7. Cassandra
“Alright, handicap…”Diego narrowed his eyes at the wide expanse of green in front of us.
A Norwalk Breakers hat shaded his face, but he tilted his head up to the afternoon sun, pouring light on his profile, long lashes over rich brown eyes and a chiseled jaw with a faint indent on one side. Painfully handsome and he knew it. “How about I give you three extra strokes on every hole?”
I crinkled my nose. “That doesn’t sound like enough.”
“That’s plenty.”
“You said you were really good at disc golf, and I’ve never played. Seems like I should get five points a hole, easy.”
Teasing Diego came easily to me. Well, actually, teasing in general came easy to me, an annoying little sister trait I’d never quite outgrown. As I grew up, I weaponized it, unnerving and disarming people who took me for a spacey young woman, which I also could be. But unlike my sister or my best friend, teasing Diego felt charged somehow. It made me feel powerful. He was poised and calm, and pushing him just off balance made me unnaturally happy.
“Four,” he ground out, jaw tight.
I held back a smile. He caved awfully quickly. “Fine, four. But I need an apology when you trounce me and I get pouty about it.”
“Pouty? I look forward to seeing that. Now, let me show you how it’s done.”
Diego strode onto the green mat and held up his disc to the sky. He shifted his feet, aiming slightly to the left of the metal basket in the distance that he’d pointed out as being the hole. His shoulders strained against his t-shirt and his biceps bulged as he practiced his throw.
Goosebumps raced down my arms as I paid more attention to his back than his technique. I’d given myself enough points to win, and I didn’t want to lose because I couldn’t keep it in my pants.
And I definitely needed to keep it in my pants.
Diego launched his disc straight at the net. It bounced off the top, clanging loudly.
“Four strokes was too many?” I groaned, taking his place on the mat. Without bothering with a practice throw, I threw my first disc. It floated through the air, landing easily in the middle of the open field, halfway between the tee and the metal net.
“What are we playing for, anyway?” Diego asked.
My mind wandered to a dozen different bets that would only get me in trouble. I’d always been the wild child and streaking, skinny dipping, and strip anything were my default bets. But midday on a Tuesday with an NFL quarterback, who I had to admit I still had a slight crush on? No way.
“Dinner, after this.” A safe bet. Not the safest. The safest would have been to ask for a run at his candy console and head home stuffed with sweets for an early evening in Becca’s empty apartment.
“I’m not sure you can afford to feed me.”
“Good thing I’m going to win then,” I said with more bravado than I should rightfully claim, throwing my disc into his bag and hefting it onto my shoulder.
If we’d been playing darts or foosball or flip cup, I could easily dominate him. But disc golf? Not so much. I had a strategy though: slow and steady. I didn’t need to beat Diego, I just needed to stay within four strokes of him.
Diego grabbed the bag from me, shuffling through it before handing me a new disc.
I eyed it suspiciously. “I’m trusting you on the club selection. You’re not giving me anything that’s wily, right?”
“No, I’m keeping those in my back pocket for when you start beating me.”
“That’s not very sporting.”
“Who said I was a good sport?” He winked at me.
The wink should have been cheesy. On any other guy, it would have been. Instead of laughing, though, my chest tightened, and my cheeks burned red. “Isn’t your career in sports? I thought you’d lose some of your competitive edge now that you get paid for it.”
“This isn’t football though, is it? Besides, I am curious to see where you’ll take me out to dinner.”
He strutted over to his disc, picking it up and grabbing another, smaller yellow disc from his bag. He easily threw the disc into the metal net.
I’d thrown my second disc ten feet away from the net, and when Diego handed me the same yellow disc, his fingertips brushed mine. His thumb drew over my wrist, and I sucked in a breath.
“Um, excuse me?”
Diego pulled his hand away, sending the disc falling to the ground. We turned toward the breathless teen standing just behind us. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, eyes bright and hair braided into two pigtails. She glanced back at her group of friends, back on the mat we’d just left. “Are you Diego Salazar?”
Diego paused, eyes widening slightly before he took a step away from me. “Um, yeah.”
“Can we get a picture?” the girl asked.
She gestured for her friends to join us before Diego answered. He glanced at me, a slight swell of panic behind his eyes.
“I don’t mind,” I reassured him. “I can even take the picture.”
The girl shook her head as her friends approached. “We’ll just get a selfie with all of us in it.”
The group of teens ran up, surrounding us. They jostled for position, pushing me into Diego’s side before holding up a phone and snapping dozens of pictures.
“These are great! Thank you so much!” The girl enthused, not taking her eyes off the phone. The kids hurried away just as fast as they’d shown up.
I picked up the fallen disc and lobbed it into the net. The metal clinked as the disc landed safely in the net. Hell, I might have a future at this sport.
“Fuck,” Diego swore under his breath. He raked a hand down his face.
I gave him a sidelong glance. “There’s a bunch more holes left, right? I don’t think you need to give up quite that easily.”
He sighed, chest rising as he tipped his head back. “I should have just told them to go away.”
“Wow. And I thought you were just awed by my pure talent.”
“Sorry.” He dropped his hand from his face and shook his head. “The kids aren’t a big deal. It’s probably fine.”
“Probably fine?” I eyed the retreating gaggle of children. “What are they going to do? Come back and jump us?”
“They’ll post that picture. Then, it’ll get picked up by some gossip site and by tomorrow, I’ll be fielding phone calls from my agent, my coach, and your sister about why I’m being photographed with another woman not even a week after Zoey called me a dog in an interview.” He exhaled heavily.
