Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

I t’s been a while since I watched a high school football game from the stands. I kind of miss it. Though, it would be nice to have more than just two girls my age sitting with me in what feels like hostile territory.

“They’re all looking at me,” I grumble to Tasha. She plops down on the metal bleacher next to me and glances across my chest, then cranes her neck to look behind her.

“Literally nobody is looking at you,” she says, tearing her straw wrapper away with her teeth and pushing it into her foam cup.

“Please say you did not spike that.” I arch a brow and eye her as her lips wrap around it slowly.

She shakes her head as she takes a drink, but as soon as she’s done says, “You probably wouldn’t like it, though, so we shouldn’t share.”

I roll my eyes and glance to my right, where the Vista band is filing into the stands.

“Is your dad coming?” Lexi asks as she takes a seat in front of Tasha and me, straddling the metal bench and offering up her bag of kettle corn. I scoop out a handful before letting her down with my response.

“He said he is, but I doubt he’ll be sitting by me.”

My friends give me instant pity faces.

“It’s fine. You don’t have to look at me that way.” I reach forward to scoop more popcorn from Lexi’s bag. My friends are up to speed on what led to me getting the boot from the parade. I don’t need them to revisit the topic tonight. It’s bad enough I had to wait for them to get out of practice to head to the game. I should have been there. We’re working on a new stunt, and it’s not like I’m the linchpin for it, but I’m definitely stronger than any of the girls who sub in my place.

“Wyatt might break my dad’s passing record tonight,” I say, shifting to a topic that gives me a little more pleasure. Maybe I should feel guilty for rooting for my dad’s record to fall, but there’s something poetic about it happening tonight. Maybe a little passive aggressive, too.

“Wow, that’s a big deal. How short is he?”

“He needs to throw for a hundred thirty yards, which is basically nothing for him this season,” I brag. I catch my tone but not before Tasha puckers her lips into a knowing smile.

“What?” I say, feeling the heat crawl up my neck.

“You’re in love,” she teases in a sing-songy voice.

I roll my eyes and reach for more popcorn. Not that I want it, but because I’m suddenly so nervous that I need to do something— anything— with my hands.

“He’s a good guy, Peyton. And you spent a lot of time with a pretty shitty one,” Tasha adds.

I glance up and meet Lexi’s eyes, and though my friend has always thought Bryce was the hottest thing on Earth, she relents a half smile and a shrug before nodding in agreement at Tasha’s assessment.

“This whole rivalry thing is pretty bad, though. Spending time with him feels?—”

“Amazing,” Tasha pipes in.

I roll my head to the side to gaze at her.

“It does, yes. And it should. But I also feel guilty, somehow. Like I’m letting down the family brand or something.” It doesn’t help that every time we’re in public together, someone on my dad’s team sees us and turns it into an act of war.

“Fuck that,” Tasha says. “You deserve to be happy.”

I loop my arm through hers and hug her bicep, then take a drink from her soda, my tongue hit with a dose of . . . rum, I think?

“Oh, wow!” I cough out.

“I told you it wasn’t your kind of drink.” She snickers.

I look around us, relieved nobody is in our immediate area yet. But before I can warn her to be careful, she takes a big drink through her straw and meets my gaze.

“Don’t worry, Peyton. This ain’t my first rodeo.”

Her lopsided smirk makes me wonder how often her water bottle is spiked with something other than Gatorade at our home games. I also think my friend maybe needs to work through her issues before she gets to college. I worry about her if we end up at different schools, which it’s looking like we might. She wants to stay here. I’ve been dreaming of leaving since I was old enough to know I could. Lately, though, I’ve been less excited about taking off on my own. I’ve also been afraid to ask Wyatt when he plans to commit. And those two emotions together have made me confused.

