Chapter 334: The One?

Andrew was sitting in the usual armchair in the office where he had his therapy sessions.

Sean was across from him, settled comfortably into his chair, glasses on and one leg crossed over the other.

He watched him for a couple of seconds.

"Busy week, huh, chief?" he finally asked, wearing that calm smile Andrew had already come to know.

Andrew let out a small smile, "Yeah... more or less."

Sean raised an eyebrow, "More or less?"

Andrew shrugged.

Sean let out a short laugh through his nose before adjusting his glasses, "Look, I try to stay away from that whole college football circus," he said, "I really do. But I’ve spent the last four days seeing your face everywhere."

Andrew laughed, "I don’t think it’s been that bad."

"Yesterday you were on a TV show that was talking about the election," Sean continued, completely serious, "I have no idea how the hell they ended up talking about college football, but there you were."

It was November 7. Barely a day had passed since the presidential election.

Barack Obama had just secured his reelection.

"Seems like people have their priorities straight," Andrew joked.

Sean smiled faintly and continued, "This morning I went out for coffee. Your face was on the front page of two newspapers. Then I turned on the TV while I was having breakfast and they were showing that last pass again. I change the channel... and there you are again."

"Did you watch the game?" Andrew asked curiously, looking at him.

"I’m offended you’d even ask," Sean said, adjusting his glasses, "Of course I watched it. At this point, it’s part of my professional preparation."

"Professional preparation?" Andrew repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course," Sean nodded, raising one hand and beginning to count on his fingers, "If you win by forty, I have to prepare myself for you to come in wanting to overanalyze the game even though everything went well. If you break some record, I have to prepare myself for you to tell me you didn’t even know what the record was. If you win a close game, I have to prepare myself for you to spend twenty minutes explaining everything you did wrong."

Andrew opened his mouth, then closed it again. He couldn’t really defend himself on that one.

"And if you lose... well, so far I’ve only had to prepare for that once," he added.

"An advantage you probably don’t have with most of your other patients," Andrew said.

Sean smiled and nodded slightly, "Back to your question, yes, Nancy and I watched it."

Andrew knew Nancy was Sean’s wife.

Not because Sean had turned their sessions into conversations about his marriage, but after so many months, it was inevitable that certain stories would come up.

Sean wasn’t the kind of therapist who sat on the other side of the room, nodded for fifty minutes, and answered everything with another question.

When the situation allowed for it, he shared things.

His own experiences. Mistakes. Arguments he’d had. Decisions he’d made when he was Andrew’s age that.

He never went into unnecessary detail and never shifted the conversation toward himself.

But he didn’t pretend to be a wall, either.

Andrew appreciated that.

Sometimes it made the sessions feel less like therapy and more like talking to someone who genuinely knew him.

"Yeah?" Andrew asked, settling a little deeper into the couch, "How did she handle the comeback?"

He tried to imagine it.

He didn’t know her personality completely, but from everything Sean had told him, she seemed fun and considerably more expressive than he was.

Sean was calm, restrained, the kind of person who could observe a room for several minutes before saying anything.

Nancy seemed to occupy the opposite end of the spectrum. More impulsive and emotional.

In a way, Andrew had always ended up imagining them with a dynamic similar to that of his own parents.

Mitch could be the more reserved one.

Cam, definitely not.

"Very badly in the first half," Sean replied, shaking his head, "I’ve heard her swear before, but that night might’ve been a record, or at least close to one."

Andrew burst out laughing and sank a little farther into the couch, resting his head against the backrest.

It was one of those long, soft couches that seemed specifically designed for a therapist’s office. Andrew was slightly reclined, his back sinking into the cushions.

Sean watched him laugh.

There was something slightly curious about the whole thing.

Nancy didn’t even know Andrew personally.

They had never met.

And yet, after so many weeks, Sean had inevitably ended up mentioning him at home more than once.

