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“I love you, Claude. I have from the moment I saw you, and I’ve never stopped.”
“I love you too, Merri. And I always will,” I told him as my heart broke, knowing he was right.
“I’m accepting Seattle,” I told Arny after a day and night of crying with Merri in my arms.
“Excellent choice! I’ll get the ball rolling, and you should be ready to fly up to sign the contract in two days.”
“Two days? That’s too quick.”
“They want you for the second half of preseason. That’s how the NFL works. Get ready for it,” Arny said before ending our call.
“I have two days,” I told Merri, fighting back the tears. “I’m gonna have to fly back to Tennessee and pack my stuff. I’m also going to have to explain to Titus that I’m not going to be back until the offseason.”
“When do you have to leave Pensacola?” Merri asked vulnerably.
“Tonight,” I realized.
Closing his eyes as if refusing to be sad, he opened them, finding his resilience.
“If you have to leave tonight, then I know what we should do today.”
“Were you thinking…” I asked with a suggestive smile.
“I wasn’t until you said it. And yeah,” he said with a mixture of horniness and melancholy. “But I know what we should do before that.”
Stepping into Bluegrass Bourbons, Pensacola’s top Tennessee-themed bar, I laughed.
“Seriously, who thought building this was a good idea?” I asked, examining the authentic raccoon skin cap that hung between two whiskey barrel-inspired windows.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. From where I’m standing, this seems like the perfect place. There should be one in every state. So, what shots should we do? The authentic Tennessee whiskey or the just as authentic Tennessee moonshine?”
“Well, since I’ll need my sight to play football, how about the whiskey?”
“And then work our way up to the good stuff. Got it,” Merri said, in the mood to make some truly poor decisions.
“What do we toast to?” I asked when I had the whiskey shot in hand.
“To what I said we would on the day I brought you here. To you playing on a fuckin’ team in the NFL.”
“I’ll toast to that,” I said joyfully, tossing back the shot, then regretting it immediately. “I’m not gonna be able to fly tonight,” I said with my face twisting into a corkscrew.
“That’s what pilots are for,” he said, placing another shot in front of me.
That first shot led to two, then three, then… um, whatever number came after three. What I’m saying is, despite our worlds crumbling around us, we had a good time. We were just about to ensure that we would regret every second of this by knocking back a shot of moonshine when Merri’s phone rang.
“If it’s your ex-boyfriend, don’t forget to thank him for me,” I told Merri sarcastically.
“Fuck Jason,” he replied.
Connecting the call, he answered it, “Fuck you, Jason.” He paused. With drunken amusement, he said, “I’m celebrating, Papa!” He paused again. “I know. But didn’t you hear? Claude will be the starting quarterback in Seattle.”
He paused, listening.
“I don’t know.” Covering the phone, he turned to me. “Did you sign the contract yet?”
“In two days,” I said, holding up two fingers I wasn’t sure were mine.
“Not yet,” Merri said to the phone. “I can ask him,” he said before turning to me. “Do you want to meet with the Cougars before you sign your big contract?”