The Vista band sounds off with the Mustang fight song, so my friends and I get to our feet, joining the hundred or so parents who came to watch their boys take the field. Their record is the same as ours, but they don’t seem to have the same following that we do. Or maybe our massive stands have a way of making a modest crowd look small. I probably could have gotten away with wearing Wyatt’s team shirt tonight, but I opted instead for the oversized Bills sweatshirt and black leggings. The desert nights are finally starting to cool, so I thought the extra layer would be nice. Plus, it still smells like his bedroom. And when I close my eyes, it almost feels like his arms around me.

Wyatt is the first to burst through the banner held by their cheer squad, and he races toward the center of the field with the school flag hoisted over his shoulder as he runs.

“I like their uniforms better,” Lexi says through a mouthful of popcorn. “They look tougher.”

“ Hmm , yeah. And maybe . . . hotter, too. Can you get me an intro with that one right there?” Tasha points to the growing crowd on the sidelines and I squint ,attempting to guess who she means.

“Which number?” I ask.

“Oh, any of them. I meant that one as in . . .” She draws an air circle around the team, and Lexi and I both slap our palms over our faces with laughter.

We all stand for the national anthem, then stay on our feet to wait for the kickoff. I use the opportunity to scope out the crowd, and I meet Wyatt’s mom’s eyes across the stands. She raises her hand and I do the same. She’s not alone, which makes me feel better about not sitting next to her. It’s going to take me a while to recover from walking straight out of Wyatt’s bedroom to breakfast with her.

A few Vista students trickle in, and the away stands are filling in more as well. It’s nothing compared to our home crowds, but at least it feels respectable now. I catch myself ogling Wyatt as he strides out to the center of the field for the coin toss, his right hand clutched in Whiskey’s. There’s something comforting in their friendship. I’m glad they have each other. Glad Wyatt has someone like him to keep him safe. I’m sure Bryce misses him, though his ego would never allow him to admit it.

“You think your dad made them all show up?” Tasha says, nudging my side with her elbow.

I follow her sightline to the fence behind the north end zone, where the sea of gold and blue jerseys are all lined up. I spot Bryce’s favorite white and gold hat immediately, and my stomach tightens. Not that he could do anything, or would, to ruin Wyatt’s game, but I can’t help but think his reason for being here is to root against him and his run on my dad’s record.

“Not sure, but I am sure he didn’t ask the media to be here.”

I point to the small set of stands on the field behind the north field goal. It’s where family members sit for our home games, a special tradition that was carried over from the old stadium. The only people there now are a few news cameras and my dad.

“You think this is about the record?” Lexi asks.

“Definitely,” I hum, my focus locked on my dad despite the kickoff happening on the field in front of me. I feel a slight pinch in my chest; maybe a part of me is sad for him.

Any empathy floating around my chest is immediately overshadowed the second Wyatt takes his first snap on the field. He’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, sidestepping a sack and rolling to his right to somehow find a receiver thirty yards down the field. The precision reminds me of watching my dad during his last pro years. He wasn’t the rough-and-tumble guy he was when he was young, so he had to learn to be exact. He was a surgeon with the ball, just as Wyatt is now. His receiver gets pushed out of bounds midfield, and just like that, Wyatt is a single digit away from making my dad number two in Arizona’s high school record books.

As if automatic, my gaze crosses the field to see if my dad is watching, knowing he is. The reporter off to the side, my dad is standing in the middle of the VIP bleachers, his arms crossed over his chest. Part of him might be proud. But I know there’s a part of him that hurts. I know it because as angry as I am with my dad, we’re still connected in our hearts. There’s an invisible thread that’s been between us since my first word, which happened to be Daddy. And for right now, this small moment, I wish I was sitting down there with him instead.

It takes Wyatt five passes to drive the ball down the field and cut the distance between him and my dad’s record in half. The crowd gasps every time a pass is caught, and a few times the band breaks out with the fight song too early, probably miscounting the yards. He owns the record by halftime, though, carving into new territory in the second half to the point where my dad’s incredible numbers will likely be seen as the old guard. Bryce will likely pass my father’s record this year too, at least in passing. But he won’t catch Wyatt, who is well on his way to setting scoring records—and rushing records too—by the end of the season.

