The QB's Nerdy Addiction novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Top Row

Hallie breaks her no-games rule from the top row and watches his father humiliate him in the tunnel. At eleven he comes to the library and asks her to read him anything.

I broke my first rule on Saturday, at 1:40 in the afternoon, in the last row of the student section.

I wore a gray hood, my glasses and a scarf up to my nose.

I told myself I was working.

The film wasn't posted until Monday, and I had never missed a home game in two seasons.

Nobody had ever looked at the top row.

I opened my notebook on my knee and ruled my columns.

Down. Distance. Where he looked.

The Panthers were playing a team from the next county, and in the second quarter Gage dropped back on third and long.

I wrote: left slot.

I wrote: again.

The ball sailed over everybody's head and out of bounds.

Across the field, high above the fifty-yard line, there was a glass box with the university's owner seats.

A heavy man in a camel coat stood up behind the glass and put both hands on the rail.

Gage's head turned toward the box for half a second.

His next throw went into the dirt.

I didn't need a notebook for that one.

I had written about it last year, and I knew what I was looking at.

I wrote the time down anyway, and my pen went through the paper.

We won by three on a field goal.

At the end I went down the concrete ramp to the bathroom under the stands, and I kept my hood up.

The tunnel to the locker room came out at the end of the same corridor.

There were cameras there, a few phones, and two students in team staff polos.

Gage came through with his helmet in his hand.

The man in the camel coat was waiting for him.

"Three of seventeen on third down," the man said. He didn't whisper. "Every one of them."

"Dad."

"You looked at me. Again. You looked up at the box like a kid who wants to be picked up."

So that was Dale Sullivan.

He had a radio voice and a big watch, and he stood a foot too close to his son.

"Everybody read it online last year," Dale said. "You play scared when I'm in the building. Well, you proved them right in front of a stadium."

"I got the win."

"You got lucky."

Dale reached out and took hold of Gage's facemask and shook it.

It was not a hard shake. It was easy and tired, because he had done it before.

Somebody's phone came up. Somebody laughed.

Gage stood there with his shoulders down and let him.

"Yes, sir," he said.

I was twenty feet away with my notebook against my chest, and my own words were coming out of Dale Sullivan's mouth.

You play scared when your father is in the building.

I had typed that on a Sunday night last November, because it was true, and because the comments had begged somebody to say it.

I had not typed it so a man could use it as a leash.

I left through the side doors before Gage lifted his head.

At eleven that night I was behind the desk of the library's first floor, which was my Saturday job, when the door opened.

The building was almost empty.

Gage walked in alone with his hood up and a red mark along his cheek where the facemask had caught him.

"I know this isn't nine," he said. "I know it isn't the third floor."

"It's not a lesson."

"No. I don't have a lesson." He rested his arms on the counter, and his sleeve rode up over the ink on his forearm. "Can you read me something? Anything. I don't think I can look at words tonight."

I should have said no.

Rule one was in my own handwriting.

"Anything?" I said.

"Whatever you've got."

I came around the desk and took him to the couch in the reading nook, under a lamp.

I sat at one end, and he took the other with his bag still on his lap.

"Read me SnapCount," he said. "The Ridgeway one. If you've got it."

I had it.

I took my phone out of my pocket, and found my own post, and read it to him in the flattest voice I owned.

"Third and eight. Number 7 stares at the left slot. The safety sits. He knows the safety is sitting."

"He throws it there anyway, because he doesn't trust his second look."

"Again."

His eyes were closed.

By the third post his head had tipped back against the cushion.

By the fifth it had tipped sideways, onto my shoulder.

He was warm and heavy. His breath had slowed.

I kept reading, quieter and quieter, until there was nothing but the lamp.

I did not move.

When the clock over the desk said twelve, I stopped, and he stirred, and I felt him wake without lifting his head.

"Don't stop," he said.

"It's midnight. I'm closing."

"Okay." He sat up, and the place on my shoulder went cold. "Come sit close at the next game."

"I don't go to games."

"Then I'll look for you anyway," Gage said, and went out into the dark.

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