Page 20 of The Brotherly Shove

"I saw the game last night. Electric, man. Sucks you're not playing for the Bruisers but shit, two Philly boys showing off on the stage like that? Yous guys did us proud. Hey, can you sign this for me?" He retrieves a crumpled receipt and pen from his jean's pocket and shoves it towards me. I'm completely dazed as I take the scrap of paper, smoothing it out on my thigh and scribbling out my signature on the back as best as I can without putting a whole in the paper. I hand it back to the man and he claps me on the back as he pulls out a phone. He snaps a selfie of us without asking. I wish he had, I would've said yes and he'd have a picture where I at least bothered to look towards the camera.

I make a mental note to geek out about signing my first autograph later. I'm too stunned to squeal right now.

My eyes are glued to the tiny television screen. There's no sound, but the closed captioning at the bottom of the screen tells me everything I need to know.

"Hometown heros, Breaker Lawson and Lennon Griffith…"

"The unstoppable duo from Pennbrook University…"

"Third string Redwoods quarterback. Mr. Irrelevant himself…"

And finally, the screen switches from Lennon and me to a familiar pot bellied, gray haired sportscaster I grew up watching, and the words he says appear on the screen.

I hold my breath. This old cuckoo bird rarely has anything kind to say about anyone, even the guys on our home teams.

"Griffith and Lawson have brought their notorious quarterback sneak from their Division I days to the San Francisco Redwoods. These boys might be playing in California,but Philadelphia is claiming these local guys as our own. Fans of the former Pennbrook Panthers took to the internet last night after the duo secured a win in Knoxville, officially dubbing the piggyback play 'The Brotherly Shove', a nod to the city that raised Griffith and Lawson."

The screen changes, switching to a swirl of fall colors advertising the return of the Gobbler hoagie at Wawa, but still I stare.

The Brotherly Shove.

That's goddamn clever. That's gonna catch on like wildfire.

Just fucking great.

I swear to all that is holy, my life is one big cosmic joke at this point. I mean seriously, is it because I didn't forward a chain email my weird aunt sent to me in the eighth grade to twelve people? Did I walk under a ladder or accidentally cross a black cat on Friday the 13th? Is that karmic injustice finally catching up to me? It has to be, because how the hell else do you explain the fact that amongst everything else—the crush, the distance, the fight, the forced proximity, all of it—the universe decides to fan the flames of the dumpster fire that is my heart.

The play that Len and I were known for in college. The one that won us the game last night, that managed to make national news in the span of one cross country flight. The one that will likely be talked about on every damn sports podcast until something more interesting comes along.

Naturally, that play would be nicknamed after the word that broke my heart into a million pieces. The Brotherly Shove.

That's what Len and I are to the world. What we were to him.

Goddamn brothers.

"Out of all the places we could've gone for your birthday dinner, this is where you choose?" I ask Ma as I hold open the door to Buds, a local spot with standard dark and tattered mahogany booths, a token old white guy with a beard drinking Miller Lites at the corner of the bar at any given time of a day, and the best cheesesteaks I've ever eaten in my life.

Word to the wise, when visiting Philly, skip the gimmicky 'rival' cheesesteak shops down in South Philly. They're trash. You want a good cheesesteak? You find yourself a corner pizza joint where the counter is manned by an eighty year old Italian man wearing a white t-shirt stained with marinara and grease.

Hands down, it'll be the most delicious sandwich you ever eat.

"Booger, it's Friday!" Ma exclaims, her accent making it sound more like 'Fry-dee'. "I don't care if it's my birthday. It's not a Friday night without $2 Yuenglings and the Buds prime rib special."

Like clockwork, Sam the bartender is crossing the bar to the stool I pull out for Ma to sit at, placing two bottles of Yuengling Lager in front of us and popping the top off with a bottle opener she pulls from her back pocket. When I sit, she reaches across the bar and squishes my cheeks between her fingers.

"My little baby, all grown up and winning NFL games! You shoulda heard the guys grumbling away last night when I had the Redwoods game on all the TV's in here instead of the Flyers game, but boy did they change their tune when our little Breaky-poo ran out onto the field. I haven't heard this room cheer for any one football team that wasn't the Bruisers since Dallas lostto Kansas City in the Big Game a few years back." Sam smacks her hand on the bar like she can't believe what she's saying, and I only curl in on myself a teeny tiny bit at her praise. I've known Sam my whole life. Her parents own Buds and befriended Ma way back in the day when they first opened. Sam is ten years older than me and used to babysit me when I was little, a fact that she loves to remind me of at every chance she gets.

The night I was drafted, she got drunk and told everyone who would listen about the time I cried for thirty minutes after she sprayed me right in the face with a hose, thinking it would be a fun summer activity to play in the water. I swear I was sneezing out hose water for days.

As she was telling the story, she picked up the hose, pointed it at me and asked me if hoses still make me cry before soaking me with the spray.

She's a bitch and I love her so much.

"You're not gonna beg me to sign something for you? You wound me, Sammy," I clutch at my heart, and then brace for impact as the whack I was expecting hits me upside the head. All three of us laugh as Sam turns to the POS, opening a ticket that I can see from here is labeled 'Ma&SmartAss'.

"The usual, guys?" she asks, though I can already see her ringing in Ma's prime rib and my cheesesteak with provolone cheese, mayo, and two orders of fries so that I have extra to shove into the sandwich.

Twenty minutes later, half my cheesesteak has been consumed and the fries have been annihilated. Though to be fair, half of those were eaten by Sam, stolen out of my basket as she ran back and forth behind the bar, mixing and serving drinks to the Friday night crowd.

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