Page 123 of It's Always Sonny

I put my hands on his shoulders. “I’m coming with you.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“What?” I laugh in disbelief. “You don’t have a say in this. I love you, Sonny. I’m not losing you again.”

“You won’t lose me, but I can’t let you come with me. The Janes are too important. None of you would be who you are today without each other. You five need each other. You’re sisters. I can’t come in between you.”

“Sisters move away all the time. And the NFL isn’t forever. How long is the contract?”

“Three years, with an option to trade me after the first. Again.” He sounds so bitter, I have to wonder if this is about more than the trade.

“Great. We’ll be back in no time. Three years is nothing,” I insist.

“It’s not nothing. It’s huge. Do you know how many times I’ve moved after a year or eighteen months? How many friendships I’ve made and said goodbye to? I’ve lost entire lifetimes more times than I can count. I’m so tired of this. The second we’re back together—”

“Hey, we are still back together. You’re not breaking up with me over this. I’m coming with you.”

“I don’t know …”

“I do,” I say. “We don’t have to have everything figured out right this second.”

He pauses. “You’re right.”

“And if you hate it, you can always quit and I’ll be your sugar momma,” I say. I mean it as a joke, but Sonny studies me.

“I can’t quit.”

He’s taking this more seriously than I expected, and that makes me take it more seriously than I expected, too. “Why not?”

“Because I need to pay the bills. I need to have a job.”

A job. He’s not saying the NFL is his dream job, that he’d miss playing the game. He’s not saying that he lives and dies football like Duke does.

It’s a job.

When he told me all those years ago that he didn’t care about football, he was serious. And I pushed him away and into a career he didn’t care about. He just happened to be supernaturally talented with a great work ethic.

“Your bills are paid,” I tell him. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“But … wouldn’t you … wouldn’t it seem like … ”

“Like you’ve accomplished everything you could ever want and now it’s time to move on? Yeah, I guess it would.”

The most vulnerable softness appears on his face. “You wouldn’t think less of me?”

I grab his face and kiss him with every bit of feeling in me. I put my heart and soul into my lips, communicating my meaning more effectively than any pep talk could.

Sonny’s arms snake around me, pulling me tight, pressing me so firmly against his chest, I feel like he’s trying to put a piece of me in his heart. Or at least, that’s how I feel.

“Do you understand?” I ask softly, my lips feeling swollen.

“You wouldn’t think less of me,” he says, smiling and kissing me again. “And I should stop being stupid.”

I kiss him back. “Exactly.”

Mikey is blabbering on still, and Sonny unmutes the phone and says, “I’ll get back to you.”

And then he hangs up.

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