“Pretzels! Mommy, I need one of those too.” Scarlett turned back to me. “Mommy said I could have whatever I wanted so she wouldn’t have to sit alone.”
Penny shook her head, but she looked a little embarrassed. “Bee and Daphne were both busy.”
I tried not to stare at the blush crossing her cheeks. God she was beautiful.
“No problem,” Tanner said. “I’ll sit with you ladies. This is going to be so much fun.”
Fuck me.
“Oh, that’ll be great!” Penny said. “Let me go get Scarlett the hotdog and soft pretzel I promised her and then we’ll meet you in the stands?”
“Perfect.”
“Good luck,” Penny said to me. “I hope you guys win.”
“We’ll definitely win,” I said.
Penny whispered something in Scarlett’s ear.
“Oh yeah. Go Eagles!” Scarlett yelled. “Did I do it right?” She looked up at Penny.
“Exactly right.” Penny kissed the top of her head, gave me a thumbs up, and headed over toward the concession stand.
“What the hell was that?” I asked Tanner when Penny was out of earshot.
“What the hell was what? I thought that went really well.”
“You told her I have the hots for some random high school student.”
“Oh. That.” Tanner shrugged. “I wanted to see if she got jealous. It didn’t seem like it to me, but I promise I’ll get to the bottom of it over the next couple hours.”
“I don’t want you to talk to her at all. Especially about any of that.”
“But I’m your wingman. We can’t forgo this opportunity. When else will I have a chance to decipher all her secrets? Scarlett looks like she’s around the age of a kid that will probably need a nap after all that food. Which gives me a couple hours to talk to Penny one on one. I’ve got this. Trust me.”
I usually trusted him. But I didn’t want him to do any of that. “Tanner…”
“Go Eagles!” he said and started walking away from me.
“Tanner!” I hissed.
He ignored me, walked up into the stands, and sat down where there was enough seating for three.
The scoreboard made a beeping noise, signaling it was time for the game to start. My team ran out for the coin toss. But my mind was in the stands. So much so that I hadn’t even realized that we were down a kicker.
“Where is Jefferson?” I asked.
“Here!” Jefferson said as he rushed onto the field balancing a few trays of cookies. So many cookies. And in a super wide variety. It seemed like maybe Jefferson was more of a baker than a kicker.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My mom and I had to finish the last batch of cookies. It took longer than we thought.”
Several guys on the team snickered.
“Perfect timing,” I said and grabbed the trays from him. “We’ll eat these after the game. Sound good?”
Jefferson nodded with a huge smile.
Hopefully they were the best damn cookies ever. Because if the game was anything like the one last week, Jefferson was going to miss a minimum of 3 PATs and a field goal.
I pulled out my clipboard and went over the plan for our first few plays. “Now let’s get out there and bury Calver Academy before halftime!”
Smith nodded. “We got this, Coach Caldwell.”
I knew that they did. I just really hoped that this time Jefferson would be a part of that victory. And that for once we didn’t win in spite of him. “Go Eagles on three.” I put my hand out and they all threw theirs in too.
“One, two, three…Go Eagles!” we all yelled at the top of our lungs.
***
It was really distracting having someone I cared about in the stands. Not that I didn’t care about Tanner. He came to all my games, which was really nice of him. But I didn’t care about him the same way I cared about Penny.
Mason and Rob teased me about having a crush on her. So much so that I knew Penny had worried about it before. She’d even confronted me about it. But I’d told her they were idiots. And that the two of us were just friends. It was mostly true. I fantasized about her. But I knew it was just a patch on a wound. I didn’t love her. I didn’t love anyone. My friends refused to drop it though. They just kept on teasing me. And James’ teasing felt a lot more like threats. He’d made it clear several times that Penny was off-limits. It was probably why I kept thinking about her. I always wanted what I couldn’t have.
Although in this case, maybe I could have Penny. Because I could feel her staring at me. And it made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
I turned around to look at her. But instead of Penny staring at me, there was another woman’s gaze pointed at me. She looked vaguely familiar. But I couldn’t place her.
A smile crossed her face and she lifted her hand and waved to me.
Fuck. I swallowed hard. I remembered. Specifically, I remembered that hand around my cock a few months ago. We’d met at some bar. We’d fucked at a nearby hotel. And I’d left in the middle of the night like I always did. No exchanged numbers. No promise of ever speaking again. I always bounced while they were sleeping. To avoid an awkward next morning. To avoid ever seeing them again. Yet…here she was.
I immediately turned back to the field. Jesus, was she stalking me? I tried to discreetly look back over my shoulder. She was still staring and smiling. She waved again. And a little farther up in the stands, Penny was deep in conversation with Tanner.
Now I had some one-night stand here and Tanner talking to Penny. Could this night get any worse?
I watched as Jefferson’s extra point sailed way to the right, nearly crashing through a window of a nearby skyrise. It bounced off the brick wall and then knocked into one of the floodlights.
Damn it.
He came running off the field.
“Good try, Jefferson.” I put my fist out for him to bump and he awkwardly shook it. This poor kid. “Did it hit your laces again?”
He looked down at his cleats and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I tried to make contact with my instep like you said. Did it look like I hit my laces instead?”
I honestly wasn’t sure. Because I was too busy thinking about what Tanner was saying to Penny. And whether or not I had a stalker situation I needed to deal with.
“We’ll keep working on it next week.” I tried to give him an encouraging smile.
“Have you tried a cookie yet?” he asked.
“Oh. No. Let me try one.”
I took a bite. “This is great.” I finally got to tell him something positive and truly mean it. His cookies were delicious. Which was good, because if they were as bad as his kicking, I’d for sure get food poisoning.
The rest of the game was painfully slow. Tanner and Penny had not stopped talking for a second. And to make matters worse, Scarlett was sound asleep on her lap. Which meant Tanner was probably grilling Penny about her sex life or inviting her to his sex club or something else wildly inappropriate.
Empire High won by two touchdowns, but only by twelve points, thanks to missed PATs by Jefferson.
As the team came off the field celebrating, I gestured toward the cookies. “Great game, guys. To celebrate the win, Jefferson brought us all a treat. Go Eagles!”