the stately homes, Bellevue Manor, and the line of limousines arriving in front of it for some special event.
An excited female voice chattered about the celebrities who were expected here in town today. Dylan was about to change the channel again, when our sister-in-law Jessica walked into the room from the back hallway, holding her two-year-old son Theo.
She glanced at the screen. “Oh! That’s the wedding Wilder is working today. Leave that on, Dylan, I want to see it.”
She smiled at the parade of famous faces going in, dressed to the nines and waving to the cameras.
Made sense. Jessica, who went by the stage name Jade in her music career, probably knew a lot of those people personally.
“Any video of the bride yet?” she asked eagerly.
“Nah, we just turned it on,” Dylan said, getting up from his chair to tower over her and the baby. “Want me to take him so you can watch?”
“Sure.” She handed the toddler to his favorite uncle.
The kid was supposedly tall for his age—like father, like son—but he looked tiny in Dylan’s arms. Well, mostadultslooked tiny compared to the guys in my family.
“Who’s the best boy?” Dylan crooned to him as Theo grabbed his nose and squeezed it. “Is it Theo? I think it is. I think it’s Theo.”
My younger brother was pretty great with kids. He had one of his own, a six-year-old daughter who’d come along unexpectedly when he was a senior in college. He didn’t have her full-time, but whenever I saw them together I was in awe of his apparently natural parenting skills.
“Actually aslightlyless good boy today,” Jess corrected him.
Turning to me, she scrunched her face in a comical wince. “Uncle Presley, I’m sorry to inform you that your phone is not waterproof.”
“Did Theo spill his sippy cup on it or something? That’s no biggie.”
Not used to having small children around, Ihadleft my phone on the coffee table, directly in the kid’s line of sight. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen the device in a while.
Jessica rolled her eyes upward then brought them back to meet mine.
“Not exactly. We’ve been working with him to, you know, get him interested in the toilet in preparation for potty training? And well… he’s interested,” she said. “He’s mastered the part about some things belonging in the potty. There’s just a little confusion aboutwhichthings. I’m not sure how he got it without me noticing, but he kind of… flushed your phone.”
What?” I barked a laugh. “Like, all the way down the pipes?”
“No. No, it didn’t go down, but it did… drown.”
“Bye bye!” Theo yelled at the top of his lungs, and we all laughed at his unintentional comedic timing.
She pulled the dark, lifeless phone from her back pocket. “I dried it off as best I could, but I think it might be dead. Oh, and there was nothing elseinthe potty at the time, in case you’re wondering.”
“Thank God for small favors,” I said.
“We’ll replace it of course,” Jess rushed to add as she sheepishly placed the doomed phone on my open palm.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I have a backup at home. I’ll contact the carrier tomorrow to tell them to transfer service to it.”
