Waiting on the Sidelines (29 page)

I pulled into Reed’s driveway behind a few other cars. The only one I recognized was Sean’s, but I was relieved that he and Becky were already here. I decided to wait to give Reed his gift later when we were alone, so I moved it to the back seat of my car, making sure the paper was tucked nicely in the box and tightening the ribbon a little more.

As I shut the door I noticed a black Cadillac pulling in behind me. I turned and started to walk up the drive way and rang the bell. Within seconds, Buck was there inviting me in.

“Girlie, get on in here,” he wrapped me into a big hug, then whispered a little in my ear. “Don’t look, but that’s my ex-wife behind you. Just take a deep breath, and you’ll be fine. She’s a…handful.” He leaned back to look at me, winked and smiled.

I appreciated having Buck on my side, but I desperately wanted Reed’s mom to like me just as much as he did. I slid behind Buck and into the house before his mother made it up to the doorway. I could hear a bit of their cordial greetings behind me when Reed came flying down the stairs and scooped me up, swinging me around in a circle and planting a big kiss on my lips.

I giggled a little until we both turned and stopped to see his mother handing Buck a giant white wool coat and brushing the front of her dress with her hands.

“Reed sweetie, come give me a kiss,” she held her hands out, smiling at her boy. She seemed so proud of her son. She reached up to touch his cheeks and gave them a soft tap and held his shoulders to look him over before hugging him and kissing his cheek. “Oh how I’ve missed you, darling. You must come stay with me and Sam sometime soon, OK?”

Her hair was immaculate. It was short and blonde and cut to perfection. Her glasses were dark frames and pointed a little on the edges. She was all business and intimidating as hell. It was interesting to see her standing next to Buck, who was more relaxed and down-to-earth. She was a beautiful woman, but I thought to myself that must have been all the connection was for Buck, because at the surface, they seemed so very different.

Reed led his mother over to where I was standing and I gulped hard, waiting for this introduction.

“Mom, I want you to meet my girlfriend, Nolan,” my heart dropped at the word girlfriend, but I held it together and smiled, reaching out my hand. It could have been my imagination, but I felt a slight hesitation from Reed’s mom as she shot Reed a quick glance before she turned to shake my hand, giving me a tight, closed-mouthed smile and peering at me a little from the top of her glasses.

“What a pleasant surprise,” she said, looking between Reed and I. “I didn’t know you had a serious girlfriend, son. We haven’t talked enough.”

“It’s very nice to meet you,” I smiled, still shaking her hand. When she looked down at it, I pulled it away slowly, realizing how eager and desperate I was coming off.

“Please, call me Millie, dear,” she said, turning to set her purse and gift bags on the table by the door, almost dismissing me.

When Sean walked up to greet her hello I finally exhaled, relief washing over me that this part of my night was finally done. I followed Reed into the kitchen where Becky was waiting along with a few of his teammates. There was quite a spread laid out along with all of Buck’s barbecue fixings, a Johnson tradition. We all made a plate of food and headed out to the patio for a little more privacy.

There were a few other family members scattered around, uncles and aunts along with some UofA alumni friends of Buck’s. Everyone greeted me warmly, but it may have been that I was just imagining them to take to me more since my cold greeting from Millie a few minutes earlier.

Reed kept me close and at his side the entire night. His warmth was comforting, and despite having kissed him so many times now, I still got a thrill every time his arm wrapped around me or his leg brushed beside mine when we sat near one another.

About an hour into the party, Reed’s father called everyone inside for an announcement. We all gathered around the large dining table by the wall-to-wall windows that looked out onto the patio. One of Reed’s uncles started handing out champagne glasses to all of us. I took a tiny sniff of mine and was surprised when it was real champagne. Waiting, we all looked up to Buck as he coughed a little to get our attention.

“Thank you all for coming today. Millie and I, well… we might fight like cats and dogs,” he laughed, and Millie chided him, elbowing his side a little. “Well, you know we do.” He said quietly, but still loud enough we all heard.

