Chapter Fifteen Archer
Chapter Fifteen
Archer
There was pink hair at the front desk. Not red.
I stopped short when I walked through the doorway of the shelter lobby.
Vanessa smiled. “Hey.” Then she tilted her head. “Why are you all dressed up?”
Fuck.
“I’m not,” I lied, tugging at the collar of my favorite blue polo shirt. Analise told me my eyes looked the best when I wore this shirt, and against my better fucking judgment, I pulled it out of the closet when I showered after my workouts.
She hummed disbelievingly, one dark eyebrow arched. “Okay.”
I cleared my throat. “Is Remi here?”
Vanessa shook her head. “Her grandpa wasn’t feeling well, so she took the day off to make him some soup or something. Honest to God, it’ll probably make him worse, but I don’t have the heart to tell her that.”
Disappointment was so much heavier when it came hard on the heels of anticipation. I’d never felt like this. Walking around like a fucking zombie, holding on to an aching need to see her. Be around her. Do whatever would make her smile. Well, maybe not whatever would make her smile.
You have to tell someone.
I couldn’t do that for her, and I just prayed she understood why.
I had heard her voice over and over and over in the three days since she’d said it. No hours scheduled at the shelter meant I hadn’t seen her. Hadn’t talked to her. Heard her voice.
I’d picked up my phone a dozen times to send her a text, but I couldn’t find a reason that was good enough.
Analise, in her extremely unhelpful way, gave me a few ideas.
Option 1: Please help settle a debate: Is cereal a soup? (Absolutely fucking not, and anyone who thought so was psychotic. If Remi said yes, I’d never be able to get over it.)
Option 2: I saw someone who looked like you today. Almost broke my neck turning to look at her. (Had a sneaking suspicion that this would backfire.)
Option 3: If I had a dollar for every time I thought about you, I’d still text you for free. (With option three, I was fully convinced my sister was plotting my demise.)
Despite a screaming gut instinct that I shouldn’t take advice from a hopelessly romantic seventeen-year-old who’d never gone on a date, I gave my sister the benefit of the doubt and typed them out one by one.
Seeing them like that, only one tap on the screen away from either endless humiliation or being pleasantly surprised if it worked, I made myself wait fifteen seconds to see how they looked.
Each one got deleted more violently than the last. By the time I got to option three, I was surprised I hadn’t cracked my phone screen.
In the end, I had to wait. Wait to see her and hope we’d get some time to talk. It would be different today, I told myself. We’d had a moment at her house, hadn’t we?
I saw her home. Met her child. I was honest. Vulnerable, even. Didn’t royally fuck up anything in the process.
Which was why I’d dressed nicely. Put on a little cologne. Shaved off the ever-present stubble.
I’d ask her out today. For coffee or dessert, if that was all I’d get. I was more than halfway through my hours, and the desperate desire for more time with her had me thinking things I’d never thought before.
Except all those things were for naught because she wasn’t even fucking here.
Vanessa was watching me with a knowing look on her face. “Don’t worry, troublemaker. She’ll be back tomorrow and you can fawn over her then.”
I glowered. “I’m not fawning.”
What a fucking liar.
“If you say so.” Her voice was dripping with condescension. “Don’t get me wrong, I love this journey for her. She needs to be chased.”
“I’m not—”
“Oh, zip it, quarterback. Yes, you are. You put on your pretty shirt and you smell much nicer than you should, considering you’re going to clean cat shit for the next hour.”
“Maybe the animals will appreciate that.”
“I’m sure they will.” She smiled. “Especially Pumpkin. She’d scratch your face off for smelling so good. But I’m gonna tell you right now, that woman is looking for the kind of perfection that doesn’t really exist anymore.”
My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Her standards are almost impossibly high, in that she is looking for complete and utter mediocrity. She wants the most vanilla man in the world, to avoid getting hurt again.” Her face gentled.
“It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, but if you want to overcome her reservations about you, you’re about to scale Mount Everest, baby. I hope you’re ready.”
I took a deep breath and managed to nod.
“Excellent,” she said. “I assume you recall where the bags of kitty litter are.”
“Yeah, I remember,” I answered dryly.
“Good boy. I’ll be up here if you need anything.”
I couldn’t turn my brain off.
At workouts and drills, Remi was always hovering at the back of my mind.
You’re about to scale Mount Everest, baby.
What the fuck was I supposed to do with that?
I could buy her a million trucks of dog food, and I still wasn’t convinced that was the right way to go about any of this.
With the level of distractions on my mind, it was a fucking miracle I was still able to do my job.
I caught the ball as Mitch snapped it to me, the hundredth rep of the morning. There were ten routes on the route tree, and as the receivers rotated in and out, we ran the route tree twelve times so they each had four cycles through.
Quick out.
Slant.
Comeback.
Curl.
Square out.
Square in.
Corner.
Post.
Go.
I had music blaring in my ears, my body humming as I made each throw to the receivers doing drills today. We had six receivers on the roster this year and two more on the practice squad. Today, we were working on the guys in the one through three spots.
Williams was a rookie, and we’d only talked a few times.
He was quick and eager, his eyes lighting up every time he caught the ball to his chest. He’d do well.
Better than I had my first year, probably because he wanted to listen and took down everything anyone was willing to teach him.
Smith and Brooks waited on the sideline, watching with sharp eyes, even though they had their own music in their ears.
This wasn’t a time for conversation.
This was the kind of repetition that was the foundation for every guy who wanted to play this game. It was the repetition I’d missed when I was injured. And what I’d taken for granted when I wasn’t.
Football was easy to figure out. I’d known how to do that since I was in high school.
It was the relationships in my life where I always struggled most.
My father.
My nonexistent mother.
My teammates and coaches.