With twenty seconds left, Wyatt takes a knee at the forty-yard line to let the clock run out, and my friends and I shout at the top of our lungs while we jump up and down on a middle-row of the home stands.

“Oh, my God, why do we cheer again? This is so much more fun,” Tasha jokes.

I sling my arm around her while Lexi manages to do a standing pike on her bleacher seat.

“Maybe we can talk Coach into letting us cheer from up here,” I laugh out, doing my best to mimic my friend’s jump. She’s far nimbler than I am, so I’m sure to onlookers my jump looked more like a blip, but it was fun. All of this—watching Wyatt, rooting for him to take the record, for the Mustangs to win their home game on an away field—is the most fun I’ve had with football in ages. Since I sat on my grandpa’s shoulders for my dad’s first playoff game in San Diego fifteen years ago. And all I have of that memory is the box of photos my mom had printed at Walgreens from her phone. This memory, it lives inside my chest. And it stars the boy on the field whose eyes are set on me as Whiskey hoists him in the air and rushes toward the sideline.

“Hey, we should probably scoot,” Lexi says, pulling my attention back to Earth, where my dad’s team is clustered around the main gates as Vista families exit.

“They’re stirring shit up,” I mutter.

“Probably,” Tasha sighs out.

We can’t hear them from this far away, but it’s obvious in their posture and the way they walk closely behind people as they exit, then turn around and laugh. They’re being dicks, because that’s the culture Bryce has instilled in them. And heart tugs or not, my dad has let it fester.

Grandpa would be disappointed.

I hover near the bottom row for a few seconds while the bleachers clear out, hoping to catch Wyatt’s attention, but his coach has called the team into a circle, and everyone has taken a knee. I don’t want to distract him, and he promised to come over after the game, so I catch up to my friends, who are waiting near the concession stand. I make one last attempt to catch Wyatt’s attention, stepping up on the first iron bar along the exit gate, but his back is to me. One of the local news outlets stuck around, too, and my dad is standing with the reporter and a camera guy, probably waiting to capture some disingenuous passing of the torch when he shakes Wyatt’s hand or something.

“We can stay if you want,” Lexi offers, but it’s late, and I’m sure there’s a party brewing in the desert that they want to get to. Even though it wasn’t our game night, it’s a Friday in the fall. Coolidge Bears will drink and be stupid.

A few of the pickup trucks I recognize as belonging to our guys speed out of the lot, one of them fishtailing in the dirt road that heads the opposite direction from town. A part of me wishes the truck would tip over, but I dash that thought because of the bad luck that likely comes with being petty like that.

“Hey, uh, Peyt? We have a problem,” Tasha says while I’m busy clearing my head of being vindictive.

“Yeah, uh? Sorry, what’s wrong?” I ask, my stomach twisting as soon as I see her eyes drawn in and mouth pulled tight. I spin around to where her focus is fixed and suddenly take back all of the mental halts I put into the universe over wishing that truck tipped. I want them all to tip now. One truck in particular—Bryce’s.

“Fuck!” My hands move to my head, fingers threading together on top as I march toward the two completely flat driver’s side tires on my Jeep. My dad’s Jeep.

“Someone slashed them,” Lexi says, kneeling and running her finger along the massive gash on the sidewall of the front tire.

“You all right, Peyton?”

I turn around, all wild-eyed and stressed, to come face-to-face with Wyatt’s mom. Her gaze darts from me to the tire where Lexi is standing, dusting her hands off on her jeans.

“Oh, damn. Do you girls need a ride home? Is there someone you can call?” His mom dives right into solution mode, which is actually really kind, and I would be so grateful if this weren’t such a political nightmare.

“It’s okay. We’ll be fine. I’m sure it was just . . . an accident. Probably ran over something,” I say excitedly, trying to sell it. I sound more manic than anything, and her face puzzles as she gives me a sideways glance.

