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“Brady Ryan, the first time I meet your mother, it will not be while I am in bed with her concussed, broken-ribbed son.”
“If I put on pajama pants, will you lie down with me?”
“Put on pajama pants and a shirt, and I will lie on top of the blanket with you underneath it.” Flashing me that smile that I love, she hands me a pair of flannel pajama pants and my t-shirt, then sits on the bed. “I love you, Brady. I need your parents not to hate me, in case one day they are my in-laws. Now stop screwing around and get in bed.”
Pulling my girl into my arms, we hear a muffled TOUCHDOWN being yelled from two floors below. Kissing her head, I whisper, “Love you, Nattie.”
The End
Epilogue
Brady
As we sit in the sweltering June heat, in navy blue caps and gowns with golden tassels, retaining every ounce of humidity in the air, you can feel the nervous energy surrounding us all. At this point in the ceremony, the energy is a living, breathing thing. Natalie is holding my hand, running her thumb back and forth over it.
Tiffany is commanding the podium, giving her final speech as class president. I am sure that the families in the stands are listening to what she is saying, but most of us are lost in our thoughts right now.
What comes next?
This is really the last time that I will ever be on this field.
This year has been both the best year and craziest year of my life.
A myriad of thoughts are going through my head. My life doesn’t change today. For most of my friends and I, life is changing in two weeks. July first, we are moving into a four-bedroom house just off of the campus of Kroydon University. A house my parents bought as an investment opportunity. According to my father, he would rather spend his money on an appreciating asset than throw it out the window on room and board. Works for me. I won’t have to deal with the dorms, and my friends were quick to grab up the other bedrooms.
It had to be four bedrooms because Natalie’s father refused to have it any other way. It didn’t matter that she will be in my room or I will be in hers every night—he insisted that she have her own room. If that was what it took for us all to live together, the guys and I didn’t care. We have more than enough space.
One of the best things about going to Kroydon Hills Prep is that it is a feeder school for Kroydon University, a Division One University. Bash and I signed our letters of intent junior year. Murphy got his offer halfway through this past football season, and Nat had been initially waitlisted.
Lucky for us, she got accepted in the spring, and we will be going together. Cooper enlisted in the Navy and ships out for boot camp in Illinois in September. He’s going to spend his summer training with a retired SEAL to get his test scores where they need to be.
Nat, Declan, and their dad were pretty fucking upset about that when he told them last fall. College recruiters from all over the country were scouting Coop, including Annapolis, but he said his heart just wasn’t in it. Cooper wants to be a Navy SEAL. He’s told us he doesn’t want to live his life in the public eye. He doesn’t want to be his father. This is what he wants. Because he chose to go the SEAL route, he had to sign up for an eight-year commitment. The Navy will own his ass until he is at least twenty-six.
Natalie is excited for him and always supportive, but when it’s just us, she cries. She’s scared of Cooper getting hurt, scared of being so far apart for such long periods. She was really hoping he’d change his mind, but once Coop decided, there was no turning back.
Cooper and Nat’s brother Declan went as the number four draft pick last spring to none other than our own Philadelphia Kings. Nat told me that he has some reservations about playing for his dad, but Philly needed a quarterback, and his dad needs this team to have a winning season.
There is a ton of speculation in the sports world on whether he should have been drafted so high or if this is nepotism at its best. He has a lot to prove.
Natalie is excited to have him around. He seems pretty cool. He graduated Notre Dame last month and is staying with their dad until he finds a place. We keep telling him that there is a finished basement in our house, and it’s all his if he wants it, but really, his signing bonus was big enough for him to buy the entire street if he wanted to. He’s going to look at condos this weekend.
During graduation practice yesterday, we were all given strict instructions that we had to sit in alphabetical order, but not a single person in our graduating class of over one hundred seniors bothered to listen. My friends are all sitting in a line: Cooper, Nattie, me, Bash, and Murphy. Nattie is whispering something to Cooper that I can’t hear. Murphy is hitting on the cheerleader to his right, and Bash is taking it all in.
Not everyone that started the year with us is sitting here today. Darby and Aria were arrested. A gag order was placed and it was never discussed, but everyone knows their families made deals. Neither of them did jail time, but neither returned to Kroydon Prep either. It was as if they had never existed.
Nat squeezes my hand, and I realize everyone else has stood up. We join the rest of the class, turn our gold tassels from one side of our caps to the other and throw them in the air. Nat turns around and throws her arms around my neck. Lifting her off of the ground, I squeeze her as tight as I can and kiss her on this field for one last time. “You ready for the rest of our lives, Sweetheart?”
“I’m ready for anything with you, QB.”
A graduation cap hits me in the head. “Stop kissing my sister!” is heard one last time.
We all laugh and leave this field and this school behind, on our way to bigger and better things. Together.
