The second Autumn and I walk into the bar, I feel my phone vibrate a half dozen times. It could be anyone. My agent, one of my teammates, Phil Carlton, or Sam, but Sam’s standing a couple of hundred feet from me, ordering a beer at the bar, chatting with Lake Powers, our left-wing and Ryker Haynes, our center forward and captain.
My hunch tells me that if I pull my phone out of my pocket, I’ll find the incessant perpetrator is my mother, who just witnessed the media interview where I said Autumn’s name for millions to hear. No doubt she’s calling to find out what my wedding tux measurements are.
I pull the phone from my back pocket. Just as I thought, MOM lights up on my phone. She must have figured texting wasn’t working and needed to go to more extreme measures, but if I don’t answer, I have no doubt that she’ll resort to calling Sam. How in the hell she got my general manager’s number, I have no idea.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“What?” Autumn asks.
I hold up my screen so she can read it.
“Oh… yeah… my mom has already called twice since we left the stadium.” she says, look as if she doesn’t have a care in the world as she scans the small crowd in the bar.
“What are we going to tell them?” I ask, debating whether or not I should turn to her and shake her for a second to stir some reality back into her.
Does she not get that our mothers are both calling for the same thing? They’re undoubtedly going to ask about our relationship status.
“If I knew the answer, I would have already answered her call,” she says playfully, nudging me with her shoulder.
My phone stops ringing and then starts back up again.
Finally I stop and turn to her as we’re halfway through the bar, “If I don’t take this call, she’ll get in her car and drive down here.”
Oh damn, I meant it as a joke, but I can already see my mom and Mrs. Daughtry queuing up the Celine Dion Best Hits CD in my mom’s Ford crossover and headed straight for us. Walla Walla to Seattle is about a four-hour drive, and I wouldn’t put it past them to have our entire wedding planned before they get here. “You going to be okay in here by yourself for a bit?”
“I survived a childhood at the hands of you and my brother. I’m made of Teflon, baby.” Autumn flexes her biceps, and I chuckle, but then her attention shifts toward the back of the room, and her eyes brighten as she picks up on her tiptoes and waves at someone.
When I look, I find Tessa Tomlin, Brent Tomlin, our left defense’s sister, A.K.A. The Hawkeyes ballbuster, waving back. This isn’t good news. Tessa was brought on last year to keep a sharp eye on the social media of both The Hawkeyes and its players’ accounts. She’s been given a lot of power to jump our shit, and she does, although I have yet to have an incident with her since I don’t post much on my social media anyway. Mostly she gets on my case for my poor treatment of the media… even though I’d say they deserve it.
I know she’s involved in spreading the social media narrative about Autumn and me and making sure it all serves the best interest of the franchise, which is to make me less touchable by the potential of this scandal. I still wish they would have let me talk to Dixie and figure out why she was spreading these false rumors about her and me. This just doesn’t seem like something she’d do. Not that I know her all that well, but I thought we understood each other from the time I spent there.
“You know Tessa then?”
Autumn looks over at me and then down at my phone, which just started ringing for the third time.
“You’d better go. I’ll be fine while you’re gone.”
Autumn walks away, headed in Tessa’s direction. I see Penelope walk over and join them.
“I’ll introduce you to the boys,” I hear Tessa say, “Brent! Have you met Conley’s girlfriend?” I hear in the distance as Tessa scoops Autumn in her arm and ushers her through the bar. As the bar door shuts behind me, I hear Brent’s voice over everything. “Conley has a girlfriend?! Since when?” I hope Tessa takes care of her, but Autumn is right. Isaac and I probably made her tough enough to handle these dimwits I consider my friends and family.
Well, at least I don’t have to make the introductions and lie to my buddies. Tessa is more than happy to take it off my hands. I just hope she’s emphasizing that she is Conley’s girlfriend, not just a friend. This whole thing might be temporary between her and I, but I’ll be damned if any of them think she’s fair game. None of those asshats are going to touch her if I have something to say about it.
I step out of the bar and stand outside in the smoking area. No one’s out here right now, so it’s a safe enough spot.
I stare up at the dark sky and peer up at the moon, hiding behind layers of clouds but still managing to shine bright enough to be seen.
The drizzle of the rain from earlier today is starting back up from being dry on Autumn and I’s way here to the bar. Soon enough, it should be raining pretty hard, or at least that’s what the forecast said.
