Chris
“Here we go, they’re out on the field. Oh my God, I think I might faint.”
“Oh God, oh God, tell me what they look like. Are they excited? Nervous? Does Ian seem calm?”
“They look…hot. Can I say that? You don’t mind, do you?”
Riley bursts out laughing on the other end of the phone.
“Do you guys have to make comments through the whole match?”
I turn towards Nick and smirk.
“Great, I’m the only dickhead out in the bleachers accompanying everyone else’s girlfriends to the game. How did I end up like this?”
“Calm down, mate, I’m here, too,” Evan reassures him.
“So?” Riley pulls my attention back to the game.
I’m sitting in the stadium with Nick and Evan.
Riley can’t come to the games anymore – she only has a few weeks left until the baby’s due, and they’ve advised her not to do too much, to stay at home.
But she’s not very good at it. So when I come to the stadium, I give her a running commentary of all the matches on the phone, which really pisses Nick off.
He’s really had enough of all these women constantly being around.
Riley watches the matches on TV too, but she says that the commentator isn’t enough. She prefers my own commentary.
“Hey, you still there?” she asks me, but I can’t respond: my man has just made his entrance, and I sit back breathlessly in my chair.
His pride, his confident smile, his slick hair. Those muscles, almost tearing through his shorts, and those hands, which, last night, were intent on…
“Ah okay, Ryan’s just come on,” Riley says. “I’ll give you a few minutes to cool off, okay? I’ll call you back after the first whistle.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me, as Evan rips the phone from my hand.
“You two are so embarrassing, you know that? He never stops staring at your arse, and you…no, I don’t even want to know what you’re staring at.”
“Shut up, you’re ruining the moment,” I say to my son, who sits next to me, scoffing.
Ryan raises his arm, waving to the crowd, and his face appears on the big screen. He looks right into the camera and smiles, like only he knows how, showing off his gleaming white teeth. I don’t know how he keeps them so perfect – surely someone would’ve smashed them to pieces by now?
He smiles, biting his lip, and my body goes up in flames, tingling with anticipation for the moment he comes home, ready for one of those red-hot nights that only he can give me.
“Can you just chill?” Nick says. “Everyone knows me here.”
“You’re so boring.”
“Me, boring? No one’s ever said that to me before.”
“Well, maybe that’s why you’re single. Don’t you reckon?”
“I think you and Ryan are a disaster of epic proportions together.”
I laugh, punching him lightly in the arm.
“He’s a bad influence on you. You’re starting to speak like him, act like him – you’re even starting to wind me up just like he does.”
“Do you need someone to stick up for you, Nick? You can ask Evan if you like.”
“Yep. You’re just like him. Same crap jokes that no one finds funny.”
“I find them funny,” Evan chimes in.
“Whose side are you on here?”
Evan shrugs arrogantly.
The starting whistle shuts us up. I turn suddenly to the field, where Ryan is sprinting, throwing himself to the ground, leaping over the opposing team, and sliding across the grass with the ball in his hands.
He wipes the sweat from his brow with his shirt, tugs at his shorts, pats his arse and gets back to it.
And I sit there, spellbound, with my heart beating like crazy and my body frozen in place. Because that mountain of muscles, that Greek God, that hard marble sculpture, is mine.
And when he comes home, I’m going to show him just how much he belongs to me, and just how much I love him, with everything that I have.
Ryan O’Connor, you’re the devil disguised as an angel.
But you’re mine.
My number three.
My man.
My today, and my tomorrow.
My forever.