The Game

Chapter 6-1

“Why are you sitting over here?”

The following week, I attended my first official home game as the team’s owner. Right before halftime, I’d been sitting in the owner’s box with friends when the jumbotron zoomed in on a man in the visiting team’s bleacher seats. My grandfather. I knew he had season tickets right behind the home team bench, so I went down to check on him.

My grandfather.My brows furrowed when I saw his shirt. “And what in heaven’s name are you wearing?” I bent for a closer look.

“Lost a damn bet with Knox.”

Oh my God, is that Christian’s face? “What bet did you lose?”

Oh my God, is that Christian’s face? “He beat me at checkers, so I have to sit here with all this dumb s**t on.”

“Why were you playing checkers with Christian?”

“Because he’s a sore loser. I won last time, so he had to have a rematch.”

I shook my head. “But why were you playing with him at all?”

My grandfather shrugged. “You’ve seen the outdoor park in my complex…”

“Yes? What about it?”

“They have those concrete tables with checkerboards painted on the top.”

“Okay…”

“We sometimes stop there when we go out for a walk.”

I was still confused. “Christian comes to see you?”

“Once or twice a month. He used to come to my team’s practices, but since I retired, he comes to the house instead.”

“I didn’t realize you two were friendly.”

“Ever since I coached his pee-wee football team—too many years ago for me to count. I followed his career through the years after that, made your father come down and watch a few of his high school games. That’s how he became interested in Knox for the Bruins.”

Pee-wee football. And here I’d thought Christian was poking fun at me for being a stats geek and not knowing people so well. I had no idea my grandfather had been his coach.

Pee-wee football. “Well, the jumbotron found you sitting on the visitor side, and the announcers are having a field day with it. Why don’t you come up to the owner’s box for the rest of the game?”

He shook his head. “No can do. I’m no deadbeat. A bet’s a bet.”

I sighed. “Okay…well, my friend Miller is here with some friends, so I’m going to go back up. But I’ll come back down in a little bit to keep you company.”

“You enjoy your friends. I’m fine right here by myself watching the game.”

I smiled. “I’ll be back anyway.”

The second half had already started by the time I made my way back to the fancy skybox. “Is everything alright with your grandfather?” Miller asked.

“Yeah, he’s fine. Apparently he lost a bet, so that’s why he’s sitting on the opposing side, wearing a T-shirt with Christian Knox’s face on it.”

“Sounds like something we would do.” Miller sipped his wine and motioned to the private seating area outside where his new boyfriend, Trent, and Trent’s brother, Travis, were sitting. “So what do you think of Trav?”

I squinted. “I thought you said this wasn’t a fix up.”

“It’s not. But he has a great smile, doesn’t he?”

Sadly, I hadn’t even noticed. Though I had noticed, from all the way up here, that Christian Knox had a fantastic one as he stood on the sidelines. It was less of a smile and more of a smirk. On his official player photo, you could see one dimple. But in some of the interviews I’d watched this week, a second one made an appearance too. And no, I hadn’t stalked. I’d done research. I was the team owner now and needed to know who my players were. At least that was what I’d told myself on more than one occasion as I clicked on his photo in the team portal.

I shrugged. “I guess so. But you know I just started dating Julian.”

“Not dating. Date. You had one. Speaking of which, has he called yet?”

Date.“No, but it’s only been a week.”

“I called Trent five minutes after our date ended to see if he wanted to go out again. He was literally still on my block, walking to the train he takes home.”

“Not everyone likes to go at warp speed in relationships like you do. Besides, I’ve known Julian a long time. He’s not the type of guy to rush into things, even with projects when we worked together. It was one of the things that gave us a lot of compatibility when I was doing the math on us.”

“The math on us.” Miller scoffed. “I know you’re a math genius, but not everything can be solved using a formula. If you’re going to pick men to date with some sort of dumb algorithm you developed—”

I interrupted. “I didn’t develop the algorithm. I used the Gale-Shapley model. It’s been proven to work for dating apps like Hinge, college admissions, and matching residents to hospitals. It’s a solid solution to stable matching problems. The developers won the Nobel Prize for it. Besides, you’re the one who pushed me to find someone I could have a long-term relationship with so…” I made air quotes. “I don’t wind up an old maid.”

“I meant to go out and meet people or go out with a guy more than five times, not feed all the men you know into a database.”

meant“You have your ways of doing things, and I have mine.”