I hit redial, and my phone doesn’t even ring.
“Briggs Michael Conley! I’ve been calling and texting you. I thought you might be dead.”
“That’s a little dramatic. Don’t you think someone from the team would tell you if I died? Besides, I was on national television less than an hour ago.”
“Don’t you sass me, mister. I was in labor with you for two days, and my hooha ripped—”
“Mom, Jesus! I don’t need the details if you ever want me to have kids of my own. Now why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell me what is so important that I have eight texts and three missed calls from you?”
Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky, and it will turn out that she didn’t watch her only son’s hockey game tonight, or at least maybe she skipped the interview afterward. Maybe she’s calling because she wants to tell me that she found a suspicious mole on her back and wants to tell me about the Google Ph.D. she just got by self-diagnosing her mole as a tropical disease that was actually cured over a century ago. But with everything going on back at home, I’m glad she’s looking out for her health.
“Your dating Autumn Daughtry and you didn’t tell me!?” she practically screams.
I hear another voice in the background… a woman’s. No!
“Mom, who’s there with you?” I ask, but it’s a moot point… I already know.
“Sandy… obviously!”
Of course, Autumn’s mom would be at my parents’ house right now. Kirk and Sandy Daughtry, Autumn’s parents, might actually follow my career more than my own flesh and blood. They sure as hell have been to more home games than my parents. My mom doesn’t like seeing me get in fights in person. “She ran down to our house barefoot with a bottle of champagne when Kirk told her about your interview. She was in the bathtub when he told her, and she’s still in her robe.” I can hear the two women in that background giggle with what I assume to be glee.
“Mom… are you drunk?”
“What?! Me?! No, never?! We’re just so excited.”
“Drunk as a skunk, these two.” I hear my dad in the background and the sound of the refrigerator door closing. I picture him walking into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of water (I assume since his doctors don’t want him drinking) and heading back out to the garage to work on his model airplane. “Congrats on the engagement, son. She’s a nice girl.”
Then I hear the door to the garage click shut.
Good talk, Dad.
Then his words land on me. What the hell did he just say?
“What?! Engagement? What the hell did you tell him?’ I hear my own voice rachet up an octave. ‘We’re not engaged, and I have no idea where you got that from,” I explain to the two tipsy women on the other line hoping the words ‘no engaged’ really sink in.
I knew they’d blow this out of proportion.
“I had a feeling this would happen!” I hear Sandy yell, ignoring my question. I can already picture her leaning against the opposite side of the island from my mom in the pink fuzzy robe that she’s had since Isaac and I were kids.
My mom adds to the ridiculousness of this situation, “It’s always the person you least expect. The girl right under your nose ends up being the one.”
I shake my head at these two.
“We’re just dating. It’s not serious.”
“The picture of her climbing you like a honey badger and mauling you in public suggests something different.” If I hear my mom talk about a woman climbing me like a honey badger again, I’ll have my eardrums surgically filled with cement. “And how dare you two keep this from us? It says in this gossip blog that you two have been dating for over two months… and not a single word to either of your mothers? It’s as if you two are in cahoots.”
“Cahoots? Of course we’re in cahoots. We’re dating.”
“For shame, Briggsy,” my mom says. “Sandy tried to convince me that if you didn’t answer on my next ring, we were jumping in the car and driving down to Seattle to confront you two.”
Fucking knew it.
I shake my head at the predictability of these two grown as women.
“Autumn hasn’t answered either. Tell her to call her mother!” Sandy yells from across the kitchen again.
“From the sounds of it, you two are too drunk to drive anything but me crazy.”
“Don’t tempt me,” my mother interjects, “I told your dad he was going to have to be our driver, and you know how he likes it when I change up plans on him when he’s already set to work on his plane thingy.”
Not only that, but my dad shouldn’t be driving them anywhere. He should be resting, taking it easy.
All right, this has gone on long enough.
“Listen, I have to go. My entire team is waiting for me in the bar.”
“And Autumn?” Sandy asks.
“And Autumn,” I confirm.
“She’s not answering her phone. Please tell her to call her mother…” Sandy says.
“All right, I got to go. You two, be careful and tell dad to take your keys. Autumn and I don’t need any impromptu visits from either of you.”
I hear my mom cover the receiver of the phone, but I can still make out her excited chatter. “Just think, Sandy, we might have a grandbaby by next Christ—”
Click.
