Page 151 of Tangled with the Tight End

“Okay,” she says. “I won’t.”

We clean up from breakfast and then we move into the front room so I can put my leg up for a while while we watch a college ball game. Winona almost gets as invested in this game as she is in the NFL.

The doorbell camera alerts me a few hours later. I pull up the app even though I know it’s my parents.

“Should I hide?” Winona teases.

“Stop it,” I say, grabbing my crutches. “If you want me to tell them, I will.”

“Let’s wait,” she says. “You know them. I want to get this right.”

“Okay,” I say.

“I’ll just be your DLS today.”

I shoot her a look. She laughs.

I want her to know how much she means to me. I’m proud to have her as … whatever she is. My girlfriend? In my mind, yes. But we haven’t put a label on it. We said we’re dating. For me, it’s already a lot more. I don’t want her to question her worth.

But I know my parents. And she doesn’t get a second chance to make an impression. It matters to me that they like her. Maybe it shouldn’t. But it does.

I swing toward the front door, opening it to find my parents staring down and to their right—at Geese Witherspoon.

Today, Geese is wearing overalls, a plaid shirt and a straw farming hat. A miniature pumpkin is at her webbed feet, perched on a miniature hay bale. She has a pitchfork attached to her overalls. Darlene bought the getup. She’s all in when it comes to Geese. Winona went crazy when she saw the outfit. She assumed I had done it. I wish I had been the one. Next time. I’ve already got plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“What is that?” Dad asks in the tone he would use if there were a dead rat, stiff on the bricks of our entryway.

“It’s a goose,” I say.

“I can see that,” he says. “But what is it doing here?”

“I like it,” I say.

“It’s tacky, Declan,” Mom says plainly, as if she’s not offending me, and inadvertently Winona with her blunt assessment. “If you want porch decor, I can ask Blaire to come by and style the porch in a way that fits the exterior aesthetic.”

“I like the goose,” I say, adopting the tone I’ve learned growing up under my dad. “It stays.”

Winona’s still in the front room watching the college game. I’m hoping the sound of the television overrides this conversation.

I love that goose, crazy as it sounds. It reminds me of her and how she burst into my life with her unorthodox and unexpected presence.

She saved me from a spiral into self-pity and depression. And she doesn’t even know it.

I need to tell her.

“How are you feeling?” Dad says, sending one more derisive glance at Geese before he steps past me into the hallway.

“I’m good.”

“How’s the timeline?”

“For returning to the field?”

He nods.

Mom comes in. I offer to take her coat, but she walks to the closet, hanging it herself.

“They say I’m on schedule. Might even make it back by the end of the season before playoffs.”