“Thank you all for coming today. Millie and I, well… we might fight like cats and dogs,” he laughed, and Millie chided him, elbowing his side a little. “Well, you know we do.” He said quietly, but still loud enough we all heard.
She urged him to go on, rolling her eyes. “Anyhow, despite that, we’ve always had one thing we could agree on. Our sons. Jason has decided to move to New Mexico where he is opening up a new Johnson dealership, starting it all on his own, and we couldn’t be prouder.”
Everyone cheered and clapped, Reed turned to me and raised his eyebrows a little, secretly mocking his older brother whom I knew he didn’t necessarily find to be as perfect as everyone else did. He looked back to his parents when his father said his name.
“Then there’s Reed, the man of the hour,” he joked, holding his glass up for a bit. “Reed, my boy, you have no idea how proud we are of you. You work hard, and you’ve had your eyes set on a goal since you and I first started tossing the pigskin around the front yard when you were four.”
“I think we can all agree that Reed has grown up to be quite a quarterback,” Buck boasted, and everyone nodded in agreement. “But, I just wanted to share in front of you all exactly how good he is.”
Buck popped open his briefcase that was sitting on the table and started pulling large envelopes out, setting them on the table one at a time. Reed seemed a little surprised and quite a bit embarrassed by this show, his leg bouncing behind the table. But he also knew his father was just trying to brag out of love, so he held my hand tightly and let him continue.
“Oklahoma. Florida. Texas Tech. Oregon. Cal. Utah. Missouri. And finally, Stanford and University of Arizona. Friends, family…what you see right there is the culmination of Reed’s diligence and desire. Son, you have worked so hard. So very hard, and I am honored to have fielded every last phone call and every single meeting that came behind each of these offer envelopes. The choice is, of course, always yours, though you may notice a certain red and blue envelope on top of the stack,” Buck laughed a little, nudging the UofA folder a little closer to Reed.
Raising his glass again, Buck urged all of us to join him. “I’d like to give a toast, to my son, whom I love with all my heart, no matter what color jersey he decides to wear,” Buck said, and we all joined him with a cheer and a drink in Reed’s honor.
Buck then slid a small box over on the table to Reed, who took it and held it in his hand for a while before opening it. I could feel him tense a little beside me from all of the attention, like he knew what was in the box. When he opened it and saw his father’s college championship ring he inhaled deeply and looked up at his father with the most loving eyes.
“Dad, I can’t take this. It’s yours,” he explained, trying to close the box and hand it back to Buck. But Buck was having none of it, and just closed Reed’s hand around it and squeezed tightly, patting him on the back and kissing the top of his head, one of his few unmanly shows of affection.
“Yes you can, and yes you will,” he said.
Millie came over after Buck’s toast to give Reed a gift more privately. Not comfortable being a part of her moment with her son, I retreated to the kitchen with Sean and Becky and looked on as Reed put on the watch his mom had given him, looking over an engraving on the back. Reed’s birthday was a lot different from mine, which usually consisted of cake and a few new T-shirts.
Reed joined me in the kitchen and showed me the nice leather watch that his mom had given him. It looked fancy, though I didn’t really recognize the brand. I just smiled and told him it was nice. I think he sensed my discomfort as he pulled me in close and kissed the top of my head. I clung to the fabric of his shirt, not wanting to let go.
I finally loosened my grip when his mother walked in and discarded an empty plate and went to wash her hands. She looked like she was getting ready to leave, which internally made me grateful, though I kept up the smiling façade I had going. She didn’t like me, and I knew it.
Looking around the house a little, she settled her eyes back to Reed while she dried her hands. “Where’s that lovely Tatum, girl, honey? I haven’t seen her all night.”
I immediately went blank, my knees buckling and I felt Reed sweep his arm behind me to wrap around my waist and hold me up. “Tatum graduated already, mom. She’s at college. We don’t really hang out any more,” Reed answered quickly, trying to diffuse the situation. Sean and Becky were looking at me to try to gage if I was alright. I was pretty sure I wasn’t.