Breaking Tackles: A Taking Flight Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

game plan should be?”
     
    “Well, honestly I was hoping that you’d transfer schools and move to New Orleans with me,” I say. I look up and see that Courtney’s face has gone completely white. “But you obviously don’t want that.”
     
    “I don’t know why,” she says, sitting in a chair. “When it was mentioned earlier, everything in me reacted negatively.”
     
    “You love Mizzou,” I say with a shrug. “I get that.”
     
    “But I love you more than a school,” she says.  “I guess I should just get over it and transfer.”
     
    Though I want that to be the end of this conversation so we can make the most of our alone time, I don’t want Courtney to do something she doesn’t want to do.
     
    “I don’t want you to transfer if you don’t want to,” I say.
     
    “But how are we going to be together?” she asks.
     
    “We’ll do long distance.”
     
    “Do you want to do that?” she asks. “All things considered, even if I moved with you to New Orleans, I’d barely see you due to your schedule. How will we make traveling work?”
     
    She has a point there. And I don’t have the answers. But I need them right now. I close my eyes and try to think of the most logical outcomes.
     
    “I think you’d probably have to do most of the traveling,” I say. “At least during the season.”
     
    “Yeah,” she says. “I figured that much.”
     
    “I know that I’ll have a few tickets for each game to give out to people,” I say. “I’m guessing you’ll want to come to the games.”
     
    “Duh,” she says. “But I don’t know if I’ll be able to come to all of them. That’s a lot of traveling for a college kid who will definitely have classes on Mondays and Thursdays.”
     
    “Yeah,” I say. “How often do you think you can handle traveling?”
     
    She mulls it over and says, “If it’s driving to places close to Missouri, then twice a month?”
     
    That’s not as often as I’d like, but it’s better than once a month. “Okay. So we’ll look at the season and figure out which home games you can make it to. I figure you’ll want to come if we play in Kansas City and St. Louis at their stadiums.”
     
    “Obviously,” she says.
     
    “Okay,” I say. “I can always fly you to Chicago and Denver and some of the other Midwestern stadiums, if it works with your schedule. This is doable.”
     
    “Yeah,” she says. “But I guess what we really need to figure out is when we want to actually get married.”
     
    I haven’t given the wedding day much thought. All I know is that I love her and I want to be with her and I want her to be happy. So if she says she wants to get married tomorrow, I’m good with that.
     
    More than good with it.
     
    “I’ll do whatever you want.”
     
    “What if I don’t know yet?” she asks quietly.
     
    “Do you want to marry me?” I ask, suddenly nervous. What if she’s backing out now that the reality of getting married is sinking in?
     
    “Of course,” she says. “I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t. But I’m not sure I want to get married quite yet. Does that make sense?”
     
    Not really.
     
    “I guess.”
     
    “I mean, we can be engaged for a while, right? There’s no rule that says we have to get married within a certain time period after getting engaged.”
     
    “That’s true.”
     
    “So why don’t we just wait?” she asks. “We have enough to worry about right now, with you moving and needing to focus on actually making the team this summer. Let’s just get through that transition before we try to make this more complicated and stressful than it already is.”
     
    “Did I overwhelm you with this?” I ask.
     
    That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted her to know that I’m serious about us and that I wasn’t going to act like my brothers did when they joined the NFL. I’m sure I’ll go out with my teammates and enjoy New Orleans when I can, but I don’t care about dating or sleeping