Chapter 8
Landon
Once I know that Rori isn’t going to be at the shoot tomorrow, I feel weirdly unsettled, which catches me by surprise. I want to be around her. See more of her. We barely had a chance to talk during the shoot. And the thought of saying goodbye in that moment—it sucks.
When have I ever had this kind of response to a woman?
Never. Never, is the answer.
As I make my way to the dressing room, I try to tamp down my reaction.
Shake it off, I say to myself.
And then I remember her smoking body in that tight athletic gear, her gasp when I couldn’t help getting hard looking at her pretty green eyes, the soft touch of her hands against mine. And I tell myself something different.
“Fuck it.”
I whip out my phone, and before I can think too hard, I text her:
LANDON: Will you get dinner with me tonight?
There’s a sixty second pause after I hit ‘send.’ It feels like sixty hours.
Finally, her response comes in:
RORI: Yes.
I stand, paralyzed for a few beats, having not been confident that she would even answer. But then I realize I better get a plan in motion.
After putting a heart emoji on her response, I text back: “8PM?”
Immediately, I start to debate how to handle this logistically. We are here for a campaign shoot together, so if some photos or video at a restaurant emerge, we can play it off as colleagues having dinner after a long day on set.
And I fully expect that within hours, if not minutes, people would be sharing videos of Rori and me out together on social media.
Not necessarily a bad thing if we can provide a business-based explanation because of the photo shoot, but I want Rori to walk into that potential media storm with eyes wide open.
I send Rori a message: “Do you want to keep this private? We could say we are colleagues grabbing a bite after a photo shoot to stop any gossip that may kickstart with photos at a restaurant.”
“Private, please,” comes the response from Rori quickly.
I message Grace next: “I need you.”
Four hours later, I’m ready for our night. I’ve showered, shaved, and gotten dressed, wearing light gray cotton pants and a white short-sleeve button-down that is made of thin material, perfect for the warm weather.
Ready for anything. If the feeling of my blood pumping extra hard is any indication, a night with Rori has my adrenaline going in high gear.
Hey, we’ve had a one-night stand, we know what each other looks like naked, hanging out shouldn’t be a big deal, I try to tell myself. Except my body doesn’t believe that.
With twenty minutes to spare, I walk out of my hotel room to a private car that’s waiting to take me a few blocks to our meeting spot. Grace has somehow gotten us a private dining space on the top of Rori’s hotel—ocean views and all.
Once there, a hotel assistant manager whisks me through a private elevator to the rooftop space. No one appears to notice me or take a picture during the entire trip.
“Thank you, Grace,” I say inside my head, relieved that I can honor Rori’s request for privacy.
Looking around, the setup for the dinner is incredible.
The open night sky is dotted by a few twinkling stars, as well as city lights popping through from the buildings, boats, and streets.
As I look over the balcony at the ground level, my eyes skirt past the marina to the Atlantic Ocean, a few of the islands off Miami also in view.
The smell in the air is a mix of the water and flowers, and the sounds are a combination of faraway ocean waves and light city noise.
For our dinner, there’s only one small dining table in the entire space, with two formal plate settings, divided by a short flower centerpiece.
The whole vibe is intimate and romantic, which makes me have two thoughts.
One, I hope Rori doesn’t freak out about all of this, because while I’ve been hopeful something may happen again tonight, this setup feels very “relationship-ish.”
Two, I’ve never done something like this with a woman before in my life.
I look down at my phone to avoid any deeper consideration of these two thoughts, and the time reads 7:57 PM. I decide to text Rori so she knows I’m here, and she gives my text a thumbs up.
“Mr. Battle, I’m your server for the evening, Ashley. Can I get you anything to drink to start?”
I turn around to follow the sound of the voice, and a blond server looks at me expectantly.
“Thank you, Ashley. Yes, I’ll take an IPA.” She nods and moves towards a staff door.
Soon I’ll stop drinking any alcohol as my more serious training starts for the new season. My personal regimen will kick up a notch in about six weeks, and then I’ll stick to healthy foods and beverages for months.
“Here you go, Mr. Battle,” the server says as she returns and hands me the beer.
As I take it and start to thank her, a “ding” goes off at the elevator bank where I’d been brought up to the roof. The elevator door opens, and the same assistant manager who had helped me get here walks out.
“This way, Ms. Reilly,” I hear her say.
Rori appears in my view next. I swallow deeply as I take her in.
She’s wearing an emerald green sundress with two bows holding it up, one on each shoulder.
The bows jump to my attention because her hair is pulled back in a loose braid, with a few curly tendrils around her face.
