Todd’s second favorite thing about football was the way it made everyone love him. When Todd played well, Peter forgot to call him stupid or a disgrace; instead, he bragged to everyone in sight that that was his son out there, leading the L.U. defense. Professors who wanted to punish Todd with a failing grade got their asses handed to them by deans who wanted Todd on the football field. Important men who ruled society-- doctors, lawyers, businessmen, politicians-- turned into giggling schoolgirls in the presence of a great football player.
The game against Pittsburgh was the biggest of the year. The L.U. Lions were good, but not good enough to be invited to a bowl game over the more famous schools. So a nationally televised in-state matchup with another Division I school was as good as it got.
Everyone from KAD was there, basking in Todd’s reflected glory.
Peter Manning had flown in from Chicago to watch Todd play.
Best of all, Blair had come. If football could make random alumni Todd had never met love Todd, and if football could make Peter Manning love Todd, then football could certainly make Blair love Todd. Hell, she already liked him and he wasn’t sure if that had ever happened before in his life.
If it had been anything but football, Todd probably would have fucked up under that much pressure. But it was football, and when it came to football, Todd didn’t fuck up. If Todd was nervous or angry or frightened, all of that disappeared just as soon as he got the pleasure of hitting someone. It was amazingly simple. That was his most favorite thing about football.
Sure enough, just before halftime, he got the ultimate prize.
Pittsburgh’s quarterback must have gone temporarily brain dead, because he threw a pass to Todd’s receiver when the guy wasn’t anything like open. The pass fell into Todd’s hands like it was meant for him. The interception alone was enough to get the crowd howling his name, but
Todd wasn’t finished. He turned and ran.
Touchdown, Llanview.
They played the second half, but it was a mere formality. The pick six had turned the emotional tide in Llanview’s favor. A close game became a landslide, and Todd was the hero.
As he sat on the bench and waited for the game clock to expire, Todd planned the rest of the day in his head. He’d listen to Coach tell the team how well they’d done, with special attention to Todd, and Coach would be sure all over again that he’d done the right thing when he’d changed Todd’s F to C. Then Todd would talk to the reporters about how it had been a team effort and he was just glad to have been a part of it, and the reporters would write about how modest he was. He’d see his dad one more time; Peter would no doubt slip him a large check without Todd asking for it, which meant that he was proud of Todd. Blair would look at him in a whole new way and let him out of the drinking buddy hole she’d pushed him into. Then KAD would throw the biggest party since the Spring Fling—but this time, no one would dare make a joke at Todd’s expense.
The first hour or so went according to plan. Todd was smiling like a fool when Blair approached with a dark-haired woman he’d never met but quickly deduced was her cousin Cassie. He did a double take when he realized that Viki was with them, too.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Mrs. Buchanan,” Todd said, sticking with the formality he’d used when talking to the reporters. He was the gladiator; she was the senator’s wife. Or the emperor’s. Or the queen, to mix his historical metaphors. Queen Victoria was about right.
She clasped his hands in hers. “I thought we agreed that it was Viki.”
“Right,” he acquiesced. “Do you come to a lot of football games?”
She laughed. “This is my first in a very long time. The Banner’s entire newsroom was buzzing with how important it was, and when Cassie mentioned that she and Blair were coming, too, I decided that I couldn’t be the only one in Llanview to miss it. I’m certainly glad I didn’t. I’ll tell everyone that I had the honor of having the hero living in my home all last summer.”
“The honor was mine,” said Todd, and even though it fit with the crap he’d been the feeding reporters about how he was no more important than anyone else, he meant it. Viki Buchanan had a way of making him into what he usually just pretended to be.
Peter ducked back into view, seemingly able to sense wealth and power wherever it appeared. He held out his hand to Viki. “Peter Manning,” he said. “Thank you for being so kind to my son. I would not have been comfortable with him staying just anywhere after that disaster last spring.”
Todd felt his muscles, beautifully loosened by an easy victory and a hot shower, start to tighten up. I flunked a test. It’s not like I killed somebody, he wanted to say, but he let Peter keep talking until Viki said she wanted to go check in with her reporters before they left.
That was when Blair put herself into his space. “Congratulations,” she said, and kissed his cheek. The kiss sent the usual jolt of want through him; in fact, it was just a bit too usual. He was quite sure that even though he had made the most spectacular, flashiest play a defensive back could hope to make, Blair’s feelings for him had remained unchanged. She’d liked him when he was a loser sitting on a park bench in the rain and she liked him now.
“You have no idea what happened, do you?” he asked.
“They explained it to me,” she said, peeking through her eyelashes the way she did when she was coy or bullshitting or both. “It was a pick six. Pick because you picked off the other team’s pass, and six because you get six points for the touchdown. See, I thought a pick six was when you went to the liquor store and they let you put six different kinds of beer in your six pack.”
