Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113330 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113330 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
“You killed it,” Luca says to Marco. He motions to my son. “You’re up, Mav. Bring your daddy the rings now.”
With a little whoop, my son slides off his chair and carefully makes his way to the front with his lace-covered pillow in hand. When he reaches me, I pat Maverick’s soft hair and praise his excellent work before taking the pillow. As Maverick goes down the line of groomsmen getting high fives, I quickly release the fake, plastic rings and swap them out for the real ones from my pocket. In the end, the ring ceremony goes off without a hitch, without Maverick ever realizing he’s been guarding plastic rings with his life this whole time.
Luca bellows, “By the powers vested in me by the State of Hawaii and the certificate I bought online for a hundred bucks—you’re welcome, that’s my wedding present to you—I now declare Marco and Nicola husband and wife. Marco, kiss your bride!”
As the crowd cheers, Marco joyfully kisses his new wife. And less than a minute later, I follow the newlyweds down the aisle with Maverick’s small hand in mine.
When I reach the end of the sandy aisle and all appropriate hugs and congratulations have been administered, I pull out my phone and check my texts. As it turns out, that buzz from earlier wasn’t Cameron sending me an update on negotiations. It was from someone far better than that—Coach Hardy, my legendary coach from college and my favorite coach ever—
replying to my text from earlier this morning.
Over the years, Coach Hardy has turned down every NFL head coaching job offered to him, preferring instead to continue coaching and building his legacy at my alma mater. Thanks to a longstanding beef between Coach and the asshole owner of the Crusaders, I’ve always known he’d never consider leaving Michigan for a coaching job in Baltimore, not even for the chance to coach me again. But now that I’m hopefully leaving the Crusaders and going to a new, not-yet-determined team—preferably, the Thunderbolts in LA—I’m hoping Coach Hardy will agree to become a package deal with me and finish out his storied career as my new team’s head coach. Hence, the reason I reached out to him this morning to ask if I could fly to his lake house in Michigan for a chat this week.
Coach: Hey, Rome. It’s great to hear from you. Great pics of Mav in his little wedding suit. There’s no need for you to come to Michigan. Coincidentally, Marsha and I are heading to Maui to celebrate our fortieth anniversary tomorrow and we’ll be staying for ten days. If you’re still going to be in Hawaii by then, I could sneak away to play a round of golf with you on Friday. There’s a golf club on Kauai I’ve been wanting to check out, so I’d come to you. Let me know if that works. Looking forward to seeing you and finding out what’s on your mind.
Chapter 4
Iris
After wandering around aimlessly through Kauai’s small airport for a solid ten minutes, I find the right rental car counter and take my place at the back of the line. There’s only one clerk and several people ahead of me, so this might take a while.
“Gramma!” a little squeak of a voice shouts excitedly, drawing my attention. “We saw a whale in da bathroom!”
The voice belongs to a striking, dark-haired boy of four or five—a kid whose soft curls and blazing smile melt me upon impact. His arms flailing, the boy careens from the bathroom to an elegant older lady a few yards away, while an older gentleman trails behind.
“There’s a sea-creature mural on the wall in the bathroom,” the older man explains with a hearty chuckle.
“How exciting,” the woman replies. “What else did you see in there, honey?”
The kid cocks his head. “My pee-pee.”
Both the man and woman burst into laughter, and I can’t help but do the same.
“In the painting, honey,” the woman amends. “What else did you see on the wall besides the whale?”
“Ooooh,” the little boy replies in his heart-melting voice. Clearly, he wasn’t trying to be funny or sassy when he answered his grandmother’s question. Like most kids his age, he was likely being literal, as his brain is wired to be during this particular stage of development. “I saw fishes and a sea turtle and . . .”
Yet another wave of grief slams into me. When I said yes to Brandon’s marriage proposal, or whatever that was, I thought I’d one day get to be like that beautiful lady over there: a wife and mother and, eventually, a grandmother. I know I’m young, but I’m scared I might have wasted too many years of my life with Brandon—that because of him, I’ve somehow missed some sliding door I was supposed to walk through to meet the true love of my life.