At one point, he’d even asked Andrew if that bothered him.

Andrew had said no.

Naturally, Sean never told her details about the sessions or anything Andrew had confided in him inside that room.

But it didn’t take much. Little things. The occasional general comment.

Enough for Nancy to end up forming an image of Andrew that was quite different from the one someone got simply by watching him play on Saturdays.

Besides, Nancy liked sports.

That had been enough for her to, almost without realizing it, start rooting for UCLA.

It also meant that she saw certain things with a different context.

Against Arizona, for example, a good part of the country had discovered a much more arrogant, provocative, and competitive side of Andrew.

Nancy had seen it too.

But she was coming at it from a different perspective.

She knew that, before the UCLA star, before the Heisman contender, and before the quarterback the entire country was talking about, Andrew was still an eighteen-year-old kid who had, by his own choice, started going to therapy.

That alone was enough for her to see him differently.

"When you made that last pass," Sean continued, "She screamed so loudly that our dog woke up and jumped higher than I’d ever seen him jump before."

Andrew let out an amused breath through his nose, "And you?"

Sean thought about it for a moment, "I was much more dignified. I screamed a little less loudly."

Andrew smiled and asked another question, "Did you think we could come back?"

"No," Sean answered with complete honesty, "I didn’t think you were going to come back."

He let a brief second of silence pass before continuing, "But when the third quarter started, I did know one thing. You weren’t going back out there defeated. They could keep scoring on you, they could make the gap even bigger, but I didn’t think you were going to step onto that field afraid of what was happening. That, I knew."

Andrew watched him in silence.

"That you actually ended up coming all the way back from that..." Sean shook his head slightly, "That seemed considerably less likely to me."

Andrew smiled. He didn’t say anything.

For a few seconds, the office fell silent again. Then Sean spoke once more, "That must be difficult."

Andrew turned his head slightly toward him, "What?"

Sean watched him for a few seconds before answering, "The entire country has spent four days talking about one of the best nights of your life, and you had to wake up the next morning, leave all of that behind, and go back to your normal life."

Andrew’s smile slowly began to fade, "Yeah," he finally admitted.

That was exactly what was strange about it.

On Saturday night, he had walked out of Autzen Stadium after putting together a game that seemed like it had come straight out of some movie.

The party had been great, the celebration too, and Sunday was more of the same.

But on Monday, he had needed to wake up early.

Back to the routine: classes, studying, practice, reviewing film, preparing for the next opponent...

All while, outside UCLA, the game still seemed like it hadn’t ended.

Sports shows were still analyzing the game play by play.

Newspapers continued publishing photographs from that night.

Analysts debated whether it had been the most impressive comeback they had ever seen in college football, not just the biggest in terms of points.

Others went even further and talked about how Andrew had delivered one of the most dominant individual performances they could remember, considering the opponent, the setting, the deficit on the scoreboard, and everything he had ultimately done to erase it.

Andrew was now a bigger favorite than ever for the Heisman. Even some of the more traditional voters who had previously leaned toward Klein because of his record had changed their minds because of this game.

Television shows, the Internet, and the fans were still stuck in Oregon.

Andrew couldn’t afford to be.

He had assignments to turn in, texts to read, practices, meetings, and another game to prepare for.

And somehow, he had to do all of that while trying not to let the noise outside distract him.

The conversation continued for quite a while.

They moved from one topic to another until, inevitably, they ended up drifting into somewhat more personal territory.

That was when she came up again.

The mysterious girl A.

Andrew had decided to call her that the first time he talked about Paige with Sean, deliberately refusing to give him her real name. By that point, the nickname had almost become an inside joke between the two of them.

Andrew had already told him a few things over the past several weeks.

How they had met.

How easily they ended up getting under each other’s skin, or how quickly they could team up to make fun others.

How competitive the two of them could be, and now there was also what had happened on Saturday night, after Oregon.

