You & Me

I was more nervous for Emmet’s first varsity game—and my first game—than I was when Riley walked up to me and said hello.

I wanted Emmet to have a great night. I wanted to cheer him on and know what I was cheering for. I wanted him and Bowen to win and for all their hard work to pay off.

I wanted to see him smile.

And I wanted to hang out with Landon again.

Friday morning, Emmet left for school before I was done showering. He left the plain blue tie on my doorknob and put his cereal bowl in the dishwasher. Teenager speak for thank you.

I imagined Emmet wearing my favorite tie all day. Did he remember he had picked it out, or was his choice simple genetics, pieces of me floating around inside my son and popping to the surface like bubbles on a pond?

Work was hopeless, and I left early. I hadn’t been paying attention since lunch. Instead, I crammed YouTube videos and tried to understand football. Nothing made sense. Why ten yards? Why was it called a down? Why was it called football if you couldn’t touch the ball with your feet? What did all these different plays mean?

I didn’t have to understand it all. I just needed to be there for Emmet.

Game volunteers had to arrive early, and because of that, we parked in a separate lot tucked behind the athletic center. I pulled in beside Landon’s BMW, then tugged on my booster T-shirt over a long-sleeve undershirt. I’m here, I texted.

Awesome! Come down to the field.

The end zone gate was wide open, like Tuesday night, and I trotted through. The stadium was empty, lonely, in a pristine, untouched kind of way. Expectancy hovered. Soon, the stadium would be heaving with parents and players and passion. Now, there were only a few people scattered around.

I spotted Landon near the tunnel where our kids jogged from the athletic center, beneath the home side of the stadium, and ran out to the field. He was snaking a huge electrical cord through the tunnel and on to the turf, tucking it against the concrete sidewall. Every six inches, he secured the cord with industrial duct tape, so sticky his fingertips were red and swollen. He was in jeans, faded cowboy boots, and his booster T-shirt, and looked more Texan than me.

“I’m here,” I said, coming up behind him. It was everything I could do to smother my grin as I held out my hands. “And I am ready to be used the way you want to.”

The back of his neck flushed. He spun on his knees, and his face sprinted right through the entire magenta spectrum as he peered up at me. “I’m never going to escape that one, am I?”

“It’s too amazing to be forgotten.”

He rolled his eyes as he grinned. “Get down here.”

I bit back the you want me on my knees joke. “What are we doing?” I grabbed the tape from him and took over tearing strips. The glue was so sticky I thought it was going to pull my flesh off.

“Making sure these kids don’t trip and die. This—” He pointed to the electrical cord. “—powers the inflatable rodeo rider the players run out of at the start of each game.” His eyebrows rose at my blank stare. “Have you seen that monstrosity?”

“I have not.”

He pointed to the cartoon rider lassoing a football on our T-shirts. “It makes this look like fine art.”

We ran around for two hours before the game, moving back and forth—and back and forth and back and forth—from the athletic center to the field. After we taped the electrical cord, Landon introduced me to the ice machines, which were ancient, creaky, and—worryingly—leaked near the outlet. “You’re taping down the electrical cord, but you’re not worried about this?” I asked, watching him stand in the puddle of water way too close to the outlet. He shrugged.

We set up two dozen tables on the sideline and covered them with water jugs. More jugs went beneath each table. We hauled out the inflatable rodeo rider and prepositioned it. Helped the marching band parents cart their gear up to the stands, and then calmed down the band director when he thought he lost his microphone on the field.

Our sons arrived before the rest of the team, walking across campus in their dress clothes with their duffels over their shoulders. Bowen had on khakis and a cream button-down with a houndstooth tie. Emmet looked sharp in his white shirt and black pants—ironed like glass, with perfect pleats—and a pop of color thanks to my tie.

“Emmet looks great,” Landon said. “Your tie?”

“Mmhmm. He picked it out when he was six. It’s my favorite.” I left out that Emmet had a choice this morning—that tie or another—and he’d picked that one. Part of me wanted to shout at the sky, pump my fists like I’d won the Daytona 500. Jog up to him and give him a big hug, ruffle his hair like he was still six.

