Chapter 5
ISAK
Tuesday morning Coach had me running through the new run-pass option package for the third time and I was running it wrong, and I could feel Fox staring at me from the chair next to mine.
"Bro."
"Don't bro me." I had enough brothers.
"You ran the same play. Wrong. Three times in a row."
"I am aware of that, thank you, Not-The-Coach Daws."
"It's the same play, oh, great and powerful Kingman."
Fucking smart ass. "I. Am. Aware."
Coach paused the film and looked at me with the particular long-suffering patience he kept on file for the days he was deciding whether to be a head coach about it or a human being about it.
The room had gone extremely quiet. There were six other guys in this room. Touchdown Jesus. I lived in this room.
"Where are you today, Kingman?" Coach Roper said.
"Right here, Coach."
He smiled real nice and midwestern friendly-like. Which I was beginning to learn meant the opposite. "Where else are you today, Kingman?"
I was on a sidewalk in OTR on Saturday afternoon and a woman with no idea who I was had looked at me like I might be a person, and now it was Tuesday and I had been on that sidewalk for ninety-six hours. But I could not say that to our brand new head Coach.
"Nowhere, Coach. Right here."
"Mm," Coach said. “Good. Because this is in fact the place to be. I believe you youngins would say this place is bussin.”
A chuckle went through the room that clearly meant we would not say that, but thanks for trying to be the cool coach. He started the film again.
Fox leaned in. "You absolute disaster."
"Shut up."
I silently and sneakily snuck a look at my phone to see if Cheerleader had texted me back yet.
Fox grinned at me like he knew a secret and wanted me to know he did. "You haven't watched a single second of film since you came into this room."
He wasn’t wrong. "You don't know what I have or haven't watched."
"We just went over a fade route and you called it a screen pass, my dude."
I had in fact called it a screen pass. There was no recovery available to me. I went back to mostly staring at the laptop while Coach drew on the board and Fox vibrated next to me like a piece of equipment that had been left on.
I checked my phone for the seventh time since we’d gotten into the film room and there had still been no text from Cheerleader, and there continued to be no text from her, and I was a professional athlete and I was going to focus on this fade-route-not-a-screen-pass and not think about cute girls with tight curls and freckles that probably dotted her whole damn, juicy body.
I was a man of considerable athletic training.
I lifted large amounts of weight three days a week.
I stood in pockets while three hundred pounds of defensive linemen barreled toward me with my demise in their eyes.
I lived, breathed, and ate football for breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, lunch, dinner, and late night snacks.
Nothing distracted me from being the best quarterback I could be.
My phone buzzed.
I dropped my pen.
Fox saw me do it. "Bro."
"Shut up right now or I will sit on you.” I’d done it before, I would absolutely do it again to shut him up. “I will sit on you in this chair and you will be very embarrassed."
Coach turned around at the board. "Are you boys going to be okay back there?"
"Yes, Coach," Fox and I said simultaneously, in the same eleven-year-old voice we had probably used in Pop Warner huddles.
The laptop on the desk in front of me, in some other universe, was running a fade route, and in this universe my phone was burning a hole in my pocket like a small radioactive object that had been delivered to me personally by a woman who had not yet decided whether to let me take her on a ride.
Coach turned back to the board.
I pulled my phone halfway out of my pocket.
I tilted the phone and looked at the screen through the slit of my pocket all sneaky like.
Cheerleader: Tig asked me to send this to Vito. Please forward at your convenience.
A picture popped up below the text of her floofball orange menace sitting in a cereal bowl, with a couple of magically delicious marshmallows stuck to his fur and a spoon sticking out from under his butt.
This woman.
Days ago I’d sent her a photo of Vito with wild eyes and a puffed up tail while a pigeon walked past my window. And now, on Tuesday morning, after ninety-six thousand hours of considered silence, she’d finally replied in kind.
I dropped the phone back in my pocket.
I went back to looking at the laptop.
The fade route ran for fifteen yards and a touchdown. The film cut to the next play.
In my pocket, the small radioactive object did not buzz again.
It had been the only thing keeping me alive for forty-five seconds.
Fox leaned in. "You okay, sweetheart?"
"Fox,” I gritted his name out like a warning.
"Oh, she texted." He waggled his eyebrows. “Or did she sext? Are there pictures?”
"It is none of your business." That would drive him crazy.
"Oh my gawd, there are pictures. She texted you, and you went pale because your entire blood supply has rerouted to your… phone.”