The clatter of cleats on concrete grows louder and on top of things, the Vista bus parked close enough to me that there’s no way to hide this shit show from Wyatt.

“Peyton, it looks like your car was vandalized. I don’t think a curb caused this,” his mom says, her voice full of suspicion.

“Peyt! What’s wrong?” My dad’s voice pulls me in the other direction, and I spin around to see him marching my way. His strides are long and fast, and there are too many variables in the air to stop the chaotic storm I’m about to find myself in.

“Someone slashed her tires, Mr. Johnson,” Lexi answers for me. Sweet Lexi, it’s probably best the news came from her. I’m somewhere between panicked and pissed. No panic in my dad’s face, though. He’s full-on lit.

“Let me see!” he growls, stepping around me and taking Lexi’s position by the tire.

Wyatt’s mom takes a step or two back, a flash of recognition on her face. I can tell when someone knows who my dad is, and I know she’s a football fan. Plus, Wyatt has mentioned how much his dad liked mine as a player. The way her gaze now shifts between me and my dad pretty much seals it for me—I’m sure she knows exactly who I am now. Just as quickly, though, she seems to put the new information away, insisting she helps.

Wyatt and Whiskey are headed this way, ignoring their coach’s shouts asking where the hell they’re going. The only person missing is Bryce, whose truck I still see, so it’s likely just a matter of time.

“Dammit!” My dad abruptly stands, hands on his hips,` as his furrowed eyes stare lasers into the front busted tire.

“It’s fine, Dad. It’s nothing.” If I could gobble my words before they reached his ears, I would. I’d do it right now. That would be my superpower. But that’s not a real thing, and sometimes I talk before I think. My dad is in my face in about a half second flat, finger pointing at me and face red.

“No, Peyton! It’s not nothing! This shit ends now!”

My dad storms across the parking lot toward Bryce’s truck, which is parked next to two others. Some of his players are sitting in the back of one, and as my dad approaches they stand and hop out of the truck bed. I wouldn’t be shocked if they sprinted into the desert.

“Was this Bryce?” Wyatt says, his tone not far removed from my father’s. I turn to face him, his eyes wild and his stare set on the back gash.

“I don’t think he would do this,” I say, knowing that even if it wasn’t him, it was with his blessing. Maybe even his direction.

“I don’t think we know Bryce at all anymore,” Whiskey says over Wyatt’s shoulder. His eyes are steely, his mouth set in a hard line.

My spine shrinks, my body sinking into the ground beneath me with the weight of it all.

“This is so stupid. It’s just football. It’s football! ” I reach my hands up to the heavens and stare at the black sky. Wyatt’s hand reaches around my waist and he pulls me into him. I move reluctantly at first, but when he has me in a full embrace, I flatten my cheek against his chest and watch my dad wave his hands with his words while his players, which now include Bryce, shrink where they stand next to their pickups.

“Can I do something? I really don’t mind giving you ladies a ride,” Wyatt’s mom suggests again.

“Mom, Peyton’s dad will handle it. I’ll fill you in at home,” Wyatt says, stepping away from me and reaching out a hand for his mom. She eyes her son silently, then shifts her gaze to the scene behind him. Her mouth hardens while at the same time her eyes soften.

“Okay,” she finally relents, and I think she’s pieced together enough to know this is a battle of male egos on full display.

“Peyton, I’m really sorry,” she says to me, her expression weighed down, full of sympathy. She pulls her son in for a quick hug, her hand patting his back before she spins and heads to an old Camaro parked in the very center of the now-empty lot.

“You should walk her to her car. Then maybe fill your coach in,” I suggest, nodding toward the Vista bus, where Coach Watts is now standing with a handful of players watching my dad read their rights to their rivals.

Wyatt breathes out a short, annoyed laugh before stepping into me and pressing his lips to mine as his hands cup my cheeks.