He’d never speak to me again. I settled for a wave.

Bowen waved back. Emmet at least acknowledged my existence with a look that wasn’t a glare before they disappeared into the athletic center.

That was good enough to send me to the moon.

We helped the athletic trainers set up their tables, foam rollers, elastic bands, coolers full of ice packs, and tape, and then ran out the bag of practice footballs from beneath the stadium for both teams to use during warm-ups. More players drifted in, and the stands started to fill with parents and fans. The cheerleaders arrived, and we coned off their practice area so no one would get too close as they flipped and tumbled and flung each other into the air.

By the time Landon said we were all done “for now,” I was ready to collapse. I hadn’t done that much physical work in ages. I was a disheveled mess, but so was Landon, and I didn’t feel quite so inferior with him looking bedraggled like me. Of course, he wore the sweat and the rumpled hair better.

We downed bottles of water and watched the team begin their warm-ups. Bowen and Emmet led the offense and defense in sprints between the yard lines before taking the team on a snakelike jog around the field.

Twenty minutes before kickoff, the stadium started playing pump-up beats. The stands had filled dramatically. The home side of the stadium looked like an overfilled canoe ready to tip over while the visitors’ side was pockmarked and splotchy. Landon said they were from out by Ponder, and more fans would trickle in as traffic settled.

When the marching band made their entrance—blaring the school fight song as loud and off-key as they possibly could—Landon dragged me back to my feet and said, “That’s our cue.”

I groaned. He laughed and led me down to the end zone, where we plugged the taped-down electrical cord into the back of the inflatable. Air pumps whirred, and the mess of plastic in front of us started to take shape.

Landon was right. It was hideous. He watched me as it inflated, and he hid his smile in his palm as I recoiled at the balloon my son was about to emerge from. An exaggerated cartoon rodeo rider in a football jersey sat astride a bucking bull while he pretended to throw a football. The opening for the team was smack-dab between the bull’s rear legs, right where its balls would have hung.

“This is awful,” I said.

“I know. I’ve thought about popping it at least a dozen times.”

The music was getting louder. The stands were overflowing, and Landon was right—even the visitors’ side was filling up. Opposite us, the other team’s parents were struggling to drag their inflatable—an eagle, with a much more sensible entrance—into place. Cheerleaders from both teams were on the field, waving to the fans as they skipped and tumbled and wiggled their pom-poms.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer rumbled suddenly. “Are you ready for a night of Last Waters Rodeo Riders’ football?”

The stadium roared. Inside the tunnel, beyond the bull’s spread legs, the team waited for their cue. They slapped each other on their helmets and backs, roaring like they were getting ready to brawl, not play on the same side. Bowen, Emmet, and Jason were all at the front.

“Everybody get on your feet and welcome to the field… your Rodeo Riders!”

Parents and fans screamed and shouted, clapped and cheered. The school colors—burgundy and white and yellow—moved like a wave through the stands. Flags and banners from the color guard snapped. Pom-poms glittered. The marching band went wild, drums and horns and cymbals at full volume as the players charged across the field to the home sideline. I felt the bellows in my bones.

Bowen was in front, but he pulled up, Emmet and Jason beside him, and let the whole team fill in on the sideline. He worked from one end to the other, high-fiving each of his teammates. Jason and Emmet had their own confab, huddling together over a clipboard with an intensity that rivaled NASA launch officers.

Landon and I deflated the rodeo rider as the other team ran out of the visitors’ tunnel. The cheerleaders led a pregame cheer routine while we stomped out the air and rolled up the heavy plastic. Both teams sent their captains to the center of the field for the coin toss as Landon and I ripped the electrical cord and tape off the field and wheeled the inflatable back into the tunnel and under the stands.

Finally, as the stadium chanted the seconds down to kickoff, Landon and I dragged ourselves to the skywalk over the tunnel by the home end zone. The skywalk was closed during games. We sagged against the railing to catch our breath.

“Because of all that,” Landon said, waving to the field and everything we’d done, “we get to watch from here. These are the best seats in the house.”

He was right. We were dead center over the end zone and watching the plays come at us head-on. It felt like Bowen could hurl that football right to us, right between the arms of the upright.