Todd chuckled in spite of himself. “I think I like yours better.”
Blair gestured at the celebratory mood around them. “You might be a minority of one with that.”
“I’m a lot of peoples’ favorite person in Llanview right now because of that play,” he agreed.
Blair kept her hand on his arm. “I like you because I like you, not because I like what you can do.”
Todd didn’t have a response to that.
Peter, however, did. His arm fell across Todd’s chest and Todd stepped back from Blair. “You aren’t falling for this, are you?” Peter hissed at Todd in a stage whisper. “You want a slut, get a slut who’s honest about herself and you. None of this pretending she doesn’t know or care what you can do for her.”
“Don’t you dare call my cousin names!” Cassie objected, unwilling to pretend that she hadn’t heard. “You don’t even know her!”
“Cousin?” sneered Peter. “She’s already bringing around the family to meet with you, Todd? That is a black widow spider and you need to step back from her web. You want a little fun, there are girls with legs just as long as hers who know better than to try to get anything other than the night with you.”
“We’re not sleeping together,” said Blair, and that killed Todd just a little. Of course it was true, but Blair had never corrected anyone’s assumptions on the matter before. “And if we were, it wouldn’t be your business.”
“My son is my business. Protecting my son from a gold-digging—”
“I have my own money, you stupid old man—”
“Whoring—”
“I don’t have to—”
“Slut who doesn’t know her place is my most important job in this life.”
“So who protects him from you?” Blair asked. She took another step toward Todd and her hand went to the back of his neck. Their eyes locked and Todd knew what she was going to do; she was going to kiss him full on the lips for the first time while his father still had his arm around Todd’s chest just to prove a point.
Ten minutes earlier, he would have taken Blair any way he could get her. Now he was tired of being her prop when she wanted to make a point to someone, be it her aunt or his father. He wasn’t going to let her get away with it, not when it would have meant another falling out with his father on top of everything else.
“You’d better go, Blair,” he said, skirting to avoid her lips
“Yes, we’d better,” agreed Cassie coolly.
“Wise decision, son,” said Peter. “That touchdown was only the second best thing you did today.”
That night, Todd took a girl named Annie Something-or-other up to his room midway through the party. It was fast and easy and she didn’t do anything crazy like tell her to hold him or tell him she liked him.
He saw Blair at Rodi’s a week or so later. He told her that he was sorry he hadn’t defended her to his father and she said that everything was fine; it wasn’t as if anything was really going on.
When the season ended and football was over forever for Todd, he was glad. He liked football, but he was more than ready to move on to the next phase of his life. It didn’t matter that it was the only thing he’d ever been good at. When he had a real job, there weren’t going to be public performances where everyone else got to sit in judgment on everything Todd did, like they were so perfect. He’d have a rich, easy life and everyone would leave him alone. He wouldn’t even watch football on Sundays, he decided. He was done with football.
***
Then football decided that it wasn’t done with Todd.
He was an above-average athlete; everyone who played Division I ball was. But he wasn’t good enough to go pro, and he knew it. His KAD brothers slapped him on the back and told him that he was the best defensive back who had ever come through L.U. and of course he was going pro, but Todd understood that that was a combination of sucking up, ignorance, and getting caught up in the moment.
He wasn’t good enough to play pro ball and everyone who really knew anything about football knew it.
Unfortunately, the Cincinnati Bengals didn’t know anything about football, which was why they sucked and had more draft picks than they knew what to do with. Someone in their front office must have watched the Pittsburgh highlights a few too many times, because when they got down to the seventh round, they drafted Todd Manning out of Llanview University. Coach personally ran down to Todd’s English class—for his senior year, he had taken up actually attending— and pulled him into a hastily coordinated press conference.
His father called, of course, full of praise and warnings not to screw this up or he’d wish he was never born.
As soon as he could escape, he ran straight to Rodi’s. It was a local hangout, so there wouldn’t be many students patting him on the back. It was dark, too, so maybe no one would even see him.
His bad luck held, though. He’d barely tasted his second beer when Marty plopped down next to him. “Hi, Todd,” she slurred. She was way ahead of him.
“Hi, Marty,” he said. He started to jump off the stool, but she put her hand on his leg—much too high on his leg for there to be any confusion about what she meant.
“You’re the big hero,” she said, tightening her fingers. “I know why I’m getting drunk by myself in a dive bar. Why are you?”
“Not your business,” he told her. “Look, you’ve got no problems. You’re graduating at the top of your class, you’ve got your own money, you’ve got your own mansion—”
“Nope.” Marty threw her head back and took another drink. “My Aunt Kiki is selling my house out from under me. She’s still in charge of me. Doesn’t it feel like you should get to a place where other people can’t control your life? You know what I mean? Don’t you just want to… if someone’s going to destroy your life, shouldn’t it be you? Shouldn’t you get the fun of destroying yourself?” Her hand slid further up his leg.
