Breaking Tackles: A Taking Flight Novel (36 page)

“What a fucking asshole,” I say, and Becca’s head pops up at that. A sad smile stretches across her face and she says, “Thanks for that.”

“Of course,” I say. “I can’t believe he did this. He’s an asshole and an idiot. You’re amazing. He’s never going to find anyone else like you.”

“Well, apparently that’s his goal.”

“Becca,” I say, “I know you’re hurting right now and that you’re going to need some time. But you’re going to find someone who adores you and cherishes you and isn’t a fucking asshole.”

She nods and a few tears slide down her cheeks. “Yeah. Someday.” She wipes her tears away and then grabs the basket I brought over and starts going through it. “Ooh, ginger ale. And
Pitch Perfect
.”

“I was convinced you were sick,” I say.

“This is kind of like having a cold,” she says. “Puffy face. Raspy voice. Inability to get warm.”

“I’m going to have Adam pummel the shit out of Drew when they play each other.”

“They both play offense,” Becca points out.

“Adam can do it off the field.”

She snorts at that and says, “You’re a really good friend. Sorry for canceling last night. Did y’all have fun?”

“Don’t apologize. And yeah,” I say, then remember that I came over here to ask her to be a bridesmaid in my freaking wedding. Shit.

“What’d y’all do?”

“Went for Thai. Ate ice cream. Watched
The Vow
.”

“I love Thai food and ice cream and
The Vow
,” she says. “I should have made myself go out.”

“You had a very valid excuse to cancel,” I say.

“But still. All I did was sit around and sob my eyes out. I’m sure when I look back on all of this someday, I’ll be annoyed by me.”

“Probably not,” I say. “You have to feel what you’re feeling. Be gentle with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up about someone else’s idiocy.”

“I know,” she says quietly, taking a sip of the ginger ale. “Anyway. You said you wanted to ask me about something when you texted this morning.”

“Yeah. About that. Now probably isn’t the best time.”

“I need a distraction, though,” Becca says, her blue eyes begging.

I wrestle with whether or not to do this. I don’t want to rub her face in my happiness. But, I do want her to be one of my bridesmaids. And if she needs a distraction…

“I wanted to know if you’d like to be one of my bridesmaids,” I say quietly.

Her eyes widen and I know that this was the wrong thing to say.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I shouldn’t have asked right now.”

“No,” she says, “No, I’m so glad you did.
Of course
I’ll be a bridesmaid! This is so exciting!”

“Oh, good,” I say, completely relieved. She asks me nearly all the same questions that my friends did last night, and we chat about colors and the groomsmen and I tell her that Ana is making the dresses.

“We have to do an epic bachelorette weekend,” she says. “Not Vegas. What about, oooh, maybe San Francisco? Or Charleston?”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ve never been to either of those cities. And I’d rather have a low-key bachelorette party where everyone just hangs out all weekend. No clubs. No strippers.”

Becca sticks her lip out in a pout. “But what if the stripper we hire is the future Channing Tatum and you’ll get to tell everyone how he got naked for you at your bachelorette party? Don’t you want that?”

“I really, deeply don’t.”

“Fine,” she says. “No strippers, then. But one club. For at least a couple hours.”

“Okay,” I say. “But I’m not wearing a tiara. Or anything that blinks. Or drinking out of a penis-shaped straw.”

“Deal,” Becca says begrudgingly.

I see the clock behind her and am shocked at how late it is. “Oh God. Becca, I’m so sorry, but I have to go catch my flight to Minneapolis. If you need anything, please call Willa, Kate, or Sophie. They’ll be more than happy to hang with you here or get you out of the apartment. Whatever you need.”

“I promise,” she says. “Thank you for coming over and listening to me be a wreck. And for asking me to be a bridesmaid. You’re the best.”

“So are you.”

We hug and then she says, “Go. Don’t miss your flight. Go Saints!”

Adam

Amanda and I meet Jason in the Vikings press office, and he has a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Hey, little brother,” he says, coming over and clapping me on the back. “Ready to lose tomorrow?”

“Nope,” I say. “There’s no way in hell I’m losing to your sorry ass.”

“Big talk, little brother,” he says, grinning.

“You’re the one who admitted I was better than you at the draft.”

He shrugs. “Maybe when I was in college. But now? You got nothing on me.”

“Okay, guys,” Amanda says. “Save it for the interview.”

She and the publicist for the Vikings shake hands and start chatting, leaving Jason and me to ourselves.

