It’s hard to digest a hot dog when you’re looking at thirty- and forty-year-old men in spandex. Seriously.
“There’s Dad!” Robbie claps his hands then whistles through his teeth at a volume that could shatter eardrums.
“Are you ready for a smackdown? Are you ready for a fight?” The crowd goes wild at the announcer’s dramatic spiel. “Tonight in the Tulsa Athletic Arena, we present our regional champion— Captain Iron Jack!”
Our family stands and yells. I lift up a sign with one arm.
“Hold on to your popcorn as he takes on the force from Biloxi— Mississippi Mud!” A man in a hideous poop brown Onesie circles Jake on the stage.
“Did I miss anything?” Luke Sullivan fills the empty seat beside me, and I have to look twice.
“What are you doing here?”
My mom reaches over me, waves at her new hero, then returns to yelling for Captain Iron Jack.
“Your mother invited me. Wants me to do another feature in our paper.”
“Fabulous,” I droll. Images of him crashing through the cabin door and yelling my name flutter through my mind. A faint memory of him holding my hand in the ambulance. Waking up in the hospital and seeing his worried face.
“You know”—he leans in closer—“we haven’t really had a chance to talk since everything happened.”
Mmm, he smells good tonight. Or maybe I’m high on wrestler sweat fumes. Yes, that’s definitely it.
“I just wanted to thank you for, um, you know, saving my life.”
I laugh and roll my eyes. “It was the drugs. Had I been thinking clearly . . .”
He opens his ever-present messenger bag and pulls out a paper.
“I just submitted this to a national contest—sponsored by Princeton University.”
I look at the words. My article on the football scandal. “Are you serious?”
Luke nods his dark head. “It was a great piece, Bella. And when I read it, I learned something about you.”
This ought to be good. I cross my arms and wait for the zippy insult. “And that is?”
“You . . . are a writer.”
“I’m a—” I blink hard as the words circulate in my brain. Below us Jake twirls Mississippi Mud over his head.
“Writer.” Luke’s eyes shine brilliant blue in the dimmed lights.
“I’m sorry I doubted you. I honestly didn’t know you had it in you.”
That makes two of us.
“This was your moment, Bella. You went through the fire and came out on the other side. I’m proud to have you on my newspaper staff.”
His hand touches mine as I hand the paper back. “Do you say that to all the girls who save your life?”
Luke’s laugh is rich and sends happy chill bumps along my skin. “Just you, Kirkwood. Only you.”
“And thanks for rescuing me from Jared.” My face flushes with heat. “It’s not every day a guy breaks down a door for me.”
My editor in chief winks. “Don’t get used to it.”
We watch the rest of the match, cheering and booing at all the right moments.
And life is all about right moments, isn’t it?
Okay, so Truman isn’t Manhattan. And I’ll never get used to stepping around cow pies in the yard. Or being ten minutes late to school because the neighbor had to take his tractor for a ride.
And back in August I had no idea why God would punish me with this place, with this life. But like Luke said, I guess it was my moment. I was meant to be here all along. And who knows where this path will lead? Maybe by this time next month I’ll have forgotten all about Macy’s and Times Square and love nothing more than a trip to Target and peaceful walks through our pasture with Betsy the licking cow.
Yeah.
That is so not happening.