Page 82 of The Tiger in the Sack

Tory Freeman laughed before she’d decided whether to, which told me where Clover learned it, and instead of a handshake she pulled me into a quick warm hug that smelled like good perfume, and over her shoulder I caught Clover’s eyes going a little wild, because moms had not been in the strategic plan.

“Hello Isak, I’m Tory. It’s nice to meet you.”

Then the fourth chair scraped back and Warner stood to do the standing-up version of a greeting, and even braced for it I felt the floor tilt. Out of pads he looked like a recruiting poster. Navy blazer with opinions. He clasped my hand in both of his, the friendly, genuine kind of handshake, which was worse.

“Kingman.” A nod, easy, teammate-easy. “Saw the film from Wednesday’s scrimmage. You got me twice on the play-action. I owe you one Sunday.”

“You’ll get it back. You always do.”

“Truth,” he agreed, and turned that same warm decency on Clover, and Clover picked up her water and drank from it like a job she’d been hired to perform well.

The hostess brought over a chair and another place setting for me. It didn’t make anyone at the table awkward or weird even a little bit.

And that wasn’t the only lie I told myself this evening.

This kind of refined party crashing was not in my playbook. All I had to do now was make sure everyone here thought I was the adoring new boyfriend at a table where the old one is also seated because the father reserved him a chair.

I sat there while a six-three linebacker who texts his grandmother every week asked my girlfriend whether she still did lemon in her water, and she said yes, and he said he remembered, and I ate bread.

I ate a lot of bread.

“So.” Brick turned the full weight of his attention on me around the time the appetizers landed, and the table tipped my way like a field when the play’s coming. “Contract year.”

“Yes sir.”

“Tigers haven’t made a real run since before you could drive.”

“We’re making one this fall.”

He studied me. He had Clover’s stillness and used it as a trap, waiting to see if I’d blink, and I didn’t, because I’d meant it.

“That’s a lot of mouth for a club who finished second to last in the conference last year,” he said.

“Dad,” Clover said.

“Yeah, but we weren’t last again.” I wouldn’t make her referee something I could carry. “But now we’ve got a defense that just found its captain and a receiver about to have the year of his life. Watch Fox Daws against the Pets this weekend. Then we’ll discuss the mouth.”

Brick Freeman, host of The Brick House, a man who ate quarterbacks for a living, looked at me for a long moment, and the corner of his jaw loosened into something in the family of a smile.

“We’ll discuss the mouth,” he said.

Warner laughed, easy, a man who’d never once had a losing season in his life. “Confidence is the whole game. I used to tell Clo that. Remember, Clo.”

“I remember a lot you used to tell me,” Clover said, light as air, and reached for the water again, and her hand held steady through sheer engineering.

Tory was brilliant and beautiful, especially when she rescued us all from the weird pause in the conversation.

“Clover, tell your father about the squad,” she said. “The new girls. She sent me a video, Brick, you should see these young women, the captains especially, the way they move.” Tory’s palm pressed flat to her own chest, holding something in. “I haven’t watched cheering look like that since my days.”

Brick laid his big hand over hers on the tablecloth, no words, and I looked away, because it felt like reading somebody’s mail.

“Mom cheered,” Clover said to me, quiet, like it surprised her to be telling it. “Bruins. That’s how they met. Dad played, she was on the squad.”

“I was the body that fit the uniform they handed out,” Tory said, and laughed, but there was an undertow in it. “Different era.”

“It’s getting less different. That’s the whole point of what we’re building. Sizes that have never stood on a sideline before. Mom, we’ve got grandmothers. I ran a community workshop last week and six of them in the back row would not leave. They want a squad. They’ve already named themselves.”

“Named themselves what?” Brick asked.