Andrew still didn’t know exactly what he had with Paige. But he wasn’t an idiot either.

There was chemistry.

They had known each other for almost two months, not long, but even so, there was an ease between them that he didn’t usually find very often.

They could compete over practically any stupid thing and end up trying to annoy each other for half an hour.

But they could also put that aside.

Have fun without needing to turn everything into a battle.

Even in smaller things, they seemed to agree quite a bit.

Their taste in movies, for example.

Paige didn’t exactly share his obsession with Star Wars, superheroes, or The Lord of the Rings, but she had a pretty broad knowledge of pop culture, and once those particular obsessions of Andrew’s were set aside, their opinions on movies lined up more than he would have expected.

Especially when it came to criticizing something.

Twilight had made that pretty clear.

But there was something else Andrew hadn’t overlooked.

Paige had told him personal things.

The first had been that she was from Texas.

Later, Paige had ended up telling Sam and the rest of the group too, which had surprised everyone, since none of them had expected that background.

Then there was the other thing. Her childhood as a child prodigy and much of her adolescence.

Andrew was still the only person in California Paige had told all of that to.

Not even Sam knew, and Andrew understood perfectly well what that meant.

Not necessarily that Paige was in love with him. He wasn’t going to build that whole story in his head. But it did mean that she trusted him in a different way.

There were also the looks.

The way she acted around him compared to other guys.

After talking about all of this for a while, Andrew eventually fell thoughtful.

He looked over at Sean, "So... when did you know, like... she was the one for you?" Andrew asked.

"January 20th, 1980," Sean replied immediately, without a trace of hesitation.

Andrew blinked, "Jesus, you know the day?" he said, smiling slightly and genuinely surprised by the precision of the answer.

"Oh, yeah," Sean nodded, "Does the date ring a bell?"

The almost testing tone made Andrew stop and think.

If Sean was asking him that way, then it probably had something to do with football.

The moment that possibility occurred to him, that sort of football encyclopedia Andrew carried around in his head immediately went to work.

It didn’t take long.

"Super Bowl XIV. Los Angeles Rams against the Pittsburgh Steelers," he answered.

"Exactly. It was played right here, where you play now. At the Rose Bowl," Sean said with a nod.

"That must’ve been insane, right? It was the Super Bowl with the all-time attendance record. More than a hundred thousand people..." Andrew commented.

It wasn’t hard to understand why.

Not only had it been played at the Rose Bowl, a stadium capable of holding an extraordinary number of spectators.

It had also been played in Los Angeles. And one of the teams taking part had been the Los Angeles Rams themselves.

That January of 1980, the city had its own team playing in the Super Bowl practically at home, inside one of the most iconic stadiums in the entire country.

It must have been insane.

Newspaper front pages and sports shows talking about the game all week.

An entire city knowing that the biggest sporting event in the country was going to be played right there, and that one of the two teams represented Los Angeles.

Besides, that era belonged to a very different reality from the present.

In 1980, Los Angeles still had an NFL franchise directly associated with the city.

Not long afterward, the Rams ended up leaving the city.

In 1982, the Raiders would arrive.

The Oakland Raiders would become the Los Angeles Raiders and remain there until 1994, before eventually returning to Oakland.

From 1995 onward, however, the city had been completely without an NFL team.

By now, in 2012, that absence had lasted nearly two decades.

Curiously, Los Angeles seemed to have learned to live with it fairly well.

There wasn’t exactly any desperation.

Nor was there a constant sense of emptiness.

It was too large a metropolis, too spread out, with too many different forms of entertainment to depend entirely on a professional football franchise.

The Lakers dominated much of the sports conversation thanks to decades of success in the NBA.

The Dodgers remained a historic baseball team.

And college football carried enormous weight because of USC and UCLA.

In other cities, losing an NFL team could feel as though someone had ripped away part of their identity.

Los Angeles was different.

It had simply moved on.

"It was crazy. I was your age," Sean replied.

