Page 78 of Protecting the Boundary
It never gets old hearing her call Meredith her mom. Kaylee doesn’t remember a time before Meredith, and that makes me happy and sad at the same time. She knows all about Sydney. Meredith has always insisted that we have pictures of Sydney available for Kaylee, who looks more and more like Syd every day.
Rome comes racing into the room followed by his little brother, Cross. At eight and six, they’ve hit that really fun age, but also have moments where they can’t stand each other. Kaylee is the overprotective big sister who’s always looking out for them and was thrilled when we brought Rome home from the hospital when she was six years old.
I put my hand out. “Woah, woah, slow down. Where are your shoes, Cross?”
“In my room.”
“Go get ’em. We gotta go.”
Kaylee is sleeping over at her best friend’s house tonight after they go to the football game at her high school. Meredith is a wreck about it because she can’t wrap her head around the fact Kay is already a freshman in high school. I teased her about it until she told me Kaylee would likely start dating in the next few years, which immediately wiped the smile from my face.
Yeah, no.
Cross runs out of the room, while Rome grabs his jacket. The boys are coming with Meredith and me to the Wolves game tonight. It’s no surprise that they’re huge football fans. After Meredith finished her degree and got her doctorate in physical therapy, she became a sports physical therapist for the Wolves where I’d joined the coaching staff. Nowadays, I work alongside my old coach Alison Fairbright, and I’ve helped take the team to three Super Bowls since my retirement as a player.
All in all, life is good. My kids are happy and healthy, and I’m married to the love of my life who never fails to make me smile.
The doorbell rings and Kaylee shouts, “I’ll get it.”
“No doubt that’s Sabrina,” Meredith says, walking up to me and kissing my cheek before she follows our daughter to the door.
I overhear her conversation with Sabrina’s mom, but focus on getting the boys ready to go. We’re already running a few minutes late. It gets infinitely harder to get out of the house on time when you have kids, but boys are a whole new adventure. Kaylee was too easy on me, I quickly found out. Rome and Cross seem to compete on who can be the most challenging on any given day.
Meredith waves as Kaylee gets in the car with Sabrina and her mom and walks back in looking excited but nervous.
“She’ll be fine,” I tell her for the fourteenth time.
“I know, I know. She’s just so grown up. I can’t get over it.”
I drop a kiss to her head. “I know how you feel.”
We look at each other, solidarity passing between us, and then Cross is running into the room with two different shoes on his feet, and the moment’s passed.
When we finally get to the stadium, we’re miraculously only five minutes late since traffic was light. The boys know the rules from how often they come to games, and tonight, Dom and Alayna are here with their three kids. Their twin boys, Ryder and Zeke, are a year older than Rome. We’ve dubbed them “The Three Amigos” because they’ve always been best friends. Their daughter, Talia, is a year younger than Cross, and I think Meredith and Alayna are both hoping they’ll get married.
Dom’s like me and insists his daughter will never date.
Rome and Cross run over to the first row seats where Dom and Alayna’s kids are and all start talking with each other and pointing out their favorite players.
Dom walks over to me on the sidelines. “You know, if we were still playing, they’d say we were their favorites.”
I smile. “I’m not so sure about that. Cross asked if I was any good. I told him I had four Super Bowl rings and he said that Singer, the new player we just recruited, has five, like four wasn’t good enough.”
Dom shakes his head. “Kids these days have no appreciation for how hard we worked to get those wins.”
“I know!”
Just like we always said we would, the Fierce Four has stayed well connected, even as we all moved on from football. I was the first to retire, but Gabe followed suit two seasons later when he got a bad neck injury. The doctor told him he’d berisking his life if he kept playing football. He said it was the easiest decision he ever made. Ty kept playing for a few more years, but ended up being traded to another team that he didn’t jibe with. He retired after one season there and moved back to LA with us. Dom retired the same year Ty got traded from the Wolves.
Football had been our lives, but once we all had families, our priorities shifted and it wasn’t as hard to stop playing as we all had suspected it would be.
Of course, it might also help that we all live next door to each other.
After Meredith and I got engaged, we bought a new house. I insisted. I appreciated that she was okay with living in the house where I made memories with Sydney, but I wasn’t comfortable with it any longer. Pictures were enough to hold the memories. I wanted a house where I could make new memories with Meredith. The house next to Gabe was up for sale, so we bought it and moved. When Dom found out, he offered the neighbors on either side an insane amount of money for their house. One took the offer immediately, and now Dom and Alayna live on the other side of Gabe and Danae. When Ty moved back to LA, he pulled a Dom and made a higher offer to our neighbors, who took the deal and ran.
And that’s how the Fierce Four took over our neighborhood. Barbecues are a blast and super easy. Even better, our kids are all friends, and we rotate who takes them every so often so each couple gets alone time. It’s the best setup I could have ever imagined.
Change isn’t always bad—scary, maybe—but closing the chapter on one part of your life doesn’t necessarily mean you’re closing the book. It just means you move on to something that might be better. And in our case, it is.