Her dress is form-fitting on top—showing off both her muscles and her curves—while the skirt swings as she steps towards me.
I glance up at her face, glowing in the light illuminating from the rooftop deck’s lamps. She doesn’t seem to have much makeup on, her skin its natural golden tone, and her lips a soft pink, with just a layer of shine.
It’s her eyes that I can’t turn away from as I catch her gaze. Their green hue is made even more vivid with the color of her dress, and her lashes frame them so perfectly that it’s hard to look anywhere else.
I cannot help but to stare as she approaches.
“Hi, Landon,” she says, her expression bright.
“Hi, you look beautiful.”
She flushes a little at my greeting, then gestures down her dress. “I hope I’m not too dressed up. I didn’t bring much with me.”
“The dress is great, but I was talking about something else,” I say, grinning back at her.
She smiles a little bigger and then surveys the rooftop setup, eyes stopping for a beat on the table, but then looking further along to the ocean and sky scenes.
“Oh wow,” she exclaims. “This is quite gorgeous.”
“It is,” I agree.
Shit, I’m a little unsure how to drive the conversation tonight. Since I’d discovered girls as a teenager, my “hang out” time with women has been focused on flirty talk and working towards hooking up.
And yeah, I’m game to do that with Rori, but it feels like it isn’t enough to rely on the old Landon charm offensive in the same way with her. For one, she’s a fellow professional athlete and potentially a colleague in more settings than the photo shoot today.
And two, I’m starting to acknowledge how much I want her to like me. Me, Landon, as a person. Not the football star, the one-night stand, the body.
So I go in a different direction with my next comment, also not wanting her to think this seductive scene is a setup.
“I know this is a little intense for a casual dinner,” I explain. “But the hotel staff said it was the best spot for absolute privacy.”
“That’s great, I get it. It’s breathtaking,” Rori responds to me with a soft smile.
Okay, no freaking out about the setting for dinner happening on her end. Excellent.
“What do you want to drink, Ms. Reilly?” Ashley asks her.
“Sparkling water for me,” she answers back.
“Should we sit down?” I ask Rori, taking a step closer to her. She nods and walks with me to the table, where I pull out her chair as she sits down.
“Such a gentleman,” she teases.
“Rarely,” I say with a laugh, sitting down on my side.
“This is still so crazy to me, being able to have dinner on a hotel rooftop with all this beauty and luxury. Growing up, all I knew was the grind, working on my game, and school,” she explains.
“At the academy, it was your basic Florida new development, so no glamorous lifestyle there. Even with traveling now on the tour, the focus is all about getting through practice, matches, press. There isn’t a lot of downtime to take advantage of the awesome places we visit. ”
“I can imagine,” I reply, taking a sip of my drink.
“So what did you think of the shoot today?”
Well, I didn’t mind seeing her in those little spandex outfits, but I don’t think I’ll answer her question that way.
“I had fun. It’s always interesting to navigate the poses they want, but par for the course on an apparel shoot like that,” I respond.
“Yeah, I’m sure they’ll make the pictures look classy, but that was definitely a different experience for me,” she says. “I’m used to working out in skimpy clothes but not with two dozen people and cameras around.”
I chuckle. “Give it a year and you won’t even think twice about those types of shoots, you’ll have so many booked.”
Her face wears a flash of disbelief at my words, and then she looks at me with an amused look in her eye. “I’m glad it was with you. It would’ve been crazy to do some of that with a stranger.”
Her words inspire the memory of our bodies touching in all the places earlier today. Yeah, I’m glad it was me too.
The server comes over and leaves Rori’s drink. She takes a sip, and then her eyes look up at me after she sets the glass down.
“Thanks for making this dinner happen. I mean, keeping it private.”
I nod and let out a burst of honesty. “I couldn’t stand the thought of saying goodbye at the photo shoot so abruptly. We barely had a real conversation.”
Her face reacts with a small widening of her eyes, but then she evens out her expression, looking like she is trying to find her words. “I….I understand. This whole day has been a whirlwind since I learned we were doing the shoot together. Landon, I…”
She pauses, but shortly after keeps going with her own wave of truth telling.
“I was nervous that you’d be upset at me for not responding to your text. I’m really glad that you didn’t take it that way. It wasn’t that I didn’t respond because I had a bad time that night.”
She takes another sip of her sparkling water.
Her green eyes then lock with mine, and she shares, with a subtle swallow, “I didn’t respond to your messages because it was so good,” her voice dipping to a whisper on the last two words.