Chapter 12 #2
I checked on Callum and the dog, my two main concerns for the evening.
Both of them appeared to be fine so I also checked on the food, which had almost disappeared.
Thankfully, the poultry thermometer I’d used had been wrong and the turkey had been thoroughly cooked by the time I took it out, and one of the guys had grown up on a farm and had no problem with carving it in a very expert way.
The platter was nearly bare now, and no one was acting uncomfortable and like they were going to be sick.
That had happened at one of Damian’s parties when some bad drugs had gone around.
Millie had pushed everyone outside to try to make it seem as if they all had just happened to pass out on his lawn, like it was an amazing coincidence and not that they had been inside as a group, doing illegal stuff there.
I walked over to where Callum was talking to another of the rookies, one of the back-up tight ends. “I could. I definitely could,” the other guy was saying.
“No.” Callum shook his head. “Sorry, Mario, no.”
“Yeah,” the tight end argued. He pulled Demitrious over. “Dem, you know that I could block like a lineman.”
Demitrious started laughing, which signaled his opinion. He tried to speak but only laughed harder.
Callum put his arm around me and I leaned against him as I listened. “I couldn’t do your job, either,” he told the tight end. “Want to race? You’d see.”
“I knock down guys all the time,” he argued. “I can go one-on-one against any defender and I could block you.”
Demitrious started laughing again. “Let’s go see,” he suggested.
I spoke up. “No! No, you could injure him,” I said to Callum. “You can’t hurt a guy on your own team.”
That didn’t help to calm the situation but everyone was mostly laughing as we went out to the small, grassy area in the middle of our group of condos.
Lights streamed from most of the windows where other people were celebrating the holiday with their families, so we could see enough.
One of the women ran down to her car, where she kept a football in the trunk.
“Blocking isn’t just running into people like an animal,” Callum said.
“Bison,” Anara murmured. She had put Maverick on a leash and he sat at her side.
“We work as a unit, always thinking, always trying to stay ahead of the defense. We’re planning angles, we’re moving together, and yeah, we’re stopping them.”
“Show me instead,” I said. I really didn’t want him to hurt Mario, the mouthy tight end.
He smiled at me. “Ok, let’s do it.”
“He’ll kill her!” I heard Jenae shrill out, but I didn’t have any fear.
“Ready?” Demetrious called. Maverick barked but Anara immediately quieted him.
“This is a base block, just one-on-one, player versus player. It’s the foundation of the offensive line,” Callum told me. “Are you ready?”
“No,” I said, and he laughed.
“Down!” Demitrious yelled, and I got into position.
“Hey!” Callum suddenly boomed. “Watch your eyes.” He had said that to the person standing behind me, a punt returner, and he pointed at him. Had that guy been staring at my butt?
“Set!” Demitrious told us. I looked at the man across from me and thought about facing him for real when he was suited up. I almost did get scared and—
“Hut!”
He lunged up and before I had even reacted, he picked me up and took off running. “Hey!” I also yelled. “Give me a chance to fight you.”
“No,” he said, laughing. “You’re mine. This is how you start, with the basics. You learn the foundational crap and you build up strong from there.”
“You knocked me off my foundation, like an earthquake,” I complained. But he only laughed harder and circled around to return to our guests.
“I’m really shocked by this violence,” Jenae said loudly, but no one seemed to care.
Anara even let Maverick romp around a little as we played more football, except for Jenae and her boyfriend.
They left, which meant they missed the dessert that Tori and Zion had brought, two huge pies that were delicious.
“I ate too much,” I said later that night, as I sat in our chair. I felt exhausted, even though it wasn’t very late. “I ate so much that I don’t know if I can walk around to clean up.”
“We don’t have much to do, just the dishes,” Callum said.
He was filling every inch of space in the dishwasher with those.
“And probably, we should vacuum. And scrub down the bathroom, and wipe the counters, clean the oven…yeah, there’s a lot to do.
” He jammed in the final plate and hit the start button, and I was happy to hear the appliance going. “We can do that tomorrow.”
“I don’t have work,” I agreed. It was Saturday but Beau hadn’t scheduled anything for us because he was off skiing somewhere with his friend, the one who owned the private plane that I’d seen before in his social media.