“Easier said than done,” he says, glancing to Whiskey before taking off to walk his mom to her car.

“What did he do to you?” I utter at Whiskey’s side, not making eye contact.

“He ended our friendship for good,” he says before putting his palm on my shoulder and squeezing me gently. He heads toward his bus without another word.

My dad’s voice is loud enough that a few key words cut through the night— sick of this and time to grow up —before he’s on a hot path back to me and my friends.

“Girls, get in my truck. Peyton, toss me your keys.” He holds his hand up and catches them in the air when I throw them. He steps into the driver’s seat, throwing the keys on the dash and scanning the inside for evidence, I’m guessing.

He slams the door shut when he’s done and waves for me to follow him to his truck while he presses his phone to his ear.

“Jared, it’s Reed. Hey, I need you to come grab the Jeep. It’s in the back lot at the school. Someone cut the tires. Yeah, keys are in it.” He shoves his phone into his back pocket, and his stride practically doubles. I’m jogging to keep up.

“Tasha, I’ll drop you off first,” he barks, pressing his key fob. My friends climb into the back seat of his crew cab and I slide into the passenger seat. The Jeep sits broken by itself in the side mirror when I close the door.

“That was some game, huh, Mr. Johnson,” Lexi says, her voice timid.

My dad’s gaze flicks up to the rearview mirror and his nostrils flare. He doesn’t open his mouth, and behind me Tasha whispers, “Not now,” to our friend.

We drop them off within minutes, and for the first ten minutes of the drive home alone with my father, it’s eerily silent. The air isn’t on in the truck. The radio is off. Somehow, the bumpy road seems smooth all of a sudden. Maybe neither of us knows how to begin. We’re both angry and not fully with each other, but there’s this new wall we’ve started to build, and the bricks feel heavy.

We’re halfway down the dark desert road that leads to our ranch when my dad hits the brakes. I fling forward, my hands wrapping around the seat belt where it slices across my chest. My dad punches the steering wheel twice, then flicks the hazards on before slowly pulling to the side of the road.

My heart is racing as my eyes move from him to the dark night and disappearing road in front of us. The last of Coolidge’s farms are to my right, the fall crops just peeking through the soil. It smells like manure out here, even with the truck’s vents off. The headlights make the haze in the air glow like a stale green potion that clings to the dry desert like a fungus. How does anything grow out here at all?

The windows begin to fog, I think from the hot air the two of us are puffing out like dragons. One of us needs to be first, and if there is one thing I’ve learned from my mom it’s that sometimes, Dad needs a push.

“You should have asked me,” I say.

I feel him shift to look at me, but I keep my eyes on the opaque glass, the view on the other side growing less clear with every breath I take. When he doesn’t respond after nearly a minute, I give in and meet his stare. I drop my gaze and huff out a short laugh.

“I thought maybe you didn’t know what I was talking about. But I can see in your eyes that you do.” My dad doesn’t have much of a poker face. His eyes are sloped at the corners, the corners of his mouth weighing down his chin. He knows.

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Ha!” I laugh out for real this time and look at the dash again. I pull the sleeve of Wyatt’s sweatshirt over my palm and lean forward, rubbing a circle on the glass so I can see through it again. The heat and the chill mix out here in the night, and it’s somehow never hot or cold this time of year. It feels like . . . nothing. How appropriate.

“I should have talked to you about it first, I know.”

“You should have.”

I pivot and meet his eyes. He mashes his lips and shakes his head slowly.

“Would you have agreed with me, though?”

“That me being the parade queen would have been a distraction for everyone and for once taken the focus off football?” I quirk a brow, and his head tilts to the side.

“Peyt, that’s not why I didn’t think it was a good idea. And you know that.”

I chew at the inside of my cheek and shift my gaze just to the side of his face. I give it the thought it deserves, and after a few seconds, nod. He’s right. I do know that. But damn, sometimes it feels like that’s how rules go for me. Football first.