“What was that about?” I ask him. I’m used to friendly competition and teasing from my brothers, but digging into it right off the bat was kind of weird.

“Just practicing for ESPN,” he says. “Manuel thinks that if we kill this, they may ask us to do one of those hilarious commercials. You know, like the Manning brothers one?”

“Yeah,” I say, laughing. “That’d be pretty cool.”

“So how are things?” he asks. “Courtney?”

“She seems really good,” I say. “She’s been working with a nutritionist and her friends have been texting me updates, letting me know that she’s eating. Hopefully this means that we’re out of the woods with this whole thing.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s hope so. Mike and I had no idea what to do. We wanted to get to New Orleans to be with you guys, but there was just no way.”

“I know,” I say. “It’s really okay. She knows that you guys care about her.”

“Yeah, but still.”

“She’ll be here tonight.”

“Awesome. Nadia will be here, too, but not until really late. She’s dying to meet Courtney. Do you think Court will want to swing by the Vikings box during the game?”

“I’ll ask her when she gets here,” I say, not wanting to speak for Courtney. Especially when she’d be meeting a supermodel. I assume that’s something that may not be easy for her right now.

“You guys ready?” Manuel asks. We both nod and then are escorted down to the field to do the ESPN interview.

Instead of suits, ESPN asked that we wear our team shirts and track pants. I thought that was sort of weird, but when the producer asked us to toss the ball back and forth down the field for some background video, I understood.

“Did you and Mike ever do one of these?” I ask Jason, because I can’t recall ever having seeing one.

“Nope,” he says. “I don’t quite know what to make of that.”

“Mom mentioned that she and Dad are being interviewed for it, too.”

“Yeah,” Jason says. “Manuel said that they might make it a longer segment on the family, instead of just a little interest piece on brothers playing each other.”

“All right,” I say, shrugging, then holding up the football. “Go long.”

Jason starts running down the field and when he hits the fifty-yard line, I throw the ball, lofting it high in the air. Jason catches it around the twenty, and immediately lobs it down the field at me. We play catch back and forth like this for a while. I keep expecting the producer to say that they have the footage they need, but she hasn’t done that yet. Which is weird.

After a few minutes, Jason and I have stopped throwing long and are just horsing around on the field. Then, from the entrance ramp, we hear “You two never did know how to take anything seriously.”

“Mike?” Jason asks, turning toward the ramp, and when we see him, standing there in his Texans shirt and track pants, we both run toward him.

“It’s on, little brothers,” he yells, running toward us. It probably looks like we’re all going to run into each other and really hurt ourselves, but this is something we used to do as kids with our dad. We’d all run toward each other, as fast and as hard as we could, and right before we collided, Dad would scoop us up, two in one arm and one in the other. When we got too big for him to pick us up, we’d all just do a group hug-slash-huddle-looking thing. It’s probably stupid. But it’s what we do.

We all meet right off the field, and as we all break our speed so that we don’t actually hurt each other, Mike grabs my shoulder, and then Jason’s, and the three of us hug.

“It’s good to see you, Mike,” I say.

“You, too,” he says. “Both of you. But I’m excited to see you two play each other tomorrow.”

“I thought you said you had to stay in Houston for your bye. That the coach had banned travel or something,” Jason says.

“He did. But when ESPN called and requested I be here, Coach made an exception for me since this is good publicity,” Mike says.

“Nice,” I say. “Did Ashton come, too?”

“Yep. She’s really excited to hang out with Courtney. And Nadia,” he says.

“Weird,” Jason says. “We’re all in relationships.”

“It’s only weird that
you’re
in a relationship,” I point out.

“True,” he says, grinning.

“So it’s more than just a fling with a model?” Mike asks.

“Yeah,” Jason says. “Definitely more than a fling.”

The producer interrupts us now and asks us to sit on some stools that they’ve placed on the field so that the reporter can ask us questions. Then they’ll want to take some more footage of the three of us talking and throwing the ball around and being ourselves.

When we finish up, Amanda lets me know that if I want to be at the airport when Courtney and my parents arrive, then we have to book it. I nod and then ask my brothers if they want to come, too. They both do, so I quickly introduce Amanda to my brothers, then we pile in the SUV Amanda rented and head to the airport.

“Photographers?” I ask her, figuring the answer is yes.