I don’t wait for her to finish that sentence. I end the call and take a cleansing breath.
I walk back into the bar, my eyes seeking out the familiar brunette whose mother and mine are wine drunk in my childhood kitchen at almost midnight, probably setting up a monthly diaper subscription that I’ll start receiving next month. I should tell them not to bother. If Isaac watched the same interview that Kirk did tonight, they’ll be planning my funeral in twenty-four hours. Best friends since we were in diapers or not… bro code clearly states, don’t touch the goddamn sister.
If only he knew that I haven’t, except for the kiss she surprised me with at lunch… and I guess the peck on the cheek she gave me early tonight as I was escorting her quickly out of the stadium. Still, I haven’t touched her the way I’m sure he thinks I have.
If I can’t be honest and tell him this is all a lie, how the hell will he think we’re not? He’d never buy it if I told him we’re being abstinent.
I can hold my own in a fight… I practically do it for a living, but Isaac hits harder than any motherfucker I’ve ever met, and he knocked out his opponent in last week’s fight in the first half… of the first round. I’m tough, I can take a hit… or two, or three, but a hit from Isaac will send me to the ER, no question.
I walk back through the bar doors, and the loud music hits me when the door swings open. The bar is basically one huge rectangle with a bar off to the right and against the wall and three pool tables at the back of the room, all running horizontally from one another.
On practice nights, or nights we just want to go out but not deal with the club scene, this place is quiet, in the sense that everyone who comes here is a regular and mostly keeps to themselves, so no one bothers us. But on winning games nights, this place can get busy with fans wanting to come and congratulate us.
This is one of those nights.
The bar is starting to fill up as I now have to turn sideways to make it through big groups of people to get to the back of the room where all of my friends are… and Autumn.
I see her now, surrounded by Penelope, Tessa, Lake, Ryker and a couple of other players, all crammed in around a four-top. I don’t see Kaenan, but I bet he took his daughter and the nanny home after the interviews.
I walk straight up behind Autumn as she’s wedge between a couple of the girls all sitting on bar stools. I take a quick scan of Autumn from behind. She wore a pair of dark wash jeans that hug her bubble butt just right and a pair of heeled booties that give her ass that little bit of lift, although sitting on the bar stool makes checking her out, a little more complicated. I still remember what her behind felt like in my hands that day in front of the restaurant when I held her up from falling directly on her derriere. When I look up, Lake Powers is smirking over at me like he caught me doing something I wasn’t supposed to be.
“Now I know why you’ve been hiding her away,” Lake says as I walk up to the table. “You were afraid she’d realize that you’re the least good-looking guy on the roster.”
“Sure, that was it,” I say sarcastically.
Autumn hears Lake and looks back over her shoulder at me, giving me a cute-as-fuck grin and then looks forward, joining back into the conversation she’s having with Penelope, Tessa and Ryker.
I know Lake just likes to ruffle feathers when he can, and by now, he’s sure to be a few beers in and buzzing with shit talk he’s been looking to unload all night. Not as if he didn’t do enough of that out on the ice against the opposition during the game.
“I don’t see a ring yet,’ Lake says, getting Autumn’s attention. ‘You’ve still got time to bail on him and pick a player with better moves.” Lake winks at Autumn, and he’s damn lucky he’s not standing close enough for me to get him in a headlock.
Autumn gives Lake a playful side-eye, as if to tell him she’d never consider leaving me for him and I puff a little in my chest at Autumn having my back in front of my buddies and showing some solidarity even though this thing isn’t real.
“Fuck off, Powers. Keep your grubby hands and your athlete’s foot away from my girl,” I say, coming up behind Autumn seated on the tall wooden stool.
My chest just barely brushes up against her back as I inch closer.
Her back straightens immediately, and it feels like she leans back against me slightly as she takes a deep inhale while the rest of the group laughs at my dig towards Lake.
She looks back over her shoulder again but this time, I’m a lot closer. Her eyebrows raise slightly as she searches my eyes for the answer to her question before she speaks it, “How was the call? You were out there awhile,” she says, a little concern in her voice.
“It’s official… our moms have lost their minds.”
Autumn pushes back and then slides off her bar stool. I step back a few feet from the table to get some privacy. Autumn follows.
“Our moms… as in plural?” she asks, her eyebrows just about knitted together.
I nod. “Your mom asked me to tell you to call her ASAP, but I’d give her until later afternoon tomorrow. I’ve heard champagne hangovers are pretty rough. Also, it’ll give you time to consider a timely question.”