She urged him to go on, rolling her eyes. “Anyhow, despite that, we’ve always had one thing we could agree on. Our sons. Jason has decided to move to New Mexico where he is opening up a new Johnson dealership, starting it all on his own, and we couldn’t be prouder.”

Everyone cheered and clapped, Reed turned to me and raised his eyebrows a little, secretly mocking his older brother whom I knew he didn’t necessarily find to be as perfect as everyone else did. He looked back to his parents when his father said his name.

“Then there’s Reed, the man of the hour,” he joked, holding his glass up for a bit. “Reed, my boy, you have no idea how proud we are of you. You work hard, and you’ve had your eyes set on a goal since you and I first started tossing the pigskin around the front yard when you were four.”

“I think we can all agree that Reed has grown up to be quite a quarterback,” Buck boasted, and everyone nodded in agreement. “But, I just wanted to share in front of you all exactly how good he is.”

Buck popped open his briefcase that was sitting on the table and started pulling large envelopes out, setting them on the table one at a time. Reed seemed a little surprised and quite a bit embarrassed by this show, his leg bouncing behind the table. But he also knew his father was just trying to brag out of love, so he held my hand tightly and let him continue.  

“Oklahoma. Florida. Texas Tech. Oregon. Cal. Utah. Missouri. And finally, Stanford and University of Arizona. Friends, family…what you see right there is the culmination of Reed’s diligence and desire. Son, you have worked so hard. So very hard, and I am honored to have fielded every last phone call and every single meeting that came behind each of these offer envelopes. The choice is, of course, always yours, though you may notice a certain red and blue envelope on top of the stack,” Buck laughed a little, nudging the UofA folder a little closer to Reed.

Raising his glass again, Buck urged all of us to join him. “I’d like to give a toast, to my son, whom I love with all my heart, no matter what color jersey he decides to wear,” Buck said, and we all joined him with a cheer and a drink in Reed’s honor.

Buck then slid a small box over on the table to Reed, who took it and held it in his hand for a while before opening it. I could feel him tense a little beside me from all of the attention, like he knew what was in the box. When he opened it and saw his father’s college championship ring he inhaled deeply and looked up at his father with the most loving eyes.

“Dad, I can’t take this. It’s yours,” he explained, trying to close the box and hand it back to Buck. But Buck was having none of it, and just closed Reed’s hand around it and squeezed tightly, patting him on the back and kissing the top of his head, one of his few unmanly shows of affection.

“Yes you can, and yes you will,” he said.

Millie came over after Buck’s toast to give Reed a gift more privately. Not comfortable being a part of her moment with her son, I retreated to the kitchen with Sean and Becky and looked on as Reed put on the watch his mom had given him, looking over an engraving on the back.
Reed’s birthday was a lot different from mine, which usually consisted of cake and a few new T-shirts.

Reed joined me in the kitchen and showed me the nice leather watch that his mom had given him. It looked fancy, though I didn’t really recognize the brand. I just smiled and told him it was nice. I think he sensed my discomfort as he pulled me in close and kissed the top of my head. I clung to the fabric of his shirt, not wanting to let go.

I finally loosened my grip when his mother walked in and discarded an empty plate and went to wash her hands. She looked like she was getting ready to leave, which internally made me grateful, though I kept up the smiling façade I had going. She didn’t like me, and I knew it.

Looking around the house a little, she settled her eyes back to Reed while she dried her hands. “Where’s that lovely Tatum, girl, honey? I haven’t seen her all night.”

I immediately went blank, my knees buckling and I felt Reed sweep his arm behind me to wrap around my waist and hold me up. “Tatum graduated already, mom. She’s at college. We don’t really hang out any more,” Reed answered quickly, trying to diffuse the situation. Sean and Becky were looking at me to try to gage if I was alright. I was pretty sure I wasn’t.

“Oh, well that’s too bad. I liked her, she was so pretty,” Millie piped back, putting emphasis on the word pretty. “Well, I have to get back before it’s too late, honey. I’ll call you next week and we can make plans for your summer visits, ok?”

