Chapter 17 #2
When he’s out of sight, Booker entwines his fingers with mine and pulls me down the long, dark tunnel.
A friend in Germany once told me that you can tell a man’s feelings for you by how he holds your hand.
A clasp hold is friendship. A pinkie hold is just sex.
A waffle hold…is love. I try not to read too much into his hold that’s definitely waffling mine as he takes a left down another hallway illuminated by dim lights.
He stops at what looks like a normal door and slides a key into the lock.
When it opens, fluorescent lights automatically kick on overhead.
It’s a mini turf football field, about a quarter of the size of an actual pitch.
There’s a regulation sized goalie net on one side and a rack of balls along the wall.
Booker locks the door behind him and says, “This is where we practice manoeuvres and penalty kicks when the weather is shit or the pitch is under maintenance.”
I assume he’s going to walk to the other door on the opposite wall marked EXIT. Instead, he stops next to a medical bench and loosens his tie, pulling it off over his head. He leans back and runs a hand through his hair. “Let’s talk.”
“Here?” I look around nervously, like we’re being watched.
He shrugs. “Why not?”
Slowly pacing the turf, my mind races with where we go from here as the rough texture of the fake grass scrapes on my wedges.
“I still don’t know what I’m doing with you, Poppy.” He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head, clearly at a loss. “And I’m bloody terrified of that.”
I chew my lip and nod thoughtfully. Even after everything that’s been said, I can see there’s still a chance that Booker could want to be just friends.
And that might kill me. So, do I tell him I’ve loved him forever?
Do I tell him why I left for Germany? Do I tell him that I can’t even look at the woods behind our houses without feeling a million cuts all over my heart?
If he’s terrified now, all those truth-bombs are going to make him want to cut and run.
I have to be creative about this. Explain that we could be great together in ways that he can better understand and without our old baggage weighing us down from the start.
I lick my lips and try to ignore his hunched shoulders and grave eyes.
“Well I told you I have feelings for you. You said more of the same, but you’re scared.
Those are the facts we have in front of us.
” I pause, steeling myself to be brave before turning to face him.
“We’re on the practice pitch, so let’s discuss the details in football terms. Maybe it’ll help. ”
He laughs and shakes his head as I bend over and unbuckle my wedges.
This is probably going to make me look absurd, but I don’t care.
Football has always been the part of his life that I avoided.
I’m not a footy expert, but I know enough to be dangerous.
Now I intend to go balls deep with him about it.
Maybe literally, I think to myself with an immature snicker.
I pad barefoot over to a bank of footballs on the wall and grab one, tossing it back and forth between my hands as I walk toward the goalie net.
“What are you doing?” He watches me with amusement as I position myself dead centre in the net.
“I’m playing your game. Are you going to make me play alone?”
He smirks and peels off his jacket, laying it on the bench before removing his cufflinks and rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. His sinewy forearms make my knees weak as he strides over to me. When he reaches the goal line ten yards away, I toss him the football.
Staring at his large, strong hands digging into the stitching, I say, “For every answer you give me that I like, I’ll remove a layer of clothing. Let’s call it Strip Football.”
“Answers that you like?” He laughs and shakes his head. “Everything is a performance to you, isn’t it?”
“Don’t act like you don’t love my weird.”
His face heats and his eyes blink rapidly for a moment. He clears his throat. “Need I remind you that you’re wearing a dress?”
“I have undergarments on.” I shrug a shoulder, attempting to be coy and probably coming off like I’m having a seizure. “Are there security cameras in here?”
“I don’t think so,” he replies.
“Kismet.” I wink and then position myself between the poles, my legs spread as I clap my hands in front of me like I’m preparing to stop a ball. Thank goodness this dress is stretchy. “If you say something I don’t like, you have to strip.”
“I would have left my jacket on if I’d known that,” he argues, propping the ball on his hip.
“Come on, Harris. You’re not afraid to play with a girl, are you?”
His warm chuckle makes me feel like a million pounds. He drops the ball and holds it beneath his brown, wing-toed shoe.
“All right, so you’re a keeper,” I begin. “Balls fly at you all the time, correct?”
