Chapter 10
CHAPTER
TEN
Gianna
“Ready?” I whisper as the final notes of the opening bumper wrap the intro.
Drake smiles in a way that’s truly unhelpful under the circumstances, but I shove that out of my mind and focus on the task at hand.
“Welcome to a very special episode of Gianna Knows Things,” I say, exiting the tabs I had open with my notes for Mercy.
I won’t need those. “Before we get into why today is going to be so exciting, I want to take a moment to welcome my new listeners who may or may not have found me through a spontaneous live video.” I roll my eyes for Drake’s benefit.
“I have no idea what all the commotion has been about.”
I pause and twist toward Francine. She gives me a thumbs-up. Technically speaking, everything is a go.
“I’ve loved seeing all of your guesses this week about my special guest,” I say, getting comfortable. “Some of you have been quite creative, and whoever started the petition to get Lincoln Landry on my podcast—God bless you. It’ll probably never happen, but I love that energy.”
Drake wrinkles his nose, moving his hand side to side as if to say that Landry is overrated. Unable to miss an opportunity to screw with him, I fan my face and blow out a breath. This earns a glare from across the table.
“Today is going to be a lot of fun,” I say, giggling at Drake.
“And, since many of you seem to be sports fans from what I can tell with the Landry comments, you’ll be especially stoked about who is sitting across from me.
We’re just going to go with the flow and see how things turn out.
We might take questions, and we might not.
Feel free to drop them in the comments or submit them on our website, just in case.
Francine, my producer extraordinaire, will be keeping up with them. ”
She makes a face at me through the glass.
My stomach flutters in anticipation of the announcement of Drake.
He’s calm, cool, and collected. But I guess I am, too, when I’m walking into a situation where I’m the main character.
It’s easy to be confident when you’re the star.
As much as I hate to admit it, he’s the star of my show today, and these women are going to lose their damn minds.
He drags a fingertip across his lower lip, the corners of his mouth curling toward the ceiling.
It’s a friendly, yet heated gesture, the waves of which scatter beneath my skin.
We’ve shared the same space hundreds of times, and we’ve even shared the same screen recently.
But there’s something different about this—something conspiratorial and indulgent, as if just being here is somehow crossing a line.
“Without further ado, it’s my pleasure to announce that none other than Drake Bennett, host of Canoodle’s own Sports Take with Drake Bennett is here for the next hour.” I take a breath. “Drake, welcome to Gianna Knows Things.”
He grins smugly. “Thank you, Gianna, but the pleasure is all mine.”
I can hear the echoes of my listeners swooning in the distance.
“Let me start this afternoon by relaying the results of our poll,” he says. “If you missed that conversation, it’s posted on Gianna’s socials. Overwhelmingly, I might add, your listeners agreed with me that sending flowers, or whatever your significant other prefers, post-argument is a good thing.”
“Whoa. Okay,” I say, laughing. “That’s not necessarily what happened.”
“Really? Because I was there and I’ve rewatched that video more than a few times.”
He did? For reasons unknown to me, that makes me happy.
“Great. Then you realize that you called for a poll just after arguing with me about whether I like flowers. One could easily construe that the real survey was not a theoretical situation, but specifically about whether I was being honest about wanting flowers or not.”
“Doesn’t matter. The audience overwhelmingly agreed with me. I think my last count was two hundred thousand to two.”
I laugh, shaking my head at him. “You could add together every comment on all of my socials, and it wouldn’t reach two hundred thousand.” I adjust my headphones, the apples of my cheeks aching from smiling so much. “But let’s add to that total by bringing up the legendary Lincoln Landry.”
Drake sighs, rolling his eyes at me.
“In my intro, I mentioned that many of you guessed Landry as my guest today. Since he’s a baseball player, and Drake is a sportsball analyst, I thought we could get his sports take—see what I did there?—about the legendary centerfielder.”
“You want to talk about sports?”
I smirk. “Generally, no. But I think there’s a definite crossover when it comes to our personal areas of expertise on Lincoln Landry.”
“Want to know what’s legendary?” he asks, his eyes narrowing. He knows exactly where I’m going with this, and the fact that it seems to bother him is far too entertaining.
“Sure.”