“Photographer, singular,” she says. “I’ve made her sign a whole bunch of non-disclosure agreements and a form that says she’ll email the photos to
me
and that I will send them to media outlets, then pay her. There’ll be none of that photographer-going-rogue business this time.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ve kind of been avoiding the media, as has Courtney. Has it been a nightmare?”

“Not as bad as it could have been,” she says. “I emailed a bunch of my contacts and pretty much begged them not to run the story. I kept it vague, but said the two of you are under a lot of pressure and scrutiny right now, and that any understanding and compassion would be appreciated.”

“How’d that work out?”

Amanda shrugs. “Most places ran
something
about Courtney collapsing and being hospitalized, but most didn’t speculate. Just reported the facts and added some well wishes at the end of the article. A couple of the more gossip-oriented blogs did speculate, and it was basically along the lines I told you it would be.”

“Got it,” I say.

“I asked Courtney if she wanted to scale back the travel, but she insisted that she didn’t,” Amanda says. “Just so you know.”

“Of course she didn’t,” Jason says. “Have you met her? That girl loves football more than anybody I know.”

Amanda laughs and says, “I know. She was adamant about coming to this game in particular. I think her words were ‘I want to see Adam school Jason on the field.’”

We all laugh at that, and then Mike asks, “Does Nadia like football?”

“Loves it,” Jason says.

“Really?” Mike asks, sounding surprised.

“Yep. I asked her out the first time because, you know, supermodel. But she’s cool. Really laid back. Funny. We didn’t talk about sports at all on the first date, and on the second, when I asked her if she was into football, she showed me her phone, which is full of sports apps. She started a fantasy football league with a bunch of her friends.”

“Model friends?” I ask.

“And other friends,” Jason says. “But yeah, a lot of models.”

“How that hasn’t been leaked to the media, I don’t know,” Amanda says. When the three of us stay quiet, she says, “I promise
I
won’t leak it. Unless Nadia wants me to.”

We all laugh and as we pull into the airport, I feel butterflies in my stomach. I don’t think the prospect of seeing Courtney will ever not give me butterflies. If my brothers knew, they’d give me shit forever.

When we park and are walking into the airport, Amanda says, “Do you want me to make dinner reservations? I know Adam is free tonight. What about you, Jason?”

“Yeah, I’m free.”

“Great,” Amanda says. “Any place in particular I should book?”

He recommends an Italian place and Amanda immediately busies herself with making the reservation and giving explicit instructions about where we should sit and that the restaurant should not post anything to their social media, including photos, announcing that the Kistlers are dining there.

“She’s good,” Mike says to me.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m kind of her pet project right now, so I’m getting a lot more personal attention from our head of publicity than most guys get. But I’m grateful for it. She’s really been a lifesaver with all of the shit that’s gone down.”

He nods and says, “I’m glad y’all are hanging in there through all of this.”

“Me, too.”

“Courtney is transferring schools and moving after the wedding, right?” Jason asks.

“Yeah,” I say, unable to keep the smile off my face. “She is.”

“Are you going to buy a place?” Mike asks me.

“What?”

“You know, a house.”

“We’ve talked about getting a bigger apartment, but I haven’t thought about buying.”

“You should think about it,” Mike says. “Even if you don’t stay in New Orleans, real estate is a good investment. And it’ll be nice for you and Courtney to move into a house to start your married life together, don’t you think?”

I nod, but I really don’t know what to think. Buying a house. That seems very permanent. And expensive. Not that I don’t have the money—but I have no idea how you even go about buying a house.

“So,” Amanda says now that there’s a lull in our conversation. “There aren’t going to be any photographers tonight. I just canceled the one I had lined up, which isn’t the most professional thing to do, but whatever. Instead, I would advise the three of you to take photos tonight and post them to your social media accounts.”

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”

“I don’t know what the social media policies are for the Vikings and Texans, so if there’s some sort of blackout or ban, follow your own team’s rules. But Adam, I really think this is a great opportunity. But only if you feel comfortable doing it. If not, don’t post anything.”

“Oh, we’ll post,” Jason says, and we all laugh at that. It’s no secret that Jason loves Instagram. After all, he’s the one who announced mine and Courtney’s engagement.

“Great,” Amanda says. “The plane should be on the ground shortly and then I’ll drive you all to the restaurant. I’ve arranged a cab to pick Ashton up at your hotel, as well as cabs for everyone to their respective hotels from the restaurant.”

“How do you know where we’re staying?” Mike asks.

“I have my ways,” Amanda says cryptically.