“Yes,” he replies skeptically, softly kicking the ball at me.
I bend over and scoop it up with my hands. “Are you ever afraid of them?”
He huffs a laugh. “You can’t be afraid of the ball as the keeper.”
“Why not?”
“Because, literally, your only job is to put yourself between the ball and the net.”
“So you sacrifice your own body for the save,” I reply, pulling the ball up and holding it to my chest. “You put yourself in harm’s way to protect the net. Why would you want that job?”
His brows lift. “The payoff of a great stop is worth it,” he responds simply, like the answer is obvious.
“Are you telling me the benefits outweigh the risks?” My voice rises as I throw him the ball. “I quite like that answer.”
Poppy straightens at my last comment, her smile warm, like I just touched her in a naughty place. My amused expression falls as she reaches over to her side and slides down the zipper of her dress along her ribs.
My hands tighten on the ball as she pulls her arms out of the top and shimmies the dress down her body. Now she stands before me in a black thong and a pink and teal polka-dot strapless bra. Mismatched. Quirky. Sexy.
Poppy.
She kicks her dress off to the side like a glittering football and then spreads her legs again, ready for round two.
To keep my mind off of her body and the fact that I want to rush her and take her in my arms, lay her flat on this pitch and claim her, I turn my focus on the ball.
I begin dribbling, my brown wingtips slippery on the turf.
“That’s precisely how I feel about us if we give this a go,” she says, gesturing between us. “We won’t just be Booker and Poppy. We’ll be more. And the rewards of that could outweigh the risks.”
I sigh, nerves prickling my fingertips as Poppy regurgitates similar words I’ve heard from Vi.
There could be so many rewards if I let myself be with her.
If I just dove in and gave myself a chance at more with her.
But my old fears are still there, and I can’t make them go away.
“But I’m not an offensive player, Poppy.
I’m not used to glory moments on the pitch like Cam and Tan have as strikers.
I’m a defensive player at my core, which means I’m constantly calculating risks and preparing for the worst case scenario.
My knee-jerk reaction is to protect myself and what I hold most dear. In this case, it’s our friendship.”
“Take your shirt off!” she shouts, stopping my movement of the ball.
I snicker at her stern expression. “Don’t like that answer?” I ask, my head tilted. She’s so cute when her brow furrows like that.
“Nope. Strip, Harris.” Her face is all business.
“I could take my shoes off,” I goad, enjoying how wound up she is right now.
“I could put my dress back on,” she challenges in return.
“All right, all right,” I say, holding my hands up for a second before undoing the buttons and sliding my shirt off.
I childishly enjoy the way she ogles me.
Her green eyes raking up and down my chest. She doesn’t even try to hide it, even though her cheekbones flush crimson beneath the fluorescents.
Clearing her throat, she continues, “All right, so what happens when a ball gets by you?” She shakes out her short blonde hair and then claps her hands together dramatically as she squats down into position.
“Like, you see the striker coming right for you! It’s Camden or Tanner, and you’re certain you know what they’re going to do.
So in your sexy, overly-analytical brain, you work out precisely how to stop the ball, but they juke you out completely and you miss it. ”
“Did you just call my brain sexy?” I ask.
She bites her lip playfully, slipping out of character before shaking her head and snapping, “Focus, Harris! Now, what do you do when one gets by you? Do you quit?”
“No,” I respond with a thoughtful frown, mulling over the image she’s described and trying my hardest to ignore the way her breasts press together when she rolls her shoulders.
I kick the ball to the far corner and it makes a cringe-worthy sound as it slaps back into the net.
I hate that sound. I hate that feeling. “Of course I miss sometimes. No keeper is perfect. But it doesn’t stop me from being gutted over the balls that get past me. No one is harder on me than myself.”
“But can’t you learn from missed saves?”
“Yes,” I pause, deep in thought. “Actually, I learn more from misses than stops. Stops are predictable. You see them coming from a mile away. The surprising shots that sneak past you…Those are the ones that burn into your brain forever.”
She nods subtly. “Are you afraid that I’ve snuck past you and made it into your net?”