“Fine. But if you’re going to score men, you should at least know the deets on Travis. He’s single, a contractor, has an eight twelve credit score, drives a Tesla, and owns his own home. He also doesn’t purchase single-use plastic bottles because he’s concerned about the environment.”

eight twelve credit score“And you’re telling me this because today was not a setup.”

notMiller grinned. “That’s right.”

“I’m going to grab a drink and go back outside to watch the game.”

He guzzled the remnants of his wine and held the glass out to me. “As long as you’re at it… I need to tinkle.”

Travis smiled when we joined them outside. Miller was right; his smile was nice. But I found myself comparing it to Christian’s. Which was absolutely ridiculous.

“So, what’s it like running a football team?” he asked.

“Well, it’s only been two weeks, but it’s pretty much meeting after meeting. I’m not used to that. I think a lot of people really like to hear themselves talk.”

Travis chuckled. “I’m not a meeting person either. I actually changed my career because of that.”

“Miller said you’re a contractor. What did you do before?”

“I went to school to be an architect. Once I graduated, it took me less than a year to realize that while I loved building things, I wasn’t cut out for the job. I spent more than half my time in meetings with owners, inspectors, the building department, or my bosses. So I quit and bought a house that was falling down near me. Moved into one room while I fixed it up, and then I sold it. A friend of my dad’s loved the renovations I’d done and asked me to work on his summer home. Things snowballed from there, and I transitioned to being a contractor.”

“Do you like owning your own business?”

He turned in his seat to face me. “I do. The good thing about being the boss is that if you don’t like parts of your job, you can assign those to someone else. My assistant handles all the building-department issues, and my site manager handles all the homeowner issues. So I pretty much get to focus on the building part, which is what I like.”

“Well, that’s something to look forward to. I’m pretty sure I don’t even know all the different parts of my job yet.”

“You will soon enough. When I started at the architecture firm, I found myself asking tons of questions of the contractors I’d work with. Looking back, I realize I was more interested in that job than the one I was hired to do, from the very beginning.”

I smiled. “I asked a million questions of the Director of Analytics the other day.”

“What does he do, exactly?”

“He keeps all the statistics the coaches use to manage the players and prepare for games against each opponent.”

“I guess that’s up your alley?”

I tapped the three-ring binder sitting on my lap. I’d been jotting things down in it all day. “I’ve started working on an algorithm that predicts game stats, just for fun, in my spare time. I’m better with numbers than people.”

“I don’t know about that. You’re doing pretty well right now.”

He seemed like a sweet-enough guy, but I needed to stay focused on the team, and talking to him kept me from tracking the stats I wanted to record. So a little while later, I excused myself and went to go sit with my grandfather. I learned more spending a quarter and a half next to him than I had reading a hundred books on football over the last two years.

When the game was over, I’d started to wheel him from the row when Christian Knox appeared on the sideline directly beneath us.

He banged on the backstop wall. “Nice shirt, old man!”

“I’m going to use it as a rag when I get home,” my grandfather yelled. “By the way, you looked great out there today… Oh wait, that wasn’t you who led the team to victory. It was the guy gunning for your job.”

Christian clutched his chest. “Low blow, Coach. Low blow.”

The two men smiled. Christian lifted his chin to me. “What’s going on, boss lady?”

“Not much. Just got more of an education on the sport of football in an hour than I did over the last two years trying to learn it on my own.”

“It’s annoying as hell, isn’t it? I think I know it all until I sit with him. You guys sticking around for a while?” He thumbed over his shoulder. “I gotta run to the post-game meeting. But I can grab the PT van from Doc and give you a ride home, if you want, Coach.” He looked at me. “It’s wheelchair accessible, and they don’t care when I take it to drive him.”

My grandfather put a finger up. “I’ll take the ride. Lenny Riddler dropped me off, but I know his daughter is in town, so I’d rather not make him go out of his way again.” He pointed to Christian. “You, on the other hand, I don’t mind wasting your time.”

Christian laughed. “You guys going to be around here?”

“Actually,” I said, “I have some friends up in the owner’s box. Why don’t you meet us there?”

He nodded. “Will do.”

Forty-five minutes later, Christian strolled into the owner’s box carrying three pizzas. He winked at me. “Thought you might be hungry.”