“This whole rivalry thing was getting out of hand. And the fire?—”

My gaze flickers back to meet his.

We haven’t talked about the fire, me and him. I know how things go in the football world out here. A whole lot of discussions happen off the books, with handshakes at the bar over a game of pool, and in after-practice meetings somewhere between the field and the parking lot. I’m sure he and Coach Watts let the inner circle know things were heating up. Boosters out here aren’t just for fundraising. Messages get sent, unwritten contracts negotiated. It's how players get transferred without penalty in a system where coaches aren’t supposed to recruit. Everyone knows it’s all a sham.

“I didn’t want you to be a target at the parade,” he says.

I shake my head and laugh.

“Turns out I didn’t need a parade to be a target. All I had to do was watch a boy I like play a stupid game.”

His mouth straightens and he swallows hard, and the air inside thins.

“You like him, huh?” His eyes somehow hold sorrow, but not the way I thought. He doesn’t care that it’s not Bryce. He cares that it’s something real.

“I like him enough to think about staying in state for college after all,” I admit with a shrug.

His lip ticks up on the right and he turns to face the steering wheel again, laying his wrist over the top.

“Staying home, huh?”

“I said in-state. I did not say home .”

“Same thing,” he says, that lip quirk now a full-on smirk. He shifts the truck into drive and presses the hazard light button off.

“Definitely not the same thing, Dad,” I repeat.

It’s still quiet and remains so for most of the way home, but the air is lighter now. Not fully clear, and there are apologies left to be said, but the doors are open.

My dad turns the truck into our drive, and there’s a familiar red truck parked next to my mom’s SUV.

“Uncle Jason is here?” I sit up on my palms, anxious to see his new baby and my Aunt Sarah. She and my mom have been best friends since grade school, the original ride-or-dies. My dad chuckles when the front door to the house opens, his brother standing in the doorway and tapping on his watch.

“I forgot that was tonight. They’re staying through next Sunday, you know, for the . . .”

“Parade,” I finish.

My Aunt Sarah got to be the parade queen. She was the first one, in fact. My mom says she basically created the role, making her own crown and wearing it while marching to the front of the parade and shooting confetti cannons along Main Street. She was a menace. A bold, loud, amazing menace, and my mom’s voice when she needed to borrow one. That’s Tasha for me. My confetti cannon.

“I know you were looking forward to it, and I’m really sorry. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you shine, or to put the spotlight on you and brag to the town that you’re my kid. I live for that,” my dad says, rolling his head against his seat back until our eyes meet. “But the spotlight feels more like a searchlight this year. I was worried someone would do something like they did tonight, only to you . And let’s face it, your mother would lose her mind.”

We both break into a short laugh, adding on jokes about how high the bail would be set to get my mom out of jail, and then the headlines in the tabloids about Former NFL Housewives Behaving Badly. My dad’s O-line doesn’t have a chance against Nolan Johnson when she’s angry and defending her family.

“I’m going to bench Bryce,” my dad says suddenly.

My laughter dies and I swallow the instant rock in my throat. I hold his gaze for a few seconds and let the words sink in.

“You think that’s a good idea?”

He breathes in through his nose and hikes his shoulders.

“I have no clue. But I have to do something. It’s our side that is starting this, and Bryce has a future in this game. He needs to learn how to lead. The hard way, apparently. Not just when he’s winning, but when things aren’t going perfectly. The guy doesn’t know what messy is.”

“He kinda does now,” I say, squinting my right eye and twisting my mouth.

“Yeah, and he has no idea how to navigate it.”

My dad’s right. He doesn’t. Bryce has never really had adversity. He got forgiveness when he acted out as a freshman—from me and my dad. And maybe that’s on us. Some people take second chances and they grow. Others think they’ve dodged a bullet.

“The alumni around here will protest. They’ll come for your job,” I say.

My dad chuckles and pushes open the driver’s door.

“Let ’em try. I’m Reed fucking Johnson.”