Waiting on the Sidelines (Waiting on the Sidelines #1)(88)
“Mom, I want you to meet my girlfriend, Nolan,” my heart dropped at the word girlfriend, but I held it together and smiled, reaching out my hand. It could have been my imagination, but I felt a slight hesitation from Reed’s mom as she shot Reed a quick glance before she turned to shake my hand, giving me a tight, closed-mouthed smile and peering at me a little from the top of her glasses.
“What a pleasant surprise,” she said, looking between Reed and I. “I didn’t know you had a serious girlfriend, son. We haven’t talked enough.”
“It’s very nice to meet you,” I smiled, still shaking her hand. When she looked down at it, I pulled it away slowly, realizing how eager and desperate I was coming off.
“Please, call me Millie, dear,” she said, turning to set her purse and gift bags on the table by the door, almost dismissing me.
When Sean walked up to greet her hello I finally exhaled, relief washing over me that this part of my night was finally done. I followed Reed into the kitchen where Becky was waiting along with a few of his teammates. There was quite a spread laid out along with all of Buck’s barbecue fixings, a Johnson tradition. We all made a plate of food and headed out to the patio for a little more privacy.
There were a few other family members scattered around, uncles and aunts along with some UofA alumni friends of Buck’s. Everyone greeted me warmly, but it may have been that I was just imagining them to take to me more since my cold greeting from Millie a few minutes earlier.
Reed kept me close and at his side the entire night. His warmth was comforting, and despite having kissed him so many times now, I still got a thrill every time his arm wrapped around me or his leg brushed beside mine when we sat near one another.
About an hour into the party, Reed’s father called everyone inside for an announcement. We all gathered around the large dining table by the wall-to-wall windows that looked out onto the patio. One of Reed’s uncles started handing out champagne glasses to all of us. I took a tiny sniff of mine and was surprised when it was real champagne. Waiting, we all looked up to Buck as he coughed a little to get our attention.
“Thank you all for coming today. Millie and I, well… we might fight like cats and dogs,” he laughed, and Millie chided him, elbowing his side a little. “Well, you know we do.” He said quietly, but still loud enough we all heard.
She urged him to go on, rolling her eyes. “Anyhow, despite that, we’ve always had one thing we could agree on. Our sons. Jason has decided to move to New Mexico where he is opening up a new Johnson dealership, starting it all on his own, and we couldn’t be prouder.”
Everyone cheered and clapped, Reed turned to me and raised his eyebrows a little, secretly mocking his older brother whom I knew he didn’t necessarily find to be as perfect as everyone else did. He looked back to his parents when his father said his name.
“Then there’s Reed, the man of the hour,” he joked, holding his glass up for a bit. “Reed, my boy, you have no idea how proud we are of you. You work hard, and you’ve had your eyes set on a goal since you and I first started tossing the pigskin around the front yard when you were four.”
“I think we can all agree that Reed has grown up to be quite a quarterback,” Buck boasted, and everyone nodded in agreement. “But, I just wanted to share in front of you all exactly how good he is.”
Buck popped open his briefcase that was sitting on the table and started pulling large envelopes out, setting them on the table one at a time. Reed seemed a little surprised and quite a bit embarrassed by this show, his leg bouncing behind the table. But he also knew his father was just trying to brag out of love, so he held my hand tightly and let him continue.
“Oklahoma. Florida. Texas Tech. Oregon. Cal. Utah. Missouri. And finally, Stanford and University of Arizona. Friends, family…what you see right there is the culmination of Reed’s diligence and desire. Son, you have worked so hard. So very hard, and I am honored to have fielded every last phone call and every single meeting that came behind each of these offer envelopes. The choice is, of course, always yours, though you may notice a certain red and blue envelope on top of the stack,” Buck laughed a little, nudging the UofA folder a little closer to Reed.
Raising his glass again, Buck urged all of us to join him. “I’d like to give a toast, to my son, whom I love with all my heart, no matter what color jersey he decides to wear,” Buck said, and we all joined him with a cheer and a drink in Reed’s honor.
Buck then slid a small box over on the table to Reed, who took it and held it in his hand for a while before opening it. I could feel him tense a little beside me from all of the attention, like he knew what was in the box. When he opened it and saw his father’s college championship ring he inhaled deeply and looked up at his father with the most loving eyes.
“Dad, I can’t take this. It’s yours,” he explained, trying to close the box and hand it back to Buck. But Buck was having none of it, and just closed Reed’s hand around it and squeezed tightly, patting him on the back and kissing the top of his head, one of his few unmanly shows of affection.
“Yes you can, and yes you will,” he said.
Millie came over after Buck’s toast to give Reed a gift more privately. Not comfortable being a part of her moment with her son, I retreated to the kitchen with Sean and Becky and looked on as Reed put on the watch his mom had given him, looking over an engraving on the back. Reed’s birthday was a lot different from mine, which usually consisted of cake and a few new T-shirts.