Page 77 of Catching Kyle

“That’s fine,” I say, not wanting to be difficult. “Ask away.”

She pulls out a notepad and leans forward. “Well, it might be obvious what I want to talk about first. Your father—Brian Weaver—was a legend in the college football space.”

I nod. “It was watching him coach that go me so interested in football.”

“Really?” she asks, somehow leaning more forward. “Can you tell me more about that?”

There’s a weird pit in my stomach. “What do you mean?”

“You say you watched him coach. This got you interested. How? Why?”

I pause, and suddenly my body feels heavier. Like if I make a sudden movement, I might just lose my balance and fall over.

“I…I’m not sure.”

Sheshifts back, a little flustered, but manages to keep her cool. “That’s fine. Could you tell me—what was home life like having a professional coach as a father?”

I can tell this is just her first question posed in a different way. I don’t want to answer, but it would feel weird not to, especially given how simple the question is.

“It was… hard.”

“Hard?” she asks, surprised.

I nod. “He was gone a lot. Busy. I don’t know if this is what all coaches were like, but it seemed like he just never had time for me and my mom.”

She furiously scribbles down on her notepad, then looks up at me, thoughtful. I can tell this wasn’t what she was expecting. Me neither, quite frankly. I haven’t even mentioned this to Neeti yet. I’ve been avoiding it. But there’s something about Robyn—maybe that she’s with ESB—that makes me feel like I have to be honest. My childhood is verifiable, after all. If I lie about this, won’t people suspect I’m lying about my dating life?

“Then…” she drifts off, then refocuses. “How did this inspire you to get into football?”

The pit in my stomach gets bigger, but the answer to her question becomes crystal clear in my head. “My dad, he…” I wipe my nose, feeling the back of my eyes heat up. But I hold back the tears. “I saw the way he looked at his players. The ones that worked hard, did well. There was a fire in his eyes then that he never had when he looked at me or my ma.”

Feeling my lips quiver, I pause until I regain my exposure. I am not crying in front of this woman.

“So I figured the best way to get his attention was to be like them. To play hard. To be that player that would make him proud.”

“Wow,” Robyn says. She sets her notepad down. “How old were you when you realized this?”

I sniffle. “Middle school, I think. Thirteen?”

She sighs. “That’s a lot on a kid.”

“Tell me about it,” I say.

She picks up her notepad and writes something down, and I panic. I just badmouthed my father to a reporter, and no matter how kind she’s being now, this news will get blasted. I don’t want people thinking I didn’t appreciate my daddy. He was a good man. Sure, he was busy, but he did his best. It wasn’t easy being a coach of a competitive football team.

“But that’s not the whole story,” I say, reaching out my hand.

She stops. “Oh?”

I swallow my spit, and it hurts going down. I want to have integrity, but I’m so confused about what that even means anymore. I just need to survive.

“As I grew older,” I begin. “I saw how hard the job was on my dad. He worked hard to provide for us. He didn’t have a good relationship with his dad, after all. My grandpa drank a lot—didn’t provide for the family. My dad wanted to be the opposite.

“Once I started playing at Miss U, that’s when my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He and my mom were divorced by then, but it still hit everyone we knew like a freight train. Here Brian Weaver was, a tank of a man, only to be afflicted by something completely out of his control.

“At first, it looked promising. We thought treatment would take care of it. Any Weaver man was a trooper, after all. But when the cancer came back full-force, we knew it was a matter of time. And in those days, my daddy’s priorities became crystal clear.”

“And what were those priorities?” Robyn asks.