“What’s the question?”
“Spring or summer for our wedding.” I smirk.
Autumn slaps my arm, and the zing of being touched by her hits me again.
“Oh, shut up. They’ve known about us dating for all of thirty minutes. There’s no way that they expect us to get married,” she says, rolling her eyes at me as if I’m being dramatic.
If she wants to know what dramatic sounds like, she should give our mothers a call tonight.
A guy tries to squeeze behind Autumn to get to the other side of the bar. I slide my hand around her waist and pull her up against me to avoid him brushing up against her in any way.
Once the guy is clear, she takes half a step back, and I let go of her, against my better judgment, and clear my throat and then retort back to her.
“The wedding is the least of my worries. They must be expecting me to knock you up before the wedding because they’re planning on a grandbaby by next Christmas.” I send her a wink that has her giggle and shake her head at the craziness of our mothers.
“Wow, you three covered a lot of ground in a twenty-minute conversation.”
“You have no idea,” I say and then sidestep around her. “I have to get Autumn home, so I’m going to leave early. Good game, everyone,” I say.
Ryker leans out of his chair and shakes my hand. “Good game, man. See you tomorrow for practice.”
Lake gives a lazy salute while Penelope and Tessa walk over and give Autumn a hug goodbye.
I give a quick wave to the rest of my teammates and to the coaches and then lead Autumn out of the bar with her hand in mine.
“You need to be prepared for your brother to find out,” I say over my shoulder as I weave us through the crowd. Many pat me on the shoulder and congratulate me on a good game. I smile back in response, but I keep her and I moving forward.
“What? Why? He has a fight in two weeks. He’s going to be ‘off-grid’ focusing until then.”
Oh, thank God. That might buy us enough time to get our shit together and come up with a way to explain this whole thing to him in a way that won’t piss him the fuck off.
“I hope you’re right. We need to prepare for him to find out, though. It’s going to happen sooner or later.”
We finally make it to the bar doors, and I push through them, keeping her close as we trudge through the deep puddles of the mostly dark parking lot to get to our parking spot a couple of rows away from the entrance of the bar as the rain is pouring down on us. It must have finally started coming down after my call with my mom, and I went back inside.
I get her settled in her seat quickly and close the door before we both drown in the downpour. I run to my side and climb in, starting my sports car.
“What do we do?” she asks.
I lean my head against my headrest and look over at her. She’s soaked, droplets of water dripping off her glossy hair onto her jacket. Her chest is pumping from the mad dash we made to my car. Her eyelashes are clumping together, and her deep green hazel eyes peer back at me. She’s beautiful in a way I’ve never appreciated before. Or maybe, I’ve never seen her kind of beauty before.
“The way I see it, we have two options. One, tell him the truth…”
“Which we can’t.”
I nod.
“So option two is…?” she asks.
“We move in together tomorrow like we’ve already planned, and we make him believe this is serious… that I have no plans to hurt you. That this isn’t a fling.”
“And you think he’ll buy it?” she asks, water droplets still dripping off strands of her hair and a doe-eye look to her like she wants to believe that my idea will work.
We both know deep down… it’s a long shot, but it’s the only shot we have.
“I have no idea. But I’m about to bet a lifelong friendship on it.”
She turns and stares out the front window for a minute, “I guess we don’t have an option.”
“Nope,” I say simply.
“Then I guess you’d better take me home. I have a few more things to pack before the movers come in the morning.” She sighs and rubs her hands down her wet jeans. “Tomorrow, we start creating an entire life. Hopefully by the time he gets wind of this, we’ll make it look believable.”
I pull out of the parking spot and head for her apartment after she gives me the address to input into my GPS.
I’ve been down this direction before, but it’s not my usual stomping grounds, and I like that GPS reroutes me if there is an accident or slower traffic on a specific route. Since it’s a home game night, there will still be more traffic out than usually, until the bars downtown close down for the evening.
When I pull up to drop her off, I see the apartment complex is only two stories, with the apartments having access to their doors from the outside, not the kind of secure apartment building with a doorman and secure parking that we’re moving into tomorrow.
This is the first time that I’m actually happy she’s moving into this building with me… she’ll be safer in this new building.
I’m not exactly sure where this need to protect her is coming from, but I can’t stop it, and it only seems to strengthen the more time we spend together.
