For a long moment, I just sat there, stunned, staring at the sleek marble table as Clay took a long sip of his drink and sat back, casually crossing ankle over knee and tossing his arm around the back of the booth as he waited for me to say something.
I slowly lifted my gaze to his. “What the hell just happened?”
Clay chuckled. “I told you.”
“He walked right over to me. He said he recognized me from campus. He… I think he was flirting with me.”
Clay cocked a brow, lifting his whiskey toward me with a knowing smirk like he wasn’t the least bit surprised.
I gaped at him, then at Shawn — who was getting settled on stage again — before I shook my head and found a way to zip my lips together. I smacked a hand on the table, grabbing my mocktail and sucking half of it down in one gulp. I slammed it on the table with more force than I intended, turning to face Clay head on.
“I need more lessons. Stat.”
An amused laugh was my only reply.
Clay
I could still remember my first football game.
I was a little tyke, five years old and just shy of four-feet tall. I remembered the smell of the turf, the way the helmet and pads felt a little too big on me as I jogged out onto the field. I remembered that I didn’t know a single thing about what I was supposed to be doing, but it was fun to run and catch the ball and get grass stains on my white football pants.
And I remembered both my parents were there.
I could still close my eyes and see their faces — Dad’s severe as he yelled out ways to be better, while Mom was on the verge of crying tears of joy and pride the entire game. I remembered them holding hands.
I remembered them happy.
It was one of the last times I remembered them that way.
Everything changed after that — slowly at first, and then all at once, like a single book falling from a shelf before you realized it was an earthquake that would eventually take down your entire house.
They started by just separating, explaining to me that they were just going to live in different houses for a while. “Mom and Dad just need a little space,” Dad had said. “It’s good for parents to have a little space.”
But a little space turned into not seeing my dad for weeks, and then months, until one day he came by with a stack of papers in his hands. I remember he rolled them into a tube, and I stole them from him and was pretending that tube was a telescope, and the ceiling was a sky full of stars. It wasn’t until Mom asked if she could look through the telescope, and then unfolded those papers as she started to cry, that I realized something fundamental in my life had shifted.
Dad sat me down at our kitchen table and told me we were still a family, even if we weren’t going to live together anymore.
Domino after domino, I watched my life as I knew it crumble around me.
But through it all, I had football.
Every season started the same, with that feeling of coming home, of the last remnants of summer holding on while fall snuck in on the breeze. It was always my favorite day of the year, the one that filled me with hope and joy like a hot air balloon lifting slowly into a clear blue sky. From my first Pee Wee game, to the first time I ran out onto the North Boston University field with a crowd roaring in the stands, it was a drug, powerful and pure.
But this time… I felt nothing.
Our first game of the season passed like a foggy dream, one where I dressed, ran through warm-up drills and played all four quarters as if I were sleeping through the entire thing. I was there, on the field, next to my defensive brothers as I tackled and sprinted and leapt into the air for an interception that was nearly a pick six. I slapped helmets and chanted cheers, wiped sweat out of my eyes on the sideline, lifted Riley onto my shoulders when the final whistle blew and we won the game, and talked to the line of media like I was the luckiest, happiest kid in the world.
But inside, I was numb.
And as much as I hated to admit it, I knew it was because of Maliyah.
Seeing her warm up on the same field, watching her cheer out of the corner of my eye, trying to ignore the looks she got from not just the guys on the team but those in the stands, too — it was a slow death from sipping poison.
I wished I was stronger. I wished I didn’t care. I wished for all the things in my life that could have broken me, this was not the one that finally did.
It was supposed to be us.
It was supposed to be her kissing me before the game, cheering me on as I played, leaping into my arms after a win. It was supposed to be my number painted on her cheek, just like in high school, and my jacket around her shoulders when the fall chill set in.
Last night, I’d almost forgotten the acute pain that resided in my chest when Giana and I had gone out in the Theater District for her first “lesson” in getting Shawn’s attention. I was so focused on helping her, on showing her how to play the game that I hadn’t had time to even think about Maliyah.
It was a welcome distraction, watching Giana’s shock as what I told her to do worked, feeling her tremble and pant beneath me as I teased her in that booth, knowing it was driving Shawn mad to watch it.
I knew, because if I were him, it would have driven me mad.
I was surprised how easy it was, how effortless it felt to kiss along her neck, to whisper in her ear and elicit a wave of chills over her skin. It was amusing at first, a permanent smile on my face as I found which buttons I could push to make her gasp, or sigh, or arch into me, or dig her nails into my flesh.
But as the night progressed, that amusement shifted into something primal.
The more I pretended like she was mine to tease like that, the more it felt like she really was.
I soaked up every little mewl that escaped her lips like a hard-fought-for reward. It surprised me how hard it was to peel myself off her when I knew Shawn was about to go on break, and I had to stifle a laugh when I realized I was hard as a rock when I stood up from our booth. I’d had to adjust myself in my pants and stand with my crotch against the bar until I could calm down.
Giana was unexpectedly addicting. Her and her weird books, her unique clothes, her innocence that she tried so hard to cover up with unfaltering sass.
She was… refreshing. And fun.
But not even she could save me from the numbness of today.
“I expect picks like that all season long,” Holden said, clapping me on the shoulder once we’d all made it back to the locker room. “Except next time, it better be run in for a touchdown.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” I shot back with a salute.
Holden smirked, tearing his damp, dirty jersey off and letting it drop to the floor before he tilted his chin at me. “You good?”
“Good.”
“Sure?”
I cracked my neck, giving him a look that I hoped told him what I wouldn’t voice out loud. No, I wasn’t good. Far from it. But I didn’t want to talk about it.
He just nodded, lips pressed together as he ran a hand back through his wet hair. “All you can do is focus on what you can control,” he said, almost to the ground or himself rather than to me.
I nodded, thankful that he wasn’t pushing it.
We finished undressing in silent, both of us dragging our asses to the ice baths before we took showers. By the end of it all, every muscle in my body was screaming in protest — just like it did at the end of every game. Four quarters of putting my muscles and bones and joints through hell never got easier. In fact, the older I got, the more talented I became? The bigger and badder guys I was facing on the field.