Page 19 of The Progressions

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Alicia said firmly, and a whistle blew as the practice started. She got distracted by watching her husband and the players, and also when her youngest son dropped her phone under the bleachers and her little daughter started to cry.

“What’s wrong with Tyler?” I whispered to the girl she’d called Dalila.

She had plenty to say when her mom wasn’t listening. “He’s a real booty hole. Wait, are you his girlfriend?”

I laughed. “No! Why is he a booty hole?”

She thought he must have been born that way, and it was a shame, but some kids came out nasty (like a girl in her class…that was a story I tried to head off, because I wanted to hear about Tyler). Basically, he’d done nothing to endear himself to anyone, not to the coaches and not to the other players.

“He complains. He says that the stadium is small and a piece of shit.” Her eyes slid to her mother, but she was heading off with the younger boy and the tiny girl to try to get under the bleachers. “He says that the guys on the offense suck, that Kayden Matthews is a terrible QB, that the coach doesn’t knowwhat he’s doing. The O-line is weak, the running backs are slow, and the worst part—”

“There’s something worse?”

She nodded. “He started making fun of César, César Hidalgo.”

I knew all about our former tight end, the guy who’d held the starting job until he’d retired and the team had signed Tyler. “What did he say about Hidalgo?”

“That he was old and he should have retired three seasons ago. Nobody liked that, especially since César isn’t there to defend himself.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked her. She knew everything.

“I make my brother Omar eavesdrop on my mom and dad,” she said. “I pay him a buck for every juicy thing he tells me. They won’t ever get mad at him because he was the baby for so long before Salma was born. He’s such a baby,” she told me, rolling her eyes. She wanted to watch the practice then, and so did I, but she’d given me a lot to think about. I knew that Tyler hadn’t been the most popular guy on his former team in California, not according to all the gossip from out there. He certainly hadn’t always been the friendliest person to me, either, and yeah, he had been outright rude more than once.

Ok, so he was just a booty hole. Not always, though, I told myself. He hadn’t been when he’d waited for me, to walk me to my car. He always did that when he came home and found me working in his condo. He wasn’t rude when we were together there, either, although I could also say that he wasn’t always the friendliest, or the most clothed. But to go out of his way to insulthis teammates? It almost seemed like…no, he wouldn’t have purposefully antagonized them. Right?

Anyway, he wasn’t doing that today and no one seemed to be trying to truck him, which made me glad. I watched as players laughed and talked to each other, but no one was chatting with Tyler. Well, if he’d behaved the way the girl had just described, why would they have? He performed in practice just as well as the other guys, as far as I could tell. If I was being totally honest, he probably did better—but all the Woodsmen were awesome, as always.

I was bursting with questions by the time that they came out of the showers and it was time for everyone to go in for lunch, which was a huge and lavish buffet. I took some surreptitious pictures to show my dad, and I’d taken them of the practice, too. I watched now as the guys started to stream out towards us, smiling as they joined their wives, girlfriends, kids, and sometimes parents. They all seemed to have people here, but Tyler hadn’t answered about where his own mother was, and Shay Galton was in…where was she again? Somewhere fun, and I could check her social media later.

Tyler finally came out, too, and he looked around briefly before his eyes landed on me. Then he smiled, and I felt just the same as when he’d done that once before: as if someone had opened a curtain and let sunshine pour in. I smiled back as he walked quickly over.

“That was a good practice,” I said, and he nodded.

“Not bad,” he answered. “Are you hungry?”

I was, and I wanted to try everything so I got a plate and started to fill it. We talked as we moved down the buffet line, about how the workout had gone, about him learning the playbook, and about the woman in Building D who had called me three times today, a Saturday, to complain about misplacing her wallet in her condo—or she could have lost it at work, at the grocery store, or at the gym, and she wanted to know if I could find it. I followed him toward the long tables, which I guessed were set up so that everyone would eat communally and meet new people. But it seemed to be dividing so that the offense, defense, and special teams players self-selected to be near each other. Jory Morin from the O-line sat with his wife, each of them holding one of their twins. She was next to the quarterback and they were surrounded by the center, right tackle, and two of the receivers. But we didn’t join that group.

“Let’s go here,” Tyler said, and he picked a spot at the end of the table where the special teams guys sat, which was also the farthest away from everyone else.

“Ok,” I said, and took the chair across from him. “Is this what you guys get to have for lunch every day?”

“Yeah, pretty much the same.” He looked at my plate. “You took as much as the linemen do.”

“I got a little excited,” I admitted. “I tend to do that at buffets because I want to make sure I get my share.”

“They’re not going to run out. Here, I’ll help you.” He did that by stabbing several bowties from my plate and popping them into his mouth.

“I don’t like when people touch my pasta salad,” I told him, and he shrugged and swallowed in a very conspicuous way. “Why didn’t you want to sit with the guys you play with?”

“I play with them, too,” he told me, glancing at the long snapper and the holder sitting a few chairs down. I waved and smiled, and they nodded back. There were Woodsmen everywhere, and it was a little hard to take.

But I settled down as I ate, because I was excited but also hungry. “How come you wanted me to come today?” I asked Tyler.

“You didn’t want to?”

“I really did,” I said immediately. “I’m thrilled to be here, more than I can put into words.”

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