The sound of keys jingling in the front door pulled me to attention. A glance at my phone showed it was two-thirty in the morning. The door opened, and Alec stepped in. He took one look at me and frowned.
“What are you doing up?” He got closer and noticed my red eyes, and he dropped everything in his hands and ran over. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m okay,” I replied. “I just got done Googling Zeke. He was huge, Alec, like a huge deal. He was number one to the pros until some asshole tackled him, trying to hurt him, and shattered his leg.”
“Jesus,” Alec replied. “No wonder he’s like that.”
I nodded. “I’m going to go apologize to him tomorrow.”
“And?” Alec raised an eyebrow. I looked at him with confusion, so he continued. “And then you will ask him out?” I looked over at Alec through a half-lidded gaze, and he held his hands up. “Fine, but I maintain that you like him.”
Alec stood up to walk away, and I grumbled, “I don’t not like him.”
Alec’s face shot back to me, and he plopped back down onto the couch next to me. “I knew it!”
“Okay! Don’t get all—you—about this. I don’t really know how I feel.” I sighed. “I know that the other night was the most fun I think I’ve ever had playing football, and knowing this,” I motioned to my computer, “I think I understand him better. I know what it’s like to constantly be fighting.” I lowered my voice. “And he is gorgeous.”
Alec yelped, and I stuck a finger in his face.
“But! He’s been on a relentless warpath to end my football career. Sure, his display today, or yesterday, suggested maybe that has changed, but I can’t go and crush on someone who doesn’t want me to play football.”
“That’s fair,” Alec replied, “but if it has changed, and you go there and apologize, and he were to, say, ask you out for a drink?”
I shrugged. “Wouldn’t say no.”
Alec jumped up off the couch, shooting both arms above his head. “Yes! Ha! Zeke for the win! Alec is right!”
I slapped his stomach. “Shh! We have neighbors.” I chuckled. “Why are you so excited about this, anyway?”
“Let’s see, why am I, your best friend, excited to see you lusting after something other than sewn together pigskin?” He massaged his chin. “Which reason do I start with?”
I waved my hand through the air. “Nevermind, I don’t want to know.”
I leaned back against the couch and pulled the blanket I had over my legs up to my shoulders. Alec started to tell me some story about something that happened at work, but it was far from my ears. I was already thinking about how I would truly react if I felt like Zeke felt differently about me than I first thought.
15
Zeke
“You can go fuck yourself,” Darius growled at me. “I am not running end zone to end zone suicides on the fives. You have lost your goddamn mind.”
“Yeah, what the hell Matheson?” one of the guards, Desmond, huffed. “We’ve only ever done half-field on the tens. We won our last game. Why are you doubling up?”
The team’s backlash at my most recent suggestion wasn’t unexpected. I was shocked when Quinn suggested it. “We could all use the added work on our stamina. We’ve been just scraping by in our games lately. I don’t want to play on a middling team. I don’t want to straddle the fence.” I crossed my arms. “Are you saying you can’t do it?”
No one wanted to answer that question. I knew I was probably asking something unreasonable of my team, but if Quinn could do it, and I could do it—albeit slower—I wanted a team that could do it. “That’s what I thought. Line up.”
More than one swear word was thrown my way, and even Tyler was looking at me like he was going to intervene when all of their attention diverted to something else.
“That’s the Widow’s captain, right?” someone whispered.
“Fuck, she’s hot. A chick that hot, and she’s into football. That’s a win-win,” someone else replied.
I looked over, and Quinn was standing in the opening to the pathway back toward the locker rooms. Ordinarily, people couldn’t just walk inside, but the security at the stadium was lazy. Not only was it a semi-pro stadium, but it was a semi-pro stadium in Montpelier, Idaho. The risk of a crazed fan wandering in was low.
“I’m gonna ask her out,” Patrick said finally, and for some reason, a fiery rage burned up inside of me. I glared over at him, and he stopped in his tracks. We stared each other down, and finally, he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t realize you’d already staked a claim.”
The concept gave me a chill, but I ignored it in favor of blowing on the whistle around my neck. The entire team grumbled and started to shittily jog the suicides. Patrick was the last off the line, so I blew my whistle again, and he charged off. Once everyone was off running drills, I started over toward Quinn. She was wearing a gray, zip-up hoodie, the zipper of which was struggling to stay where Quinn had left it half-zipped down due to the size of her chest. Under her hoodie was a black t-shirt with her jersey number on it, and she was also wearing a pair of hip-hugging jeans and athletic sneakers. Her brown hair was hanging down in waves over her head, and her eyes were shimmering in the sunlight. There was a muted throb in my chest as I got closer that I wanted to rip out and throw away. We’d done little else besides argue and scrap. Why was my body suddenly reacting to seeing her?
I stopped about ten feet away and crossed my arms. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to apologize to you,” she replied. “I didn’t know about all that shit you went through your senior year. That sucks.”
The brief warmth I felt shoved aside so that anger could step through. “You came here to pity me?”
Quinn recoiled. “What? No.”
“I know that you don’t know much about me, so take this as a free lesson. I don’t accept pity. It’s my least favorite thing. I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve ever had, and I’ll continue working hard. I had to battle against four older brothers coming up, and I refused to be babied or looked down upon. So, if you came here to just make me feel shittier about that stuff, you can get out and not come back.”
“Hey,” Quinn snapped. “Don’t scream at me because of the shit you’ve been through. I didn’t do it.”
I opened my mouth to respond and then stopped. No one had ever given it to me like that before.
“I didn’t come here to pity you, I know what that feels like. No one ever took me seriously coming up because I was a girl who wanted to play football. If anything, I’ll treat you harsher now because I know what you’re fighting for. No special treatment.” She rolled her eyes. “I suppose it shouldn’t shock me that this is how you’d react. You’re an ass after all.”
I imagined Daniel nicely trying to tell me that people’s entire worlds don’t revolve around me, and suddenly, it all locked into place. I immediately assumed that Quinn’s whole thought process was based on me, but it was much more about comparing her own experiences.