“Eight seasons and over five hundred receptions. Fifty-two touchdowns, a red-zone nightmare, and has one of the most memorable catches in postseason history with a tip-to-self, one-handed, through-contact grab that sealed the Illinois Legends’ ticket to the championship.”
He sits back, his arms crossed over his chest, and smirks.
I might not know a ton about sports, but I also don’t live under a rock.
He’s not talking about Lincoln Landry. He’s talking about himself.
I remember that catch vividly, watching it in the middle of The Swill on a rainy Sunday evening.
Everyone who understood anything about football was highly impressed by the skills required to pull off that catch.
I was highly impressed with his obliques on the replay.
“Funny,” I say, feigning ignorance. “That doesn’t sound like baseball.”
“You’ve got to be—”
“I’m kidding.” I giggle. “Everyone, if you didn’t know, Drake is more than just a handsome face.” And amazing body. “He also had a Hall of Fame-worthy career as a tight end with the Illinois Legends.”
He lifts a brow. “You know that I was a tight end?”
I’m not sure if it’s his question or the way he asks it that catches me off guard. But it’s clear I knew that, and I’m not about to admit that I went home from The Swill and looked him up—mainly for pictures. This doesn’t seem like the time or place for that.
I clear my throat. “Let’s take a call from the audience. Francine, do you have one for us?” Drake pins me to my seat with his stare as I read the words on my computer screen. I ignore him, refusing to make eye contact. “We have Hannah from Chattanooga on the line. Hey, Hannah.”
“Hey, Gianna! I’m so excited to talk to you. I call in here every single week and finally got through.”
“Welcome to the show.”
“Hi, Hannah,” Drake says, oozing with charm. “Thanks for calling in.”
She squeals. “Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe I’m talking to Gianna and Drake. My boyfriend is a huge fan of yours, and he’s going to die when he finds out that I talked to you today.”
Drake chuckles. “I really like the excitement over here. I usually get guys wanting to fight it out over statistics.”
“I’m happy to make a cameo on your show,” I say, wiggling my eyebrows. “We could do my version of fantasy football.”
He can’t keep a straight face. “Not happening.”
“Hannah, what do you need to know?” I ask, laughing at Drake.
“So my question is personal, obviously,” she says.
“But how do you deal with fear in a relationship? Like, my boyfriend is great, and we’re in love for sure.
But I know that his parents—who have always been super nice to me—expect him to marry someone in another tax bracket, let’s say.
If we continue to date, they’re going to pressure him to leave me, and I don’t think there’s anything that I can do to overcome that. ”
Ouch. “Well, my first reaction is to say fuck them.”
Hannah laughs, but it’s tight. Her apprehension is palpable. I want to go on one of my little rants, but I wait so Drake can hop in because once I get started, I can’t stop.
“Wow,” Drake says, running a hand down his chiseled face. “That’s rough. I’m sorry that you’re going through this. It must be hard.”
“It is,” she says. “I don’t know what to do. Do I keep going and hope for the best, or end it now and save myself more memories to cry about later?”
Drake’s gaze meets mine. The ferocity in them could scorch the earth, but the tenderness alongside it would soothe the burn. The intensity steals my breath, and a lump settles in the base of my throat.
His jaw, dusted with a day’s worth of stubble, flexes, and it might just be the sexiest thing I’ve ever witnessed. A man annoyed by the treatment of a stranger? Watching his protective instincts kick in just inches from me?
Take me now.
“Do you want to go first?” I ask him.
He nods. “I have two sisters, Hannah. If one of them came to me with this situation, I’d suggest they talk with their guy about his intentions.
Make sure they were on the same page. Because the one thing we can’t do is read people’s minds, and there’s no way to know if he feels the same pressure or what kind of future he sees with you without asking him directly.
” His brows pull together. “Have you had a conversation like that with him?”
She sighs. “Kind of. He’s acknowledged that I’m not too far off base with my suspicions about his parents, but he sort of dances around it.
I mean, I know he loves me. We’ve been together a year and a half.
But, even if he says he wants to marry me, can that marriage survive?
Or am I just being too dramatic about all of this, which is what he usually thinks is happening? ”
“If a man tells you that you’re being too dramatic—red flag,” I say.
“He’s deflecting. Some call it gaslighting.
The issue at hand here isn’t how big your feelings are, but why you’re feeling them in the first place.
The fact that he doesn’t want to acknowledge and work through that is a huge problem for me. ”