Remi.
I didn’t know how to do any of it, not when it mattered.
I snapped the ball a little too hard on the last go route. Williams had done his job, sprinting straight down the middle of the field about twenty-five yards, but the ball sailed over his head, easily ten yards past him.
“Fuck,” I muttered, then tapped my chest. “That’s on me.”
Williams jogged back with an easy smile on his face. “No worries, QB. I shoulda run faster.”
I pulled out an earbud and tucked it into my wristband so he knew I was paying attention. “You ran fast enough. I was distracted with my own shit.”
My QB coach glanced in my direction, his eyebrows lifting slightly at the admission. Brooks and Smith shared a look on the sideline.
Williams set his hands on his hips. “Anything you want to talk about?”
I froze.
So did Brooks and Smith.
Mitch sucked in a quick breath and held it.
“You want to talk about my problems,” I said slowly.
He shrugged. “We’re teammates, right? If you’re struggling with something, we should feel secure enough to ask if you need help.”
Brooks swiped a hand over his mouth, and Smith stared down at the ground.
I stared at Williams with narrowed eyes, my chest tightening uncomfortably.
He was trying to help.
Tell someone.
I banished the sound of Remi’s voice out of my head. Other than Coach, I couldn’t remember the last time anyone around me had offered something so simple. Not that I blamed my teammates—they were all living their own lives. It wasn’t their responsibility to fix me.
“I don’t know if you can,” I told him, crossing my arms over my chest.
He nodded. “Is it about the DUI?”
“Fucking rookies,” Smith muttered. Brooks choked on a laugh.
“What?” Williams asked. “Are we not supposed to talk about that?”
“It’s not about the DUI.” I rolled my neck until I heard a crack. “I, uh, I like someone.”
My QB coach dropped his phone. Brooks’s head snapped up and Smith’s mouth fell open.
Williams nodded eagerly. “That’s . . . that’s good. What’s the problem?”
“Well, she hates me. Sort of.” I grimaced. “Maybe.”
Remi might not have hated me anymore, but I wasn’t sure she really trusted me either.
“So she knows you?” he asked carefully.
Brooks lost his battle, leaning in to Smith as he burst out laughing. I glared, which made them both laugh harder. Mitch coughed, but he couldn’t hide his smile either.
The rookie’s face turned red. “Fuck, that’s not what I meant. I just . . . I meant, you two have met and everything.”
“Yes,” I answered dryly. “And everything.” I pulled the hat off my head and ran a hand through my hair. “Her life is complicated. She’s a single mom. Always working, taking care of people. Her friend, uh, she said that meeting her standards would be like climbing Mount Everest.”
All of them made an “oh” sound.
Brooks straightened. “Look, Archer, you gotta be straight with women like that. Single moms don’t fuck around with liars or playboys.”
“I know, I’m trying. I’m not either one of those things.”
“Yeah, but you’re not a saint either,” Smith said.
Tell someone.
I pushed my tongue into the side of my cheek. “Yeah, I know. I met her doing my community service. Well. Met her a second time. The first time was . . . complicated.”
Williams’s eyes widened. “What does she do?”
I gave him a dry look. “She runs the animal shelter.”
“Oh.”
Brooks smiled. “Oh shit, for real? I’ve been thinking about getting a dog. They got any cute ones?”
“Lots of them. I’m not there when people come in for adoptions. She doesn’t want it to become a circus with me there the whole time.”
They all nodded.
“So this is, like, important to her.”
I looked over at Williams. “Yeah.”
“Have you asked her out yet?”
“No,” I said with a roll of my shoulders. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“Dude.” Smith smacked my chest. “You’re a quarterback for a professional football team. That uncomplicates a lot.”
“I think my résumé is a strike against me, unfortunately.”
“You gotta play it smooth,” Brooks said. “Under the radar. You don’t want to scare her off.”
“Right.”
Brooks nodded. “But let her know you’re interested. Not, like, too much. Just enough.”
“Okay. Fuck. How do you know if it’s too much?”
“You know,” they replied in unison.
Williams shrugged. “I think you should ignore her about coming in during adoption hours.”
Brooks and Smith immediately started shaking their heads.
“No, man.”
“Bad, bad idea.”
The rookie held up his hands. “I’m just saying. I think you should go. More people usually means more dogs adopted.”
I stared at the kid. “You’re single, right?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “My girlfriend dumped me right before the draft because she said I wouldn’t do shit.”
Brooks whistled. “She know you got drafted?”
Williams nodded. “Tried to call me the next day.”
Smith narrowed his eyes. “What’d you do?”
“Told her I was too busy spending my signing bonus to talk to her.”
The guys burst out laughing, shoving the rookie as he grinned.
I smiled, shaking my head.
“I can’t just show up if she told me no,” I said once they’d calmed down. “I know her well enough. It would piss her off.”
“Shit, I’d go down there and look at dogs, but I don’t want to make it crazy either,” Brooks said.
My gaze snapped to his, brain stumbling over a thought.
That was it.
“What are you guys doing tomorrow?” I asked.
“Nothing, why?”
When you’ve gone your entire life believing that asking for help made you weak, it was so fucking hard to force the words out.
Despite my upbringing, I was so far from perfect, we weren’t even circling the same orbit. But neither was I weak, no matter what my father might have said to the contrary.
I was trying.
“You know anyone else on the team who wants a dog?”
We all turned to my QB coach. He held his hands up. “I already have three, and my wife would murder me if I brought home another one.”
Williams laughed.
Smith held up a hand. “I heard Justice say something about it a couple weeks ago. He might be looking.”
“Good.” I sucked in a deep breath and fought through the instinct to shut down, pretend like I was fine. “I need your help. Will you guys come with me tomorrow?”