For a moment, his expression changed ever so slightly, as if a part of him had gone back to that January.

He remembered a city even louder than usual. Pittsburgh fans arriving from out of state.

Hotels packed.

Bars overflowing.

Rams jerseys everywhere.

Los Angeles was always used to attracting attention, but that week had been different.

The entire country seemed to be looking their way.

"My friends and I had slept out on the sidewalk all night to get tickets," Sean added.

Andrew sat up a little, "You got tickets?"

"Yeah. On game day, a few hours beforehand, I was waiting at a bar for it to be time to head over to the Rose Bowl," Sean replied.

Andrew looked at him with a mixture of surprise and excitement, "I can’t believe you had tickets to that game! It must’ve been incredible going into halftime ahead. The whole stadium must’ve gone insane."

Because even though Pittsburgh had entered as the heavy favorite and was looking for its second straight Super Bowl, the game had been much closer than many people expected.

The Rams were playing the game of their lives.

For much of the game, they had managed to stay ahead of a Steelers team that was in the middle of a dynasty.

Even the final score of 31-19 was misleading.

Pittsburgh hadn’t truly broken the game open until the fourth quarter, and at halftime, Los Angeles was leading 13-10.

More than a hundred thousand people inside the Rose Bowl.

The Rams leading the Super Bowl in their own city at halftime.

Andrew could perfectly imagine what that must have felt like.

Sean watched him for a second and then said calmly, "No. I don’t know how the people in the stadium felt. I wasn’t there."

Andrew went completely still. He stared at him in silence until he finally managed a simple, confused, "What?"

"I was in a bar having a drink with my future wife. She walked in just as I was waiting with my friends to leave for the stadium. When I saw her come in, I knew I couldn’t go to the game," Sean replied.

Andrew stared at him as though he’d just heard something incomprehensible, "You missed the game to have a drink with a woman you’d never even seen before?"

"Yeah, but you should’ve seen her. She was stunning," Sean replied.

"I don’t care!" Andrew exclaimed.

He shot to his feet and started pacing around the room with both hands on top of his head, "You could’ve gone to that legendary Super Bowl and you decided not to?"

Sean couldn’t help but smile.

Andrew kept pacing, "Oh my God, and who were these friends of yours? They just let you stay at the bar like that? After everything you had to go through to get those tickets?"

"Oh, they had to. They saw in my eyes that I was serious," Sean replied, clearly amused by his reaction.

Andrew stood still for a second. Then he huffed out a laugh, shook his head, and finally dropped back onto the couch, "You’re crazy. I didn’t know you were the type to fall in love quickly."

"Neither did I," Sean said with a faint laugh, "But when I saw her, I felt a very intense attraction. Something like thinking: I have to meet this person."

Andrew was still shaking his head slightly. Part of him was still stuck on the wasted Super Bowl tickets.

But Sean’s tone changed. It became more reflective, "But that could’ve gone very badly. At that point, I wasn’t in love with Nancy. I’d barely even seen her. It was attraction. Very strong, yes, but it was still only that. We could’ve had that drink, realized we had absolutely nothing in common, and never seen each other again."

Andrew stopped mourning the game and started paying attention again.

Sean continued. "Falling in love works differently for everyone. For some people, it happens quickly. Others need much more time. And from everything you’ve told me about yourself... you seem more like the second kind."

Andrew nodded slowly.

He thought so too.

"But that doesn’t mean falling in love quickly is stronger," Sean added, "They’re different variables. You can take months to get there and end up loving someone just as much, or even more, than someone who felt it in the first week. How long it took you to fall in love doesn’t determine how much you’ll love afterward."

Andrew remained silent.

That made sense.

In fact, he’d already lived through it.

With Pippa, there hadn’t been any magical moment when he’d first seen her or immediately known he wanted to be with her.

At first, there had been friendship.

Then came the attraction.

