Page 42 of After the Snap

I say it before I have the chance to choose something more honest, exactly the way I did when he called me in Houston. I wasn’t fine then either. Dad turns the tablet on his desk face down, and the movement makes my chest tighten because I know what comes next. His full attention has always been harder to hide from than his questions.

“You know you can tell me if something’s wrong.”

“I know.”

That’s the problem. He knew something was wrong before I managed to tell him about the MCAT. He knew losing Mom’s ring wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t breathe that morning, even when he never pushed me to explain the rest. Dad knows almost every piece of the life that fell apart in Houston.

He doesn’t know about the man who sat beside me on the worst day I’d had in years and never asked me to find a bright side. Jubal let me be scared and exhausted without trying to fix any of it. For a few hours, I didn’t have to be the daughter who always had a plan because I was with someone who didn’t know enough about me to expect one. Now he’s somewhere down the hall wearing a Charlotte Valor badge.

“I’m just tired,” I say, because at least that part is true.

Dad’s expression softens. “Then stop trying to find things for me to do and go home.”

“I’m not finding things for you to do. I’m helping.”

“You reorganized my calendar, corrected two typos in a document no one asked you to read, and informed Denise that the labels on her filing cabinet are inefficient.”

“They are inefficient.”

“She threatened to ban you from her desk.”

The corner of his mouth lifts, and mine follows because this is easy. I know how to be Dad’s daughter. I know how to tease him about unanswered texts and fix things nobody asked me to fix.

“Besides, I have enough people around here trying to get me organized. Jubal spent half the morning going through protections with the offense, and somehow that turned into Whit sending me six pages of changes before nine.”

Dad keeps talking, but my attention catches on the ease with which Jubal has become part of his day. He has meetings here. Plays to learn. Teammates who expect him to show up tomorrow and the day after that. Somewhere beyond these offices is probably a locker with his name already attached to it. This isn’t a place he happened to be today. He belongs here now.

“Bug?”

“Sorry. What?”

“I said I’m glad he’s settling in. It’s been a rough few days for him.”

His words pull me straight back to the man sitting beside me in a Houston bar, staring into his drink while he tried to explain what it felt like to give years of his life to something only for it to decide it didn’t want him anymore. I hadn’t understood what he meant, and now I do.

I almost ask why. One sentence, and Dad could probably tell me exactly what happened to Jubal in Houston, filling in every blank the stranger beside me chose to leave empty. But Jubal told me what he wanted me to know that night. Learning his name doesn’t give me the right to take the rest.

“That’s good.” I swallow before trying again. “That he’s settling in.”

“Yeah.” Dad glances down at his tablet. “I think Charlotte might be good for him.”

I look toward the doorway before I can stop myself. Less than a week ago, I closed Jubal’s front door behind me, believing I was ending something exactly where it was supposed to end. I left Houston repeating that until I almost believed it, then watched the entire city disappear beneath the clouds.

Now my father says his name like it already belongs here, and I can’t pretend finding Jubal in this office was some impossible coincidence I’ll never have to deal with again. He’s Dad’s quarterback. This building is where he comes to work every morning, and as long as I’m here, there’s no version of Charlotte where I can put him back in Houston and leave him there. I’d spent the last few days wondering how I was ever supposed to get Mom’s ring back from a man whose name I didn’t know. Now I know exactly where to find him.

“I’m going to let you get back to work,” I say, slipping my phone into my back pocket before Dad can decide he has another question about whether I’m okay.

“You sure you don’t need anything else?”

“No. Thursday was the important part.”

“That sounds suspiciously like you’re admitting I was useful.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” He smiles as he reaches for the tablet again.

He lets me leave without another question, and I make it through the doorway before Denise looks up from her desk and immediately narrows her eyes. “That was quick.”

“He answered one question. I’m trying not to overwhelm him.”