“So we’re done?” I slumped, my elbows on the railing.

“Until halftime. Then we go refill the water jugs. After the game, we bring them back to the athletic center. We bring back the trainers’ equipment, too. But that’s all we have to do.”

I counted water jugs in fours. Lost count at thirty-two. They were breeding out there. How much water did kids drink, anyway? “You are using me every way you want. I need a nap. I’ll be in my truck.”

Landon grabbed my arm when I pretended to walk away. He laughed. “No, now the important work begins. We cheer on our boys! You can sleep when they go to college.”

“Are you going to help me understand what’s going on out there?” I waved to the field. “What on Earth is happening?”

“Absolutely. So, tell me. What do you know about football? I’ll fill in whatever gaps you have.”

I looked him dead in his eyes. “What is a football?”

Landon blinked.

“I’m kidding. I know it’s the round ball with those black and white hexagons.”

He shoved my shoulder. I fell away, came back laughing, and sagged into his side. We both braced against the railing. Our shoulders were touching, elbows brushing as we shifted to watch each play.

On the field, Bowen led the offense right up the center. Every time he passed, Landon hissed in a breath, held it. Blew it out when the receiver caught the ball. No, I realized, not when the receiver caught the ball. When Bowen stayed on his feet. One of the opposing team snaked through the scramble of players in front of Bowen and dragged him down, and that was when Landon didn’t exhale. Not until he saw Bowen pop up again, towering over the line and ready to take another snap.

Throughout the first possession—when we had the ball—Emmet watched from the sideline, so close to the field his toes were touching the white paint. He gripped his helmet in both hands, fingers flexing around his face mask. He scowled at everything. The scoreboard, the turf, the lights, the other team. He bellowed Bowen’s name, shouted for him to come on, bro.

Landon patiently explained the chaos in front of me. What plays Bowen was calling and why sometimes he passed and sometimes he handed it off to the running back. He counted yards and downs and dissected the whys of each player’s moves and told me what to watch for with the other team’s defense, how to see which players were matching up with who across the line. He predicted the plays Bowen was going to call and then quizzed me on whether I thought it was going to be a run or a pass.

The shape of the game started to form in my mind. I fell into the rhythm of huddle, line up, snap. I held my breath with Landon. Smelled the turf and the rubber, felt the crackle in the air. Heard the slap of the ball in Bowen’s hands, the grunts of the players as they rushed to make their plays.

“It’s happening.” Landon’s hand squeezed down on my forearm. “Bowen’s going for a touchdown pass. This play. His first of the season.”

I couldn’t tell what was different about this play from the others, but Landon knew his son, knew him inside and out. He could read Bowen’s thoughts and emotions and moods, decipher a whole language in the hitch of his son’s breathing or the shake and stretch of his arms and legs.

Bowen broke the huddle and walked up to the line. He sounded off, calling cadence like I’d heard NFL players do on TV.

The ball snapped. Landon’s grip on my arm tightened. Bowen dropped back. On the sideline, Emmet clenched his teeth, held his helmet in front of his chest in both hands. Receivers raced for the end zone, two to the sidelines, one running diagonally. Bowen’s gaze swept the field. I swear, he looked right at us.

Bowen launched the football like a missile, arrowing it to the far-right corner. The receiver leapt, arms outstretched, back arched, his whole body stretching, stretching—

It all crystallized. The lights, the screaming fans on their feet. Emmet on the sideline, shouting. Bowen waiting, watching his pass. The receiver framed through the uprights as the ball slid into his waiting palms before he came down in a tumble into the end zone. Touchdown.

Nothing in eleven years had inspired me to draw again, but that made my fingers curl. I wanted to grab this moment and put those lines on paper, seize these images and hold them forever.

Of course, I couldn’t. The moment exploded. The stands erupted, as did the sideline, everyone on their feet as they roared. Even Emmet was smiling, both hands over his head as he hollered.

Bowen jogged off the field to Emmet. Emmet passed him a water bottle while special teams took the field.

