When we get the bill, it is for $4.59. I hand our waitress the two twenties, and the woman laughs, shakes her head, and says, “Change?” When I say, “No, thank you”—thinking Nikki would want me to overtip—the waitress says to Tiffany, “Honey, I had him all wrong. You two come back real soon. Okay?” And I can tell the woman is satisfied with her tip because she sort of skips her way to the register.
Tiffany doesn’t say anything on the walk home, so I don’t either. When we get to her house, I tell her I had a great time. “Thanks,” I say, and then offer a handshake, just so Tiffany will not get the wrong idea.
She looks at my hand and then up at me, but she doesn’t shake. For a second I think she is going to start crying again, but instead she says, “Remember when I said you could fuck me?”
I nod slowly because I wish I did not remember it so vividly.
“I don’t want you to fuck me, Pat. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
She walks around her parents’ house, and then I am alone again.
When I arrive home, my mom excitedly asks me what we had for dinner, and when I tell her raisin bran, she laughs and says, “Really, what did you have?” I ignore her, go to my room, and lock the door.
Lying down on my bed, I pick up the picture of Nikki and tell her all about my date and how I gave the waitress a nice tip and how sad Tiffany seems and how much I can’t wait for apart time to end so Nikki and I can share raisin bran at some diner and walk through the cool early September air—and then I am crying again.
I bury my face and sob into my pillow so my parents will not hear.
Sing and Spell and Chant
I get up at 4:30 a.m. and start lifting so I will be done with my workout by kickoff, and when I finally come up from the basement, the house smells like crabby snacks, three-meats pizza, and buffalo wings. “Smells good,” I say to my mom while I put on my trash bag, and then I’m out the door for a ten-mile run.
I am shocked to see that Tiffany is jogging up and down the block, because she did not run behind me yesterday, and also, I am running in the a.m., which is not my regular time to run.
I jog toward Knight’s Park, and when I look over my shoulder, I see she’s following me again. “How did you know that I would be running early?” I say, but she keeps her head down and only follows silently.
We run our ten miles, and when I return to my house, Tiffany runs on without saying anything, as if we had never even eaten raisin bran together at the diner and nothing has changed.
I see my brother’s silver BMW parked in front of my parents’ house, so I sneak in the back door, run up the stairs, and jump into the shower. When I finish showering, I put on my Hank Baskett jersey—which my mother has laundered, getting the makeup off the numbers—and then follow the sound of the pregame show to the family room, ready to root on the Birds.
My best friend, Ronnie, is seated next to my brother, which surprises me. Both of them are wearing green away jerseys with the number 18 and the name Stallworth on the back—Ronnie’s is a cheap replica jersey with iron-on numbers, but Jake’s is authentic. Dad is in his chair, wearing his number 5 McNabb replica jersey.
When I say, “Go Birds!” my brother stands, turns to face me, puts both hands in the air, and says “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” until Ronnie and my dad also stand, face me, raise their hands in the air, and say “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” When I raise my hands in the air and say “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” all four of us do the chant, rapidly spelling the letters with our arms and bodies—“E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!”—shooting out two arms and a leg to make an E, touching our fingertips high above our heads to make an A, and so forth.