I flinched at the rapid-fire assessment of a selfie. “Well, good news. My sister probably won’t refer to me as ‘another woman’.”
“And my agent would actually be thrilled.” Diego worked his jaw. “He consulted with some PR firm who suggested I get a new, low-profile girlfriend.”
“You have a PR firm? How many scorned girlfriends do you have running to the press on a daily basis, Diego?” I tutted.
“Usually, none. But the whole interview thing got out of hand, and he got one in case I couldn’t calm things down.”
“But that?” I scrunched my nose and pointed to the kids piling into an SUV. “That was a picture. It’s nothing.”
He shrugged. “Things have changed a lot since I played college ball. Some of it is definitely my fault, but in college I could...”
“Make out with random girls in treehouses?”
He nodded. “It was a simpler time.”
I swiveled my head around the course and, finding it empty, took a step toward Diego, brushing my shoulder against his. “How about another bet? I bet this won’t amount to anything. So, if our picture pops up on some gossip site, you win. If we don’t see it again, I win. They seem like nice kids.”
“What are we betting?”
I shrugged. “How about another round of disc golf?”
He laughed, sloughing off the stress from the picture. “How’s that a bet? I was going to drag you back out here with me, anyway?”
“Trust me, after I beat you, you’re never going to want to bring me back.”
“Game on.”
* * *
I straightened as Diego served me a plate of falafel at the fold-up table beside a food truck that had drowned out the belching of their generator with loud K-pop.
“One point,” he muttered.
The pita was fresh and warm, and the falafel crunched as I folded the entire sandwich into a burrito. I took a bite, closing my eyes and rocking slightly in my seat as I ate. When I opened my eyes, Diego watched me with a grin.
“One point,” he repeated and shook his head without the smile fading.
“I think that’s a sign that we were evenly matched. But, ultimately, I’m the better player.”
“Uh-nuh,” he protested through a mouthful of gyro meat. “You can’t say that when I had four points to make up per hole. I’m clearly the better player.”
“Give me a few more rounds and I’ll catch up.”
“Does that mean you’ll drop the handicap next time we play?”
“Not a chance,” I said, grabbing a napkin from the pile he’d dropped at the center of the table to wipe my mouth.
A lone car passed by the food truck, and we sat alone in an otherwise empty parking lot. Too late for lunch and too early for dinner, not exactly surprising. Still, the seclusion made me wonder if Diego hadn’t picked the food truck specifically so no one would see us.
Which he might have.
And I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t understand his concern about the picture we took together earlier. Other than the odd friend tagging me in an unattractive picture, I’d never had to deal with unwanted snapshots showing up online.
Still, his knee-jerk regret at taking a picture with me stung.
“Can I ask you a question?” Diego set down his gyro and leaned across the table. His stare turned uncharacteristically earnest.
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t you stay in New Hampshire when I was there?” His voice was light, but his jaw tightened once the question was out.
Diego had spent the last two summers in New Hampshire, training with my sister, and I’d moved heaven and earth not to be there. Not that it was hard. I didn’t have an apartment lease or pets or a job with benefits.
I just jumped at any opportunity to go somewhere else: a free couch, a tentative job offer, an interesting event.
My cheeks burned, and I dipped my head, tracing my fork through the tahini left on my plate. “I didn’t live in New Hampshire anymore.”
“Becca said you were home that first summer, and you took off right before I came to town.”
I waved a hand, avoiding eye contact. “Becca didn’t know what I was up to. She talks about training and football and nothing else. And that summer, she was a wreck. I had a place in Boston, a job. I told her that.”
“So you weren’t avoiding me?”
I asked. “Was there a reason to avoid you?”
His brown eyes narrowed slightly before he shook his head. “No. I didn’t think so anyway.”
“It was just bad timing. And I was there during the Highland games.”
“You waved ‘hi’ to me once. I wasn’t even sure I’d seen you until Becca mentioned you came for the games.”
Avoiding Diego during the event had been a little skill but mostly dumb luck.
“I was only there for two days, and we both were busy. Besides, you were mobbed every time I saw you, signing autographs and smiling at old ladies.”
“Old ladies love me,” he said cockily.
I laughed. “I bet they do.”
“But you didn’t avoid me?”
“Absolutely not. Why would I?”
I tamped down the lie with more falafel. At least I didn’t need to worry about food for the rest of the night. I cleaned up the trash, thanking the food truck owner before we piled back into Diego’s car.
He made his way through the after-work traffic, and I kept my mouth shut. I could already hear myself asking him if he wanted to get a drink. To come inside. To hang out longer.
Being around him felt as easy as it had five years ago, despite the distance and fame. Of course, the selfie had thrown the course of the day off track and, even without saying it, Diego probably wanted to get back to the safety of his home.
“Well, I promise if anyone contacts me for an interview, I’ll be nothing but effusive about our afternoon together.” I said with a grin. “I’ll have to tell them how bad you are at disc golf, though.”
“You had an unfair advantage.” Diego’s knuckles relaxed on the steering wheel, and the tension drained from his face.
“But I still won.” I leaned across the seat, brushing a kiss over his cheek before slipping out of the car. “Thanks for the nice day.”
“I’ll see you soon for that rematch.”
“Looking forward to it,” I said, before slamming the door shut.
I shouldn’t see Diego again, even if he called.
But I kind of hoped he’d call.