He jumped off the stool so fast he spilled his beer. “Yeah,” he told Marty. “So I don’t need any help from you.”
Then he told the bartender he was switching to scotch. For four or five drinks, he pondered how messed up it was that he agreed with Marty about something. He needed a reminder of how much he hated Marty, he decided.
“I’m like that chick,” he slurred when he miraculously managed to dial Blair’s number from the payphone in the corner and she picked up. “That chick who falls down the hole and gets really small. She goes to Wonderland. Alice. I’m Alice. I’m in Wonderland.”
“Are you all right?” Blair asked. “Where are you?”
“I told you. I’m in Wonderland.”
“Should I come get you?”
“Why would you come get me? Not like you’re my wife. You’re not even my girlfriend.”
“I’m your friend, though.”
“You know who wanted to be my friend? Marty Saybrooke. She wanted to be really good friends tonight.”
“That kind of offer would make me drink, too,” said Blair. “Then you must be at Rodi’s. That’s where she usually trolls for men. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Don’t bother,” Todd told her, but no one ever listened to Todd. Blair arrived in less time than it took him to steal the bottle of scotch from behind the bar, since the piece of shit bartender had cut him off.
“I don’t think you need that,” said Blair. She slid the hard-won bottle across the table and away from him.
“Give me back my bottle,” he growled, and she did. He took four or five long swallows. There was not enough alcohol in the world for this.
“Todd, what happened?” she asked. She reached for his hand like she had a year ago at the Spring Fling.
“My life is never going to be mine. Not ever. You know what I should have done? I should have let myself get expelled last year.” He toasted her with the bottle before taking another long drink.
“Never should have left that party with you. This is your fault.”
“What, exactly, is my fault?”
“I got drafted.”
“I didn’t think they did that since the Vietnam War.”
Todd laughed until he hiccupped and buried his face in his hands. Blair took the opportunity to slide his scotch away again, and this time he let her because she was so ridiculous. “Football, Blair,” her managed at last. “You ever heard of the Cincinnati Bengals?”
“Not really,” said Blair.
“That’s cause they suck. They suck so much they thought I could help them. You are looking at the 195th pick in the 1994 NFL draft.”
“I’m guessing you don’t want me to congratulate you.”
“You guess right. You always were super smart. That’s why you’d never do anything with me but talk. Smart enough to know a loser when you see one.”
“I never thought you were a loser,” said Blair. “And obviously the Cincinnati Bengals don’t, either. Can’t you take it as a compliment that they want you and politely say, no thank you?”
“I floated that idea by Mr. Peter Manning. It did not go well.”
Blair tugged Todd’s arm around her shoulders and steadied him against her. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Why?”
“So you can have some water and some vitamins and hopefully not be hung over too bad tomorrow.”
It took him three tries to find his wallet and empty its contents onto the table. Then he let Blair drag him into the fresh air, and, eventually, to her little penthouse that was really her aunt’s little penthouse. She deposited him on her bed.
“If I’d known that getting plastered was all it took to get into your bed, I would have done it sooner,” he told her.
“Uh-huh,” she told him, busying herself collecting the promised water and vitamins.
“It’s your last chance, Babe. I’m graduating next week and then I’m off to Cincinnati. Then we’ll never see each other again.”
“I hope that isn’t true,” she said, and she almost sounded like she meant it.
“Everyone thinks we’ve been knocking boots for a year,” he told her.
“I know that.”
“So why aren’t we? You ain’t in love with some other guy.”
“I’m in love with Melador.”
“You could have us both.”
“You know how you don’t like to pick fights with your father?” she asked. That was an understatement. “I don’t like to pick fights with my aunt.”
“But your aunt loves you,” Todd blurted out drunkenly.
“Your dad loves you,” said Blair weakly, but he could see that she knew she was lying.
“When I’m doing exactly what he wants. Every time I make a mistake—” Todd clapped his hands together to simulate the sound of a beating. Blair jumped. “You don’t know what that feels like.”
She sat beside him on the bed. “I was in foster care for the first eleven years of my life. They can kick you out of a home because you were too loud or too quiet or you laid the silverware out in the wrong order or one of the other kids told a lie about you. Then you start over with a whole new family and try not to make them mad.”
“But your aunt is your aunt. She’s not gonna throw you out for doing with me what she thinks you’re doing with me anyway.”
“I know,” said Blair, but she had a far-off look in her eyes that unnerved him.
“Tell Uncle Todd all about it,” he said. Even if his own life was shit, he really did want to hear about hers. It wasn’t like she was Marty.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me about when your aunt took you out of foster care,” he said.
She gave him a long, serious look. “All right.”
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I am absolutely in love with this story! Thank you so much for sharing it!
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