“It will be a good game,” Landon said. He sighed, all the stress and tension that had coiled inside of him blown free. “Making that first touchdown for any quarterback—any team—is huge. Football is about momentum. One missed or broken play can end a game and suck the life out of a team. It’s all about commitment.”

My gaze lasered to Emmet as the defense took the field. He seemed to scan the sideline, the crowd, the impossibly-stuffed stands. I had no idea if he could see me, but I waved both hands over my head and called, “Go Emmet!”

I thought I’d had an overpowering need to draw Bowen’s touchdown pass, but that was nothing compared to the feeling I had when my son was on the field and he waited for his first snap in his first varsity football game. It’s just a game, I thought, until I saw him.

There he was, long-limbed and loose, his hands opening and closing in the flood of the stadium lights. Offense and defense were lined up over the ball, frozen in place as the stands rose like waves about to crash.

All I could see was Emmet and those two 9s in the center of his chest. What’s nine times nine, Dad? Infinity, buddy. How far I’ll love you.

Emmet’s shoulders rose and fell. His hands opened, squeezed shut. Nervous energy trembled through him, through me. I saw his cleat shift left. Felt my own leg quiver. “Go Emmet!” I called again.

He was like an animal when the ball snapped. Cutting left, jerking right, then leaping forward and bear-hugging the running back with the ball before spinning and bringing him to the ground.

The whole play had taken three seconds. Landon cheered. I tried to remember to breathe. “He blocked a first down,” I said.

“More than that. They lost a yard thanks to Emmet.”

Emmet’s defense stopped the other team in their tracks. They didn’t move more than five yards, and in three downs, they sent out their kicker to get rid of the ball. Emmet jogged off the field, and Bowen slung his elbow around Emmet’s neck. He buried his face in Emmet’s neck and pretended to punch him in the belly. Emmet laughed, and the sound waves slammed into me all the way up on the skywalk.

Bowen threw two more touchdown passes before halftime. Emmet kept the other team hemmed in and never let them advance past the fifty-yard line. He let them have a few first downs, though. Landon leaned in and told me, “He’s loosening up his coverage a bit. He needs to let Bowen and the offense catch their breath while the defense is on the field. But he’s like a cat playing with a mouse. He’ll let the other team have the ball for five minutes.”

I timed it. Landon was right.

At half, we cheered for the team as they ran beneath us into the tunnel. Then we had to hustle: get down to the sideline, grab the water jugs, haul them to the spigots. Landon had stashed coolers of ice beneath the stands, and we shoveled ice into the jugs so the kids could have cold water. We checked in with the athletic trainers, dodged the marching band, and then detoured to the back of the concession stand, where Annie was waiting for us with a pile of foil-wrapped hot dogs.

“I saw you guys out there!” She squeezed Landon’s wrist. She was wearing a plastic apron, a hair net, and gigantic football charm earrings. A “35” made of diamonds dangled from a chain around her neck. She turned her huge smile to me. “You doin’ all right, Luke? Hanging in?”

“Barely. Landon is working me into an early grave.”

Annie laughed. She passed us each a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper, wished us a good second half, and then ducked into the concession stand.

The visiting team came back from half time with something to prove. They scored two touchdowns, making the game a nail-biter. They’d obviously figured out a weakness in the offensive line, too, because every time Bowen dropped to pass, someone sneaked through into the pocket. Bowen hit the turf more in the third quarter than he had all game. I thought Landon was going to stop breathing.

As the fourth quarter started, the other team’s energy had amped up while ours had flagged. Bowen was walking up and down the sideline and rolling his shoulders. Landon had glued his eyes to his son. “Go see the trainer, Bowen. Don’t be a hero.”

Emmet was back on the field, and though I was worried about Bowen—and Landon—every one of the atoms in my cells was tuned to my son.

The other team wrestled a first down out of a pass up the sideline, marching through the fifty-yard demarcation, and they got five yards out of a second down when one of Emmet’s defensive players slipped on the field.

Third down and five. Another first down would lead them on a march to the end zone, and give them an opportunity to tie—or even win—the game. They huddled up, and their marching band started a raucous stand tune. Their fans were on their feet.