She leaned in to kiss Reed on the cheek again and he helped her pull her coat back on. I just stood behind him, feeling nothing but stupid. Finally, she acknowledged me when we were at the door. “Oh, and it was really nice to meet you…” she couldn’t remember my name.

“Nolan,” Reed finished, his voice exposing his irritation and embarrassment for his mother.

By the time all of the guests had left, it was just Reed and I alone on the sofa in his living room. Buck had gone out to join a few of his alumni friends at the bar. Reed stood and walked to the kitchen, where he started to put food away in the refrigerator. I let out a deep sigh, collapsing backwards on the large ottoman, feeling a little bit like the sucker in a match against the prize fighter.

I heard Reed chuckle a little as he walked in and stood over me, reaching his hand down to lift me up. “Come on, it wasn’t that bad,” he smiled.

“Oh, I don’t know. It was pretty bad,” I stood up and hugged him, his hands rubbing my back a little. “Your mom does not like me. I mean, like at all.”

Reed squeezed me a little tighter before speaking. “Don’t be crazy. Of course she does. She just doesn’t know you yet. I told you she was a bit image consumed, and she’s always in that mode. Now you see why I love living with my dad,” he laughed a little, but his voice also sounded sad that he isn’t able to be as close with his mom.

I looked over at the stacks of offer envelopes on his table still, now stacked neatly. I walked over to them and he followed me. I slid them apart and took them all in. “Reed, this is amazing,” I smiled at him.

He took in a deep breath and then softly smiled, too, turning to look at me. “It’s all kind of overwhelming, too,” he said. “I’m still not totally sure what I want to do.”

“You’ll figure it out,” I reassured, though a part of me was also flashing forward to the inevitable time when we would have to be apart. Not wanting to dwell any more on that or the sick feeling left over from my first encounter with Millie, I jerked up with energy and grinned largely at Reed.

“Hey! Want your present?” I was so anxious to give it to him. He just closed his eyes and then reached out his hands. “Well, you’re going to have to stand like that for a minute. It’s in the car. Hold on.”

I raced out the door to my car and grabbed the heavy box from my backseat. I brought it inside, where Reed was still standing with his eyes closed and his hands out. I stopped to admire him for a moment, but he sensed I was there.

“You’re teasing me. Not nice, Nolan. I’ll remember this,” his grin was so damned distracting. When I reached him, I placed the heavy box in his hands and warned him to hold on tight.

“OK, open your eyes,” I said, pins and needles everywhere I was so excited to see if he loved it as much as he did in my fantasy.

He turned his head a little and smirked, tightening his eyes as he glanced up at me, shaking the box a little.

“Open it already, would you?” I couldn’t take it.

He sat down on the ottoman and put the box in his lap, untying the ribbon that was keeping the lid in place. He slid the top off the box and pulled away the tissue paper, lifting the book out and letting the wrapping fall to the floor.

The leather binding for the cover came out exactly as I had wanted it to, almost looking like an old weathered football. My dad helped me brand #13 on the cover along with ‘Johnson.’ I watched as Reed’s fingers worked at the leather straps to open the book and I almost cried a little when his face reacted to the photo on the first page, biting his lip and smiling innocently. It was one that Buck had given me. Reed was 6 or 7 in the picture, and he was sitting on Buck’s shoulders holding his first trophy in the air, waving number one with his finger. Buck had told me it was his favorite memory, so I thought there was a good chance it might be Reed’s, too.

I could tell he was feeling the emotion a little when he reached up to wipe his eye just a little and then looked up at me with a grin.

“Well, keep looking. There’s more than just one picture in there, you know?” I urged him on.

He flipped through the pages, stopping for several seconds to take each one in. There was a mix of news clippings, awards and photos. I had written captions for some of the pictures based on the information Buck had given me. Finally, when he got near the end of the book, he stopped at the section of photos of him with his friends. Selfishly, I stuck one in of him and me taken during the lock-in. Someone had snuck a photo when he was lying on my lap (I was pretty sure it was Sienna). I made a copy for myself, too.