“I have work but I can jump in when I get home. Did you have fun?” He nudged me a little with his knee and I got up so we could both fit. There was room if I sat on his lap, which I did.
“I had a great time, except when I got tackled.”
He laughed. “If I had tackled you—”
“I would have ended up in the condo behind me. Speaking of things behind me, what was happening there?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“You told the punt return guy to stop looking at something. Was it at me?”
“Yeah, it was. He was ogling your ass and I didn’t like it. He stopped when I pointed that out.”
“I’m sorry.”
He moved me over so he could look into my eyes. “About what?”
“I didn’t mean to stick my butt in his face,” I explained. “It wasn’t on purpose.”
“I know that. He should have been sorry for staring but maybe he didn’t learn about manners. Maybe someone should teach him,” he said.
“No, not you.”
He paused and sighed. “Ok, not me. Don’t worry about him, though.”
I wasn’t. I was worried about fitting into a bridesmaid dress, and then I realized that I hadn’t told him about it. “Anara asked me to be in her wedding!” I exclaimed.
“Is that good?”
“That’s great. I’m very excited because I’ve never done it before. I never thought I’d be in any wedding at all, not even one for me,” I told him.
“You don’t want that?”
“I never even considered it,” I explained. “Who would I have married, Damian?”
His hold on me tightened. “Hell no.”
“Exactly. I wasn’t in a position to meet someone else. I dated guys in high school but I wasn’t serious about any of them. I wanted them to like me but I didn’t have the time for a real relationship.” I hadn’t been ready for that, anyway.
“Why were you so busy? What were you doing, working?”
“Yes. What about you? Did you have serious relationships? Did you think about getting married?”
The fact that he laughed again gave me the answer, but he explained further.
“In high school, I was too much of an asshole to have a girlfriend and the same was true for a few years afterwards. I mean, there were women…” He trailed off and I didn’t need to know any more about them.
“I dated someone when I was going to the JUCO and working in lumber, but she wasn’t very impressed by any of that.
She didn’t think that I was serious enough. ”
“You were serious about football. Very serious!”
“Yeah, I should give her a call—no, don’t go.
” He would have let me get up if I’d kept trying, but I lay back after the first attempt.
“I was kidding. We weren’t serious, either.
I also didn’t have enough time to give to a relationship.
I still don’t,” he told me. “I look at the family guys on the team and I don’t know how they do it.
Their wives and girlfriends are some kind of superwomen to handle all this crap. ”
“They handle it fine. And if you had a family, you would be around more when the season was over, because it’s not full year. Right?”
I thought that he nodded, although I didn’t pick my head up to see. I did hear what he said next.
“I never pictured myself doing that.”
“You probably didn’t picture yourself being a pro-football player, either, but here you are. You can do anything,” I said.
“Thank you. It means a lot that you think so,” he answered.
I sat quietly, thinking about kids. Maverick was quiet now, too, and I wondered if it would have been safe for him to be near one. Was that a possibility now for me now? Could I do that with my life? I didn’t know, and I needed to be honest about that and about other things, too.
“I wasn’t busy with a real job during high school. I was working, kind of, but I wasn’t getting paid,” I said. “It wasn’t anything that I could have put on my résumé. I was living with my grandma and she and my aunt weren’t well.”
“They were sick? What was wrong?”
“Grandma had long-term health problems, like diabetes and osteoporosis, arthritis, and…there were a lot. Her memory was good, though, right up until she died at the hospital. My aunt, Simone, had other issues. She had been diagnosed with a few different mental health conditions when she was a teenager and she wasn’t able to live on her own.
She didn’t like to take her medications, so it was a lot to deal with and as my grandma got sicker, I was responsible for her care.
It got harder and harder to make it to school because they needed me at home, so I started to miss class all the time.
After my grandma died, I barely made it at all and it was a miracle that I graduated. ”
“Hm.” We were quiet for a little while. “Thanks for telling me,” he said.
Now I nodded, and he could tell because it meant I was kind of nuzzling against his chest. I wanted to tell him more, too.
“She had that dog and I was scared of it, but I was also scared of her. She had a terrible temper and my grandma, her mom, was the only one who was able to calm her down. I sure couldn’t.
She wasn’t any bigger than I was but when someone is out of control, size matters less. ”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. And she passed away, too?”