After that, they started dating, and only over the following months, as he truly began to know her, did he end up falling in love.

He had needed to build trust, familiarity, understand how she thought, and spend enough time with her for an emotional connection to form, something that simply couldn’t exist with someone you’d only just met.

That was why Andrew had never really bought into the idea that if a girl didn’t drive you crazy during the first two weeks, then she simply wasn’t the one.

He knew well that it didn’t work that way.

At least, not for him.

"So why don’t you give her a chance, chief?" Sean asked suddenly.

"Who?" Andrew asked.

"The mysterious girl A," Sean replied with the slightest smile.

Andrew let out a breath through his nose, "I didn’t say I wasn’t giving her one. Actually, we’re getting together to watch movies this Saturday after my game... kind of a date, I guess," he replied.

He had already made plans with Paige to get together and watch the last Twilight movie they still had left. After that, they’d be ready to watch the finale of the saga, the last movie, which would be released in theaters on November 16.

"I know. But you’re trying to decide too early whether it’s worth pursuing," Sean said calmly.

Andrew frowned slightly.

Sean settled back into his chair, "For someone like you, falling in love slowly is almost worse."

Andrew raised his eyebrows, slightly offended, "Why would it be worse?"

"Because you’re a perfectionist."

The answer came far too quickly.

Andrew narrowed his eyes.

Sean continued before he could protest, "You don’t want to spend months building something with someone only to find out later that it doesn’t work. You don’t want to invest time, energy, trust... all of that, only to end up having to walk away."

Andrew stayed quiet.

"That’s why you asked me when I knew Nancy was the one," Sean added, "You weren’t asking just out of curiosity. You were looking for some moment, some sign that would let you know in advance."

Andrew looked away for a moment.

Sean had hit the nail on the head.

Andrew wanted some kind of confirmation.

A concrete point from which he could say that this had a future and that continuing forward wasn’t going to end up becoming a huge waste of time and emotional energy.

"Relationships don’t work that way. You can’t maximize them. You can’t treat them like a decision where you analyze every variable, calculate the risk, and choose the option with the highest probability of success. You have to live them," Sean said.

He paused and concluded, "If it works, great. And if six months from now you realize you weren’t compatible, that doesn’t mean those six months were wasted either. You got to know someone. You learned things about her. About yourself. About what you want and what you don’t want. Because if you wait until you’re completely sure before you really get to know someone, you’re going to be waiting forever."

That made Andrew lower his gaze slightly, "You’re right..." he murmured.

Ever since things had ended with Jade more than six months ago, he had barely allowed himself to truly get to know any other girl.

For a long time, he had preferred to blame it on his routine: classes, practices, games, travel, family...

Yes, all of that took up a considerable amount of his time. But it probably wasn’t the whole explanation.

Steve played football too, practiced, and had classes.

And yet he still had a girlfriend: Sam.

In fact, a good number of the guys on the team were in relationships.

Andrew could be more obsessive than most when it came to studying film or preparing for a game, but not to the point where having a romantic life was completely impossible.

Maybe it had simply been easier not to try.

Sean watched him for a moment, "And from everything you’ve told me, this girl seems to have quite a few things going for her," he commented.

Attraction, for starters.

That much was obvious.

But there was trust too. It was still being built, yes, but that was exactly why Andrew paid attention to every small step forward.

Then there was her intelligence. Something that, as much as he hated to admit it, Andrew found attractive.

Not because he needed a girl who could solve impossible equations or have a perfect academic record.

Pippa had been intelligent. Nancy from Mater Dei had been too.

Andrew had always valued being with someone who had ambitions, curiosity, and a life of her own.

In Paige’s particular case, her intelligence was more than high.

It was extraordinary.

Probably greater than that of any girl Andrew had ever met.

Than almost anyone he had ever met, really.

Andrew thought about it for a few seconds. Finally, he nodded, ’I gave Jade a chance. Even Madison,’ he thought with a slight grimace.

