minute of the game tested Gideon. His knee throbbed each time he crouched down to get the ball. The Sharks got their second wind, and they seemed bound and determined to take out Gideon. Each play, they jumped on him harder and faster.
Gideon didn’t complain much, but it started wearing on him. The last few seconds of the game, Gideon pulled his team together.
He glanced at Dennis before he spoke. “Last run, fellas. We can do this.”
“The last twenty seconds, and they’re up five points.” Dennis pointed up. “Give me the ball. Once you get it in my hands, we’ve won the Super Bowl, baby!” He pounded Gideon on his back.
Relying on Dennis didn’t suit Gideon. He wanted to go in this game playing it to the very end. “Give me a 300.”
“What? That’s crazy. You’re going to run that play now when—”
“Watch my back.” No time for apologies. Gideon broke from the pack to resume his spot.
He spied the goal line. He needed to do more. After looking off to the sideline, he watched his other teammates staring at him like a savior. He saw panic and disbelief in each of their faces.
Gideon called the play. The center hiked the ball to him. The taut ball slid into his awaiting hands. Gideon watched Dennis faking out one of the larger Sharks players to coast down the field, but he never turned around to Gideon. Without seeing Dennis’s eyes, he couldn’t chance throwing the ball to him and expect him to receive it. Instead of throwing the ball, Gideon took off down the field around the outside where his team managed to corral the Sharks players and keep them in the center.
Gideon charged toward the goal line. He gripped the ball as though it contained the cure to whatever ailed his mother. He chomped down on the black mouth guard as he pushed his body to incredible limits. No one from the opposing team blocked his path. In the goal area, he saw Dennis jumping up and down and waving his hands. Too late.
Gideon kept running. From the side, he caught the image of an opposing team player catching up to him. Mustering every bit of strength he had, Gideon took a big leap over the player as soon as the man attempted to tackle him.
When Gideon landed with a crunch, his bones and muscles ached. He peered over and saw he had made it over the goal line. He couldn’t help but laugh out of sheer joy. His knee didn’t share in his happiness. He’d made it.
Dennis stood over him. “That was a dick move, man.” He hesitated before putting his hand out to him. Gideon accepted it.
“Looking out for the team.” Gideon walked alongside Dennis.
“No, you weren’t.” Dennis jogged ahead.
Gideon didn’t see his move as one to slight anyone. He wanted to see his team win. After their successful field goal kick and time running out, they did win. Colorful streamers, confetti and tickertape filled the arena. The team jumped around after dousing Brick with a cooler full of a bright orange drink.
Dennis, although he celebrated with his team, kept his distance from Gideon. In the loud arena, the silence from his friend drowned out everything else. He would have to get Dennis alone to tell him why he did what he did.
He had to call his mother and Gunnar first. He had to hear their voices. After getting his cell phone, he called his mother’s house.
“Queen’s not here,” Victor Dabu, one of his mother’s trusted employees at her flower shop, said. “She’s at the hospital.”
Gideon covered his free ear with his hand to make sure he had heard what Victor said. “What? Did you say hospital?”
“Yes. She’s fine.”
Gideon breathed a sigh of relief. He imagined that his last play may have caused her to have a heart attack. He glanced at Dennis, who now busied himself doing an interview with a popular female sports journalist.
“Why is she at the hospital?” Gideon hated shouting over the crowd, but he had to have this conversation.
“Gunnar was shot. He’s in surgery now.”
The sounds of the crowd faded away. For a moment, the movement around Gideon slowed down. Shot. His brother had been shot.
“Hey, son, the president would like a word with you.” Coach Brick held up the phone to Gideon.
“I can’t. I got to go home and see my mother.” Gideon ran from the sidelines and tried making his way through the throngs of people now on the field.
Gideon didn’t care how it sounded. He knew he had to make it home before he lost his family.
Chapter 2
“Ugh, turn that off.” Janelle Gold moved a large glass vase filled with bright red roses that sat by the front door of her flower shop, Flowers Galore, next to the front counter. “That’s why I got into flowers and plants, to stay away from meathead jocks who can’t tell the difference between a tulip and a rose.” To illustrate her point, Janelle held a yellow tulip in one hand and a rose in the other.
She took a deep breath, inhaling the fragrant scents swirling in the air. Besides the smells, Janelle fell in love with the vibrant colors all around her. Reds, blues, yellows, oranges, greens. Beauty in every place she looked. Every day felt like she had fallen into a Monet painting that she never wanted to escape. Too bad her bank could be the turpentine that might erase her from her dreams whether she wanted out or not.
“Come on, Janelle. It’s the Super Bowl. I mainly watch for the commercials anyway. They’re hilarious.” Penny, one of Janelle’s employees and a friend since elementary school, stayed glued to the TV as she watched the Virginia Beach Wolves celebrating. “Look at that. Our home team won! Isn’t that exciting?”
“Not really.” Janelle locked the front door. “So a local team won. It won’t get customers in the store.” She pulled a dozen roses with baby’s breath from a vase and wrapped it in green paper so that the flowers trumpeted from the large open end.
“Maybe if you’d done like I asked and made a Wolves bouquet filled with red, yellow, and black roses.” Penny shrugged.
Janelle cocked her head. “Black roses?”
“I would have added dye to their water or spray painted them.”
Janelle laughed and shook her head.
Penny continued. “The point is, I made a suggestion and as usual, you turned it down.”
“I wouldn’t have turned down your suggestion if it was a good one.”
Penny screwed up her face and stuck out her tongue before staring at the TV screen.
Janelle shouldn’t have even bothered opening up and staying late on a Sunday, Super Bowl Sunday no less. No one wanted flowers then. No, her time would be in a couple of weeks when Valentine’s Day rolled around. She’d already gotten some orders in by phone and e-mail.
Although she didn’t want her friend Elizabeth Sommerville to be sick, she’d thought with Elizabeth being out of commission for a while, perhaps sales at Flowers Galore would go up a little. They hadn’t.
