Page 55 of Brad & Finn
Chloe rolled her eyes at him before looking back out at the familiar avenue running the length of the town. “Well, you damn well better be after that little Polaroid stunt. Seriously, that was one of the most romantic things I’ve ever seen. I almost cried, and my mom and Christian are going to bawl their eyes out when I tell them about it.”
It had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, and he’d been betting it all on the fact that the old film still worked. The photos had been a little ghostly, and he hadn’t given Finn any chance to change his poses or think too hard, but that sort of made them all the better. He was pretty sure if he folded back the white edges of the photo, it would fit in the inside pocket of his wallet.
“I mean, how are you ever going to top that?” Chloe asked.
Brad rolled his shoulders one at a time. He had a few more ideas up his sleeve, but at least one of them was—hopefully—still in his childhood closet. He explained them to Chloe, answering a few clarifying questions as they drove through the winding streets of his old neighborhood.
“Okay, so we’ll meet you at the football field?” Chloe asked as he stepped out of the car in front of his driveway.
“Yeah, right around 5:30? That should hopefully give me enough time to get things together, get back, get dressed, and get over there.”
“Sounds like you have a lot of ‘getting’ to do, Bradley.”
His name wasn’t actually Bradley, it was Braden, but Chloe had somehow nicknamed his nickname, and he’d never discouraged it. In fact, it had always felt like their little thing, something that connected the two of them in a different way from his relationship with Kendall and deep affection for Finn. That was why his heart had damn near fallen out of his chest when Finn called him Bradley during their little photo shoot. It felt like they’d finally come full circle, coming back into each other’s lives, right when they were supposed to.
Brad gave Chloe his campiest salute and shut the car door before hurrying up his driveway. He tossed a quick wave at Mrs. Walters, who waved back, and he let himself in his old front door.
“Brad?” his mom called from the back of the house.
Even though Brad didn’t have much time to spare, he didn’t want to start up a shouting conversation where she’d try and yell up through the floor of his bedroom. Admittedly, the sound travelled pretty well, but that would waste even more of his precious searching time.
He walked into the kitchen and found her elbow deep in a bowl of some type of dough.
“Hi, honey! I wasn’t expecting you home today. Aren’t you going to prom soon?”
Brad walked over and placed a soft kiss on her cheek before peeking into the bowl. It looked like some sort of bread, but he wasn’t sure what kind. “Yeah, it’s in a couple of hours. I just…” He realized he was wholly unprepared for this conversation, but maybe he could get away with the basics. “I’m going to ask someone to prom, and I wanted to grab a few things from my room to do it.”
His mom turned and balanced the bowl on her hip, while both of her hands were still submerged in it. It was a talent she’d been forced to develop when Brad was a kid, running around the house and demanding her near constant attention as she tried to keep them both fed while also keeping him entertained and out of trouble.
“Well, that sounds fun!” She smiled. “Is it someone you went to school with? Sort of like a…what do you kids call it? A throwback?”
Shit, he’d walked right into that one. “It’s a friend of someone I went to school with,” Brad said, skirting the truth as best he could.
His mom cocked her head and studied him. “Is it serious?”
Brad leaned his hip into the counter. “I…don’t know. I don’t think it’s serious yet, but maybe it has the potential to be?”
He felt down to his core how deep a lie that was. He knew without a shadow of a doubt it had the potential to be serious because after only forty-eight hours, he felt like no time had passed at all, and he and Finn were ready to pick up on their four-year friendship—but this time with the bonus of twenty years of experience.
“Are they from Chicago?” she asked, expertly using a gender-neutral pronoun. Back when he was sweating on the floor of his college dorm, wondering if his coming-out phone call would bethe last time they talked, he never could have imagined her using they/them pronouns, yet here they were.
He didn’t always give his mom enough credit, so he let a little of his real thoughts slip out. “He lives in Indianapolis, which Google tells me is only a three-hour drive away. Maybe I’ll end up moving down to South Shore, or even farther out, and then it’ll be closer to two and a half. I haven’t seen next year’s schedule yet, but I’m sure there’ll be a fair amount of downtime in the off-season, and I have a few months to figure it all out, and?—”
Brad pressed his lips together at the wide-eyed expression his mom was making.
“That sounds like a lot more than an invitation to prom.” She turned and deposited the bowl back on the counter. Taking a few shuffle steps to the right, she nudged on the faucet with her elbow and rinsed her hands before turning back to face him. “I didn’t know you were dating again,” she said as she dried her hands on a towel decorated with the logo of the university he would soon be coaching for.
Brad tilted to the side so he could lean his head on the cabinet door. “I’m always kind of dating—or, at least, open to dating. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me? To keep myself open in case the future parent of your grandchildren appears?”
He had meant it as a joke, an attempt to deflect and hopefully end the conversation, but his mom waved her hand in the air in almost the exact same way his grandmother used to do. She’d been so great at waving away his mother’s anxieties and Brad’s stress about trying to be there for his mom after his dad left. She’d wave her hand and say “pish posh” in her breathy voice, and for just a moment, his mom’s shoulders would relax, and Brad would feel like he could take a full breath again. Losing her almost exactly eight years ago had been what spurred Brad to accept the recruiting job he’d never really wanted. He’d felt likehe had to dosomethingto keep his life moving—and to distract his mom from yet another loss.
“Well, yes, I say that, but you know I’m joking,” his mom said.
Brad scoffed as he tried to pull himself out of memories that seemed to linger around every corner and hang off every doorway in the house.
His mom studied him and then her face fell. “Honey, I know how busy you are and how serious you are about your job. Of course, I worry about you, out there on your recruiting trips all alone, but that’s not going to happen anymore, right? Not with this big promotion?”
“Yeah,” Brad said, reaching for his bicep and pressing against the grain. “It has been a bit lonely, but I’m hoping things are going to change.” At least, he’d been hoping adding Finn to the mix would change things, but that seemed like a lot of hope to hang on one person.