“Emmet needs to stop them right here,” Landon said. “The momentum has shifted to the other team. He can break through that, though. They’re running on inertia. If he can stop them, we can take the game back. Bowen’s like a chained tiger right now. He needs to get back on the field, and Emmet is the only one who can get him out there.”

“He’ll do it.” I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t move my eyes off Emmet. I counted every turf stain on his jersey, every bruise on his shin. Was that blood on his sleeve? You can do this. You’ve got this.

Hands opening. Hands closing. I breathed in time with my son.

The ball snapped. Emmet roared into motion. “Blitz!” Landon hissed.

Emmet was fast. If I’d blinked, I would have missed the play. My son erupted over the line, skipped left, jerked right, and moved around the linemen who tried to tear him down. He leapt, and got one arm around the shoulders of the quarterback and one hand on the ball.

Time froze, my son hanging in the air. The stadium was a held breath. I heard my heartbeat once. You have this, Emmet.

Emmet came down in a flurry of arms and legs and exploding turf, and hauled the other team’s quarterback down.

The stadium, the sideline, everyone wearing burgundy and white, roared. I shouted Emmet’s name until my throat was raw.

When Emmet jogged off the field, he handed the football to Bowen.

Like Landon predicted, the other team fell apart after Emmet’s big stop. Bowen led a slow march upfield, winding down the clock before he passed the ball to the tight end for a fourth and final touchdown.

After the game, our players sang the school fight song with the marching band and the cheerleaders while the stands emptied. Annie and her group of moms ascended into the bleachers with garbage bags to pick up trash and recycling. Landon and I hauled water jugs until I thought my arms were going to fall off.

Finally, we had everything disassembled, emptied, and packed away, and the stadium was as it was six hours before when I’d first arrived.

So much had happened, though.

It was like I’d entered a new world, an alternate reality where my son wasn’t depressed and hated everything about his life. A world where he smiled and where people knew his name and knew how amazing he was. And in that world, he’d seen me on the skywalk, and he knew I was there, watching him and cheering him on. Breathing with him during every one of those plays.

The first of the players trickled out of the athletic center when we were finally finished. Landon and I sat on my tailgate and waited for our sons. I ached, down to my toes and my fingers.

Bowen and Emmet emerged half an hour later. I slid to my feet, my hands shoved into my jeans. Butterflies filled me. I wanted to see Emmet smiling, proud of himself and his big win. I wanted to congratulate him to his face, tell him I’d seen it all, every moment, and that I was so proud of him.

But the smiling Emmet from the sideline had been replaced with the gloomy Emmet I lived with. He was scowling again, glaring at his sandals and the cars in the parking lot like he didn’t want to walk out with Bowen and find me waiting for him.

Bowen, of course, was all smiles, and he wrapped Landon up in a hug and lifted his dad off his feet. Landon talked a mile a minute, recounting every moment of glory Bowen had during the game. They were off in their own world, father and son, excited to be reunited.

I stood in front of Emmet. “Hey. You were awesome.”

Emmet shrugged. He hitched his duffel higher on his shoulder.

“You were. You were unstoppable out there.”

“Not unstoppable. They got two touchdowns, Dad. It was a one-score game until the end.”

I sighed. “Em—”

Bowen reappeared, slinging an arm around Emmet’s neck. “Hey, you guys want to come with us? Dad and I always go get massive ice cream sundaes after the first game. C’mon, come with us. It will be fun.”

Emmet grunted.

“Sure,” I said.

Bowen drove himself and Emmet, and I followed Landon’s BMW in my truck. Before we pulled out of the school, Landon tried to catch my eye and a smile, but, like Emmet, I wasn’t in the mood anymore. I avoided his gaze, glaring at the steering wheel and the athletic center. The good mood I’d had, the hopeful, buoyant expectancy that had filled me, had popped. Everyone, it seemed, got glimpses of the best parts of Emmet. Except me.

The dessert parlor was an old-school kind of place, a throwback to the 1950s. We crowded into a booth in the back, the boys on one side and me and Landon on the other. The menus were so huge we had to share, and Landon and I perused sundae options and milkshakes until I was dizzy. “What are you getting?” I asked him.

“What I always get: a banana split.”

