Page 58 of The Progressions

“I’m never telling her anything, ever again,” I announced. “No, it’s not a playdate. I’m trying to connect you with yourteammates and first, I had an idea that you might want to have a party. But Iva won’t want people in that hothouse with baby Balderston. Ante up.”

Tyler pushed over a paper clip, a big one because this was a high-stakes game. “Last night, he fell asleep on me, skin to skin. I think he liked hearing my heartbeat.”

I imagined doing that myself, and decided that I would like everything about it. “But he’s not really ready to be a fun guest,” I said, and Tyler agreed and gave himself two cards.

“Tell me why I would I have a party.”

“To be collegial. You know, nice,” I answered. I pointed to the deck. “I’ll take one.”

“You’re going to win. I already know it,” he said, and frowned. He wasn’t a sore loser, but he didn’t really enjoy it.

“Because of the limitations in your condo, a party is out,” I continued. “I made a dinner reservation for you instead, for tomorrow night.”

“What?” Tyler asked. He was focused on his hand and tossed another bet onto the pile. “I raise you a clip.”

I saw his bet with a safety pin and raised a rubber band. “I said, I made a—”

“No, I heard you just fine,” he interrupted. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I call. Two of a kind.”

I also laid out my cards. “That’s a straight, which beats your hand,” I said helpfully.

“God damn it, tomorrow I’m bringing my own deck, and we’ll see how you do with those.” He picked up my cards, shaking his head. “Who am I supposed to be going to dinner with?”

“You can pick from a list of people. I considered the Woodsmen offense, and I narrowed the possibilities down to five. It’s based on your personalities.” I held out my phone. “Take a look.”

He did, very briefly. “There are more than forty guys on our offense. How the hell do you know all their personalities?”

“I study how they play and I watch them on the sidelines. I listen to their interviews and read whatever I can,” I explained. “I look their social media, I look at their girlfriends’ and wives’ and exes’ posts, I find out at what other players say about them.”

“That doesn’t mean very much,” he disagreed. “If you did that about me, what would you think?”

Probably nothing good. Shay Galton’s recent pictures had been mostly sales pitches for different products and had contained enough nudity and sexual content that several of them had been removed. In interviews, Tyler was very quiet and hard to read, and if you had believed what the other Seal players had said about him, then you wouldn’t have liked him at all.

And you really would like him a lot. “If you think I’m wrong about them, choose other guys instead,” I encouraged. “But take a look at my list.”

He did. “Yeah, he’s not bad.” He was pointing at the first name there, the guy who was the second-option wide receiver.

“Great!” I said happily. In my brief interactions with Santiago at Fan Day, I had always thought he was nice. His wife was a former Woodsmen Wonderwomen cheerleader, so I already knew all about her, of course. “That’s a good choice. I’ll send you the restaurant information and you can ask him to go this afternoon, at your practice.”

“Do I have to give him flowers or make a cute sign, like asking a date to prom?”

“Did you really do that for your prom date?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine how excited that girl must have been.

“I didn’t do a sign, but I did give her a rose. She said yes,” he answered, but that was obvious. “Did you go?”

“Shockingly, I did. For some side money, I was tutoring a guy who had just moved to our town from Portugal, and we went together. First, we had eggs and pancakes that I made for a special ‘breakfast for dinner’ prom meal that we shared with my dad, and then we drove separately because João was hoping to run into the girl he actually liked and he thoughtfully suggested that I’d need to find my own way home. It was nice of him to mention it,” I said, “because I couldn’t have afforded a rideshare to my house, and none of them would have wanted to drive that far, anyway.”

“Did you have fun?”

“Not really,” I confessed. “Back then, I was also working at a marina and the day before, I had dropped a small anchor on my foot. I wasn’t too excited about dancing, and I didn’t have peopleto hang out with once my date hooked up with his girl. Did you have fun at yours?”

“As we tried to leave the hotel where they’d held it, my car wouldn’t start, so I popped the hood to look around. My date leaned over to see what I was doing. But she was drunk and she made herself dizzy. She threw up into my engine,” he said. “She had already lost her phone at a pre-party we’d gone to so she wasn’t answering her mom, and she obviously wasn’t at that location when her dad and big brother went to find her. They were driving around looking for her, and when they saw her lying in the back seat of my car with puke all over her dress, they tried to kill me. They had brought baseball bats.”

“Good grief!” It was much worse than mine, because João was really nice and had walked slowly so that my bruised foot and I could keep up with him. “Did you fight them?”

Tyler shook his head. “It was one of those times that it was smarter to run, and neither of them could keep up with me. I don’t think I’ve ever gone much faster than I did when I left my screaming date in that parking lot.”

“I don’t understand the thing about trying to prevent people from having sex on prom night,” I mentioned.

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