Normally a touchdown isn’t a huge deal in a preseason game.
But I can’t help the huge deal that I make.
After I perform a quick celebration in the end zone, I scan over to Avery, who’s jumping up and down, clapping and smiling.
The sight of her cheering for me, here, in person? It brings the stakes of today to a whole other level. The question of ‘why is she here?’burns even hotter in my mind.
I jog her way as some of my teammates slap me on the back and shout my name along the run. Finally, I’m in front of her.
So are a million cameras, but I ignore them.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she responds, grinning.
“This is yours.” I hand her the football. “Touchdown.”
She gives a little laugh. “So I saw.”
“You look nice.” I’m unable to come up with anything more original. “You look…beautiful.”
Her rich brown eyes sparkle from the spotlights from the stadium. “Thank you. Speaking of which, are you ready for your surprise?”
I glance around, and there’s hundreds of people looking at us, plus all the cameras.
“Are you sure you want to do this here?”
“Yes, it’s not like that.” She winks at me.
And then she brings her hands to the bottom of her shirt—a plain large T-shirt that’s the blue of the Waves’ uniform—and peels it off.
To reveal a second T-shirt underneath…
The half-Surge, half-Waves shirt from the Etsy store that her sister had texted her.
Shit, she bought that? It’s pretty much as ridiculous-looking as we thought from the picture.
I start laughing; I can’t help it. I’m sure everyone around us is confused.
A whistle blows, and I turn around. I’m about to earn us a delay of game penalty.
“I need to get back,” I tell her.
“Just one more thing before you do.” She turns around one hundred and eighty degrees. “Surprise!”
It has “Avley” on the back.Our ship name.
I give her another chuckle and a big smile, with no time to do more.
Hustling back to the other side of the field, where the Waves players are watching the extra-point kick, I can’t help but wonder:
What is she up to?
At the endof the game, I hike it to the locker room. It’s been a weird second half, because I didn’t play—normal for a preseason game when you don’t want your best players to risk injury—and couldn’t stop looking at Avery, on the far side of the field from me.
She seemed a lot more focused on me than the game too, her gaze directed my way every time I found myself checking on her.
I’m still confused—but now, shit, after sixty minutes of our lingering glances, I can feel the hope I had in the first half increasing tenfold.