“Classic. That sounds good. I’ll do the same.”

I tried to guess what Emmet would order. Did I know my son well enough to guess? When it was Riley’s turn to bring the after-game snack for herd ball—and she tapped me to be the one to struggle across the field with the four coolers packed with ice and tiny cardboard cups of Blue Bell ice cream—I would sneak a little carton of strawberry in among all the chocolate and vanilla. It was Emmet’s and my little secret… until he had pink smeared across his lips and the front of his uniform.

I bet with myself. You’re a good father if you guess he’s going to order a strawberry hot fudge sundae.

“So, dude.” Bowen leaned into Emmet the same way Landon leaned into me. Like father, like son. “You shredded your first varsity game.”

Emmet gave Bowen a lackluster smile. I knew he could smile. Hell, I had just seen him beaming through the end of the game. Why was he so opposed to being happy now?

Was it because of me? Because I was there?

This is why you’ve stayed away. Because he doesn’t want you anywhere around him.

I sighed and stared at the corner booth and the family of three sharing a brownie sundae. A mom, a dad, a little boy. The mom and dad were sneaking bites and gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes in between making sure the boy didn’t fling fudge sauce on the walls as he pretended to conduct a marching band. Or fight an invisible sword fight. With boys at that age, it could be anything.

When Emmet was that young, he and I used to have crayon drawing contests on the back of the paper menus.

Landon and Bowen tried to fill the silence between Emmet and me. They should have come here on their own. We were anchors on their good moods. Emmet glared at the ketchup packets and shuffled the saltshaker from between his thumb and forefinger.

Finally, I couldn’t stand another moment of Emmet’s woe, and I barreled into Landon and Bowen’s recitations of the game highlights. “Emmet’s stop in the fourth was the best play,” I blurted out. “You took the momentum back from the other team with that sack. Without that stop, they might have gotten another touchdown, but you held it. The whole team has you to thank for the win.”

“See!” Bowen threw out his massive hands as he whirled on Emmet. He almost hit me in the face. “That’s what I told you!”

Emmet grasped the saltshaker in his fist. He took his time looking up at me.

Under the table, out of sight, Landon’s hand brushed the side of my leg.

“You noticed that?” Emmet’s voice was soft.

“I think the whole town heard the cheers after your play. They might have recorded the rumble on the Richter scale.” Emmet’s ears turned pink, and he dug his thumb into the edge of the table. “Of course I noticed. I saw everything. I told you, you were amazing.”

There was a flicker, like a candle flame sputtering, in Emmet’s cheek. He held my stare, and for the first time in I-couldn’t-remember-how-long, my son smiled at me.

It was only for a moment, a fleeting half of a blink, there and then gone, but it hit me like a freight train at full speed.

Landon squeezed my knee. I wanted to grab him and scream, Did you see that? Did you? It happened, right?

I smiled back at Emmet. “You kicked ass tonight. I’m glad I got to see it. It’s totally different being able to watch the game in person.”

He frowned. “Huh?”

“I could never get a ticket to your home games. I used to hang out in the parking lot and listen to the announcer, but the game makes a lot more sense when you can see the plays.”

Emmet’s jaw dropped as the color drained from his face.

“Howdy, fellas.”

I almost groaned when the waitress appeared. She had the worst timing in the world. As soon as she spoke, Emmet’s gaze dropped, his shoulders hunched, and he dug his thumb against the side of the table like he was trying to start a fire.

“What can I get for y’all tonight?”

“Two banana splits.” Landon ordered for me while I stared at my son and tried to will him to look my way.

Bowen ordered the monster bowl, a massive heap of eight scoops of ice cream smothered in hot fudge, caramel, and strawberry syrups, whipped cream, and rainbow sprinkles. It usually was a shared dish, but he ordered it with one spoon. I almost gagged at the flavors he ordered. Cotton candy, coconut, and pistachio? Even Landon looked a little green.

“And you, young man?” The waitress waited for Emmet to blink himself back to reality. He didn’t look disgruntled or disdainful so much as lost.

“Um, I’ll have a strawberry hot fudge sundae, ma’am,” Emmet mumbled. “Thanks.”

I smiled.