Coach turned around again. "Kingman. Daws. You two are killing me. Meeting dismissed. Go run twenty laps before drills this afternoon."
Fuck. I didn’t love getting my balls busted by our new coach the first week of camp. But also…maybe I did need some cardiovascular exercise. My heart was already beating at a low aerobic pace as it was.
Coach pointed toward the door. “Get out. The rest of us are going to have some coffee and maybe a cookie while we put our feet up.”
The other guys snickered and I didn’t care. I was about to sprint down the hallway to the locker room where I could read this text in private with my dignity intact.
Fox and I pushed our chairs back and slunk from the room, but the second we hit the hallway, we both took off running toward the locker room.
I pulled out my phone the second we were inside the doors. Fox put his shoulder against mine and read stared down at the screen. I let him because there was clearly no other option and because if I tried to stop him, he was going to put his elbow into my ribs.
Fox made a sound like a man who had just been handed a surprise ice cream cone. "Dude."
"Don't." I tried to turn away so he couldn’t see, but he just used his finely honed running back moves and flipped around to my other side.
"DUDE. She likes you." He smiled, but also shook his head like it was a woman liking me was some huge anomaly.
"Maybe, but how do I reply to this?" It was clearly an opening from her to talk some more. Do I call her, send a shirtless pic? I did have killer abs. I knew better than to send a dick pick.
"Don't answer yet." Fox’s tone was pretty fucking confident, and I trusted it zero percent.
"What? Why not? She gave me an opening. I should text her, or send her another picture in reply."
"Don't answer fast. Answer in like seven minutes. You don’t want to look thirsty."
This from a man who’d never in his life had to ask a woman out. He could get laid just by entering a room. Fucking movie star smile got them in zero point two second flat every time. "I am not playing that game."
"You don't know it but you are playing a game. Like cat and mouse. But I think you’re the mouse in this case."
Since she’d ignored me for days, I was going to make sure she was still on for our ride on Friday.
Just as I was about to be brilliant an email popped up from Gabrielle.
The subject line read: Trouble incoming — My sister Tiki. Those two words sitting there like a tripwire. Gabrielle did not send emails. Gabrielle sent agendas. She probably wanted me to give her younger sister a signed jersey or something.
It wouldn’t be that much trouble, I just did not currently have the bandwidth for thinking about any other woman’s needs at the moment. I had a cheerleader who'd texted me a cat in a cereal bowl and had not yet agreed to get on my bike. That was the only weather I was tracking.
I did not open the email.
I would deal with it later. Later being a flexible, generous, possibly imaginary window of time.
Back to my brilliant, charming, flirty cute texts.
Me: Do you want to bring your marshmallow covered cat on our bike ride?
I bounced on my toes waiting and if she didn’t reply soon, I’d have the strongest calves on the team.
Cheerleader: About that…
Uh oh.
Fox slugged me in the arm. “I told you. Thirsty. Girls can smell it and it stinks.”
“How would you know? You’ve never been thirsty in your life.”
“True. But I have thirsty friends.” He stared at me like I was supposed to guess he was talking about me.
The three dots appeared on her side of the screen and I felt them in my actual stomach. Ping, ping, ping.
The three dots disappeared.
The three dots appeared.
Cheerleader: I have some questions.
Questions I could do.
Me: Hit me with them.
Fox paced like he was waiting for news from the doctor and occasionally peeked his head over my shoulder to read the text exchange.
Cheerleader: Good. Vetting protocol commencing.
Me: I'm ready.
Cheerleader: Years riding?
Me: Nine.
Cheerleader: Crashes?
Me: None.
Cheerleader: Speeding tickets?
Me: Also none.
Cheerleader: Are you lying? Just a little bit?
Me: Nope. I’m a safety boy.
I didn’t need anyone I knew finding out about my motorcycle since everyone would be Judgy McJudgersons about it. An accident or a ticket would be fodder for the rumor mill. So I really was careful. Not to mention it would make my insurance cost more than my signing bonus.
Cheerleader: Are you a felon?
Me: No.
I wanted to laugh, but she was probably pretty serious about these questions, so no laughing emojis for me.
Cheerleader: Married, divorced, separated, engaged, situationship?
Me: No to all of the above. Cheating and cheaters are not my jam.
Cheerleader: Children?
Me: No. But I come from a big family and I’d probably like a few. Some day.
Cheerleader: Roommates?