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dropped open
in astonishment. The entire offensive line of the Conquerors—every last single
one of them—was standing in Mattie's kitchen wearing pointed party hats and
standing under a banner that read Happy birthday, Sydney!
    "Sydney?" Joe
muttered disbelievingly. "Who the hell is Sydney?"
    "That's you,"
Mattie answered in a hushed tone. "There was kind of a mix-up at the
store, so I told the guys that Sydney was your real first name."
    "You told them what?" Joe exploded in a muffled roar.
    "Sydney Joseph
Ryan," Mattie murmured distractedly, positioning a party hat on his head.
"It has a nice ring to it."
    Joe's eyes focused
helplessly on the behemoths that were his teammates as they celebrated his
birthday. Porter and Johnson were tossing an open bottle of champagne between
them like a football, Kelly was kneeling at the spigot on the keg of beer in
the corner and guzzling from the endless stream spewing forth, and Riley was
making out with a blonde at the sink. Most of the rest were surrounding the
spread of food on the table. It was chaos.
    "Are you
surprised?" Mattie asked anxiously, carefully keeping her distance from
the rowdy men overrunning her kitchen.
    Joe nodded wordlessly,
wondering how to burst her bubble. "But Mattie," he finally broke out
woefully, "my birthday isn't until April!"
    "I know that,"
Mattie told him cheerfully. "But if we had the party then, it wouldn't be
a surprise."
    Joe swallowed in sudden
fear... because he understood the logic behind her reasoning.
    Three
    If Joe was learning a lot
about Mattie, she was learning an equal amount about him. With the appearance
of Joe in her life, Mattie's very existence changed. Yet the change was so
gradual, so natural, it snuck beneath her carefully built and maintained
defenses, much as Joe himself had, without her notice. He had simply become a
part of her life.
    They, spent a lot of time
together—either at Mattie's small cottage outside the Dallas city limits or at
Joe's large turn-of-the-century house in an older section of the city. Somehow,
Mattie discovered wryly, they had ended up together part or all of every day.
Joe liked to jog in the mornings, and sometimes Mattie—"the quintessential
lazybones," she called herself—would keep him company on her bicycle. More
often than not, Mattie accompanied Joe to practice and gradually accustomed
herself to the sight of huge lumps of humanity hurling themselves at him. She
even managed hesitant smiles—from a safe distance—to his teammates.
Occasionally she would meet the wife or girl friend of a player in the stands.
They all seemed genuinely happy and not a little surprised to meet her.
"Joe's never brought anyone to the stadium before," one of the more
forthright of them had told her. The unmasked curiosity in their eyes made
Mattie nervous. What did they think her relationship to Joe was? They were all
very nice and very friendly, but Mattie, who had spent most of her life
building and enforcing walls, had a hard time scaling them. Only with Joe did
her guard drop, and even then she knew that a part of her was still in hiding.
    Joe continually amazed
her. Every day of his life he was surrounded by people. Teammates, coaches,
fans, reporters... and yet, as she had seen in his eyes that first day, he was
lonely. Unlike Mattie, who had carefully chosen photography as her profession
because it meant she didn't have to work closely with others, Joe's livelihood
incorporated a host of people. He responded to all of them, worked with many of
them, liked and respected quite a few of them.. .and Mattie realized that none
of them knew the Joe Ryan who was her friend. It was as if he saved that part
of himself for her.
    He filled needs of
Mattie's that she hadn't even known existed, and yet she wondered if she was as
good a friend to him. He was so open with her, and she stayed so closed with
him. He respected the boundaries she had set, yet he invited her into every
area of his life. Sometimes, if she