Both of them had been considerably farther from what he normally looked for in someone.

Andrew didn’t need a perfect checklist of qualities. But he did value certain things that both Pippa and Nancy had possessed. Both had been intelligent girls, with personalities of their own, and capable of challenging him.

With Jade and Madison, it had been different.

Even before those relationships had gone very far, Andrew had already noticed certain attitudes that didn’t quite sit right with him.

Even so, he had given them a chance, Jade more than Madison.

Which made it stupid that he was hesitating now with Paige.

Paige was much closer to the kind of person Andrew normally ended up connecting with. Closer to Pippa or Nancy.

Steve and Howard had spent months teasing him for practically taking himself out of the dating game after Jade.

Maybe it was time to get back into it, and on Saturday he could try something if the opportunity came up.

Eventually, the session came to an end.

Andrew got up from the couch and walked toward the door.

He already had one hand on the doorknob when he stopped.

He turned his head slightly toward Sean, a teasing smile appearing on his face.

"Do I have your permission to tell my dad that you gave up Super Bowl tickets for a woman you’d just met?"

Sean closed his eyes for a second and let out a sigh.

Cam would definitely get emotional if he heard the story. A great love story.

Andrew could already perfectly imagine the expression his father would make before he even got to the ending.

Sean stood up and gave him a small shove toward the door, "If you want to, go ahead. Good luck Saturday."

Andrew walked out still smiling.

As the days moved toward Saturday, one of the tweets that began circulating the most was posted by @ESPNStatsInfo.

The account belonged to ESPN’s statistics department and had already become a regular reference for people who followed sports on Twitter.

It wasn’t dedicated to opinions. Nor to major analysis.

Its purpose was much simpler: data, records, and historical comparisons.

After what had happened in Oregon, Andrew had given them plenty of material.

The tweet itself was short.

@ESPNStatsInfo:

Andrew Pritchett-Tucker rewrote the Pac-12 record book Saturday vs Oregon. Here’s a look at the damage:

The important part was underneath.

Attached to the tweet was an image prepared by ESPN’s own graphics team.

A photograph of Andrew in his UCLA uniform occupied one side, while on the other appeared a list of numbers beneath a huge headline.

ANDREW PRITCHETT-TUCKER — RECORD NIGHT AT OREGON

582 total yards — Pac-12 single-game record

7 passing TD — Pac-12 single-game record

7 passing TD — UCLA single-game record

582 total yards — UCLA single-game record

42 total TD this season — Pac-12 single-season record

38 passing TD — NCAA freshman record

Slightly separated from the rest was the stat that turned the image into something more than a simple summary of what had happened on Saturday.

NEXT UP:

1 passing TD away from tying Matt Barkley’s Pac-12 single-season record.

💬 Comments on the tweet:

@KSmedt16:

I watched Troy Aikman here. I watched Cade McNown here. Never thought I would see a freshman come in and immediately start erasing UCLA records like this.

@Thecyberhawk1:

The NCAA freshman record is what blows my mind. Bradford threw 36 with that Oklahoma offense and people thought that was insane. Andrew already has 38.

@jackebf993 (replying to @Thecyberhawk1):

And Bradford was a redshirt freshman, Andrew is a true freshman...

@Edwardmostbeat:

I hate that this graphic exists.

@breakihawk10:

The remarkable part of Pritchett-Tucker’s season is how quickly the conversation has shifted. In September it was "great freshman." Now he’s breaking conference and NCAA records and is the Heisman favorite.

@dajacob59:

Pritchett is the man

@cant’bellsw:

Washington boys looking at all this 💀

@Steph_1997:

Matt Barkley checking ESPN and seeing "1 TD away" after setting the record LAST YEAR: 😐

@IoriBernestein:

Even if he stopped playing today, 38 passing TD as a true freshman would be historically ridiculous.

...

Finally, Saturday arrived.

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