Page 122 of The Off Limits Captain
“Your father is driving. The girls are packed already. I am not asking permission, Ryan.”
There it is. The tone I was raised on.
I press a hand to the glass and look at my reflection, hair damp, jaw tight, captain of a team that has just advanced, son of a woman who refuses to stay safely where I put her.
“I’ll send tickets,” I say.
“Good ones,” my father calls from somewhere off-phone.
I huff a laugh I do not plan. “Only the best.”
Peyton
Susan McAllister calls while I am sitting in a high school parking lot watching a seventeen-year-old quarterback carry three helmets toward a storage shed.
My assignment is supposed to be about concussion funding. Worthy. Important. Dry enough to suck the oxygen out of a newsroom.
“Peyton? It’s Susan.”
I straighten so fast my seat belt locks. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine. I am calling because I want you to come to the farm this weekend.”
My hand tightens on the phone. “Susan.”
“This is not for a story or access, and nobody needs anything from you. I want to see you.”
Ryan will not be there. I know that. Playoffs have him pinned to the city. Practice, media, film, recovery, whatever ritual keeps a captain from coming apart. But the farm is still his. His family. His kitchen. His porch.
“I appreciate it,” I say, “but I don’t think that is wise.”
“Honey, if I wanted wise I would ask my cardiologist. I am asking you to dinner.”
The laugh slips out before I can stop it.
Susan must hear it, because she presses her advantage. “The girls have asked about you every day. Bill bought more bread than four people could finish because he thinks hospitality is a math problem. And I would like to sit with you when I am not attached to hospital machines.”
“Ryan knows?”
“Ryan is busy pretending he does not miss you.”
My chest goes tight.
“Susan.”
“What?”
“That is not fair.”
“Most true things are not.”
I close my eyes. The quarterback drops one helmet, swears, then looks around to see if an adult heard him.
“What time should I arrive?”
I finish the interview. I file the concussion piece from a coffee shop off the highway. I spend twenty minutes talking myself out of going and another ten packing anyway.
Friday afternoon, I drive four hours north with gas station coffee, my overnight bag in the back seat, and Susan’s invitation sitting in my chest like something I have not earned.
