He became a kid. Whenever our team made a big play, he’d lean forward in his seat, gripping the edge like gravity was going to give out at any moment. Whenever Bloomington snatched back the advantage, he’d clench his teeth and rap the seats with his knuckles and send little tremors through my thighs. And in the fourth quarter, whenever things got particularly tense, he’d reach over and grab my hand, and shake it gently.
There had been chatting during the game. I had asked questions about what was happening and he had explained (in what were supposedly layman’s terms) about formations and strategies, though I don’t remember even a word of it. What I do remember was his tone. It wasn’t condescending. It wasn’t “let me explain some man stuff to this precious little doll.” Again, he was a kid. He was excited and proud. He might as well have been talking about his Legos.
So every time he grabbed my hand, I was holding a kid’s hand and it was cute and innocent and it wasn’t at all like holding Dylan’s hand in my living room a few days before. The gentle shakes were the ones I recognized from my youngest cousins, the can-you-believe-that-we’re-at-a-water-park-and-there-are- waterslides-and-oh-boy-I-could-pee-my-pants-right-this-minute! variety of shakes.
Kids grow up, though, and the kid version of Dylan went through puberty in the final seconds of the game. The scoreboard read Bloomington 38 and Covington 33. We had the ball at the fifty-yard line. Twenty seconds left on the clock. I’d seen enough movies to know that this was why people loved sports. Underdogs making good and last-second scores. Everyone on our team was wearing two black armbands, for chrissakes. Emotion to spare, my friends. To spare.
And Bloomington wasn’t taking it easy on us out of sympathy. They were snarling, punching, and gouging. “It’s a sign of respect,” Dylan explained. “No true athlete wants to be a charity case. This is the way it should be.”
The crowd was singing the alma mater, which pretty much never happens because it’s a creepy bit of propaganda about “merging together as one, for the honor of mighty Covington.” Still, in this context, it was appropriate. We had suffered together and together we were fighting through it, one throbbing mass of cheers and tears. We didn’t need to win this game necessarily, but we needed people to remember this game. Even a girl who doesn’t care about sports can be on board with that.
Our quarterback, Clint Jessup, was doing a hell of a job, but with twenty seconds left on the clock, he buckled over and started puking on the field. I’m not sure if there are rules about such things, but I think that even in football, puking puts you on the sidelines for a play or two. Because that’s exactly where Clint headed. Helmet on the ground, head in his hands, he stumbled to the bench.
“They don’t have any timeouts left, so they gotta go with Deely,” Dylan said with a groan. “Deely has never even taken a varsity snap.”
Deely was Malik Deely. From pre-calc. And support group. The one cool head in our woeful bunch. He was the team’s backup quarterback, which, from what I could gather, meant he stood around holding a clipboard all game until the last twenty seconds when he was expected to come in and save the day because our number one guy was too vomity.
“Don’t worry, Malik can handle pressure,” I assured Dylan and Dylan gave me a you-better-be-right look, and it was that exact moment that he changed, that the hand-holding changed, that the charming became charged. He squeezed my fingers—a little too hard at first perhaps—but when he eased up, he soothed things by stroking them. He ran a fingertip over my palm, almost as though he were writing a message on it.
Maybe it was the crowd pulsing around us or the sweaty anxiety all over the field, but it was an unbearably sexy moment, at least for me. And when Malik Deely lined up behind his teammates and started barking out the play, I was basically at a point where I wanted to pull Dylan in and stuff my face in his neck and nuzzle, nuzzle, nuzzle. Weird, I know, and may not seem all that hot to you, but when you want something at a certain moment and you’re not sure whether you can have it, but you know that it’s within the realm of possibility if only you have the courage to go after it . . . well, I don’t care who you are or what that thing you want is, the simple fact is this: It’s fucking hot.
Problem this time was that I didn’t go after it. It didn’t seem right to distract Dylan. Because as Dylan ran that fingertip over my palm, and I thought about scorched convenience stores and dancing triplets and infinite nuzzling, Malik Deely took his first varsity snap.
I’m not exactly a sportscaster, so I’m not sure the best way to describe what happened next, but here goes.
Malik had the ball, raised up like he was ready to pass, and he moved left and right, looking downfield to see if there was anyone open. Two of the defenders from Bloomington pushed past the guys who were supposed to be blocking them and they closed in on Malik.
“Jarowski!” Dylan yelled, as did almost everyone else in the crowd, because the lumbering lunk named Jared Jarowski had broken free. But it was too late. The defenders were pouncing on Malik and Malik was bringing the ball to his chest and curling into a fetal position.
A collective gasp. And then . . . a collective cheer. Somehow, Malik slid out from under the two defenders without being tackled and there was an open patch of grass in front of him.
“Go! Go! Go!” Dylan hollered, tapping my hand with each go!
Malik went. He burst forth with the ball tucked under his arm. He reached the forty-yard line, then the thirty-five, then the thirty.
Defenders pursued. Malik spun out of danger and kept running. He stuck an arm out and knocked a guy over. He hurdled another guy. He was at the twenty-five, then the twenty.
I’ll admit it. Football wasn’t entirely boring. I could see the clock was in the single digits. I was as wrapped up in it as anyone else. A few of the guys on our team made some amazing blocks, throwing their bodies in front of Bloomington players who were nipping at Malik’s heels.
“Please no flags, please no flags, please no flags,” Dylan chanted as Malik hit the fifteen and then the ten.
It was almost too good to be true. A touchdown would win it for us. We didn’t even need to make the extra point. Get the ball into the end zone, spike the thing, dance a dance, and call it a day. But when Malik reached the five-yard line, it happened.
He dropped the ball.
The crowd howled. The ball bounced once. Almost everyone within a five-yard radius dove for it. Malik didn’t need to dive though, because on the ball’s second bounce, he caught it. A shuffle, two leaps, a dive, and he was in.
Touchdown!
Nuts is not the word for what the crowd went. Psychotic is more like it. The stands shook as Quaker fans threw themselves on each other, over each other, and into the field. The band tried to break into the fight song, but the pandemonium sent their trumpets and tubas flying and the only sound they made was the clang of brass on bleachers.
I was hugging Dylan. I hardly realized it. Our hands were now clutching at each other’s sides and we were hugging and hopping up and down and I was laughing myself to bits and it was magnificent in so many ways. The noise. The vibrations. The feeling of his chest pressing against mine.
Down on the field, teammates were surrounding Malik and howling in his face like a bunch of Vikings, as players from Bloomington lay scattered on the grass, collapsed with exhaustion or doubled over and head-butting the ground in frustration.
In the stands at the opposite sideline, where the collection of Bloomington fans were either sulking or politely clapping in appreciation of our perseverance, I spotted two familiar faces. Special Agents Carla Rosetti and Demetri Meadows, dressed like they were on the job, stood side by side, intently watching something. But it wasn’t Malik.
Rosetti raised her arm and pointed while Meadows raised his phone and tilted it sideways to take a picture of our team’s bench. I figured our bench had cleared the second Malik had scored, but I was wrong. There were two players standing in front