26. Just Getting Started
JUST GETTING STARTED
“ T his is crazy,” Emma said almost two months later. “I mean the stadium isn’t even half full and the electricity is... Through. The. Roof.”
Warren smiled when he looked at his girlfriend of over four months.
Mike had been on his case to make a public announcement, but he’d been holding back. After today’s opening game though, he might not have much of a choice and it’d be best to get it out of the way.
“I’ll never tire of this feeling,” he said. “It’s hard to explain it, but there is this air of electricity, as you said.”
“It could be all the testosterone,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. Her head resembled a pendulum on a grandfather clock. Even talking to him now, she was doing it.
He wouldn’t be jealous.
He got the girl.
“Maybe,” he said, pulling her close under his arm. Word had gotten out he had a girlfriend and there was a lot of speculation and eyes on them.
The fact she was here on the field talking to him during warmups said more than she was just his girlfriend.
Maybe if he could get the words out of his head that he loved her, he wouldn’t feel so unsure of things and make it public knowledge.
“Roark is so jealous,” she said.
“He could have come to the game,” he said. “There are plenty of seats in the box.”
He’d paid for a private box for Emma and his mother and sisters for the game. It was something he’d done before so that his family could be comfortable for games regardless of the teams he’d played for.
Last year, he never had time to do it because he’d been out for the games they would have been able to come to. He understood them not wanting to attend a game where he was on the sidelines.
“I told him that,” she said. “But he’s got a big case this week and said he needed to be ready for it.”
“As long as you’re willing to come to more games, I’ll do it again,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have to pay for these seats all the time,” she said. “That’s nuts.”
“It’s not a big deal,” he said. It’s not as if he didn’t have the money and he didn’t spend it on a lot. Having his girlfriend watching him and knowing she was close by was more than worth it.
Especially knowing she’d be going home with him.
In the past two months, she came to see him four times. He hadn’t been able to do the same to her on the island.
Once training camp started, he had a few weeks of that, then preseason and traveling, obligations to the press. Life was just getting started.
If Emma hadn’t been so willing to come here for him, he wasn’t sure he’d feel as if he was ready to let the world know.
But she did, every other weekend for a few nights. She even flew over once and they made arrangements for the helicopter to drop her at the stadium.
That raised a lot of eyebrows for those remaining there after practice one day, then her getting picked back up the same way.
She shrugged it off and no one said a word to him about it. They probably figured he’d paid for it and not the other way around.
“If you say so,” she said. “Because Roark would love it.”
“Along with your father,” he said.
“He would too,” she said. Her hand went to the pass hanging on her neck with her picture on it. She’d take it off when they got in the box, but for now, she needed it.
“How are you doing, Emma?”
She turned her head to see Mike standing there. “I’m well,” she said. “This is great.”
“We are glad you are enjoying it. Did Warren tell you we’d like to make a statement soon?”
He watched her squint at his publicist. “He did,” she said. “But he needs to focus on the game today and bringing that up isn’t a good idea, don’t you think?”
Mike laughed and slapped Warren on the arm. “He also should get out there and start warming up with his team, and yet he’s over here with you.”
Which was a subtle dig. Warren turned to see several of the coaches’ eyes on them. He didn’t appreciate the remark that he wasn’t putting the team first when he always did.
“Go,” she said. “Mike won’t let me get lost.”
“Nope,” Mike said. “We can come over here and watch or I can escort Emma to her seats.”
His mother and sister would be there soon, as they were coming later.
Emma and his sisters had a great time last night at his house laughing and telling stories.
Stories of her childhood and his.
They were nothing alike yet she brought humor to it all.
She made his sisters feel like they were close and could confide in each other for their first time meeting.
There was this air about her that never came off as snotty or stuck up. That could be why he was so drawn to her when she was pretending to be a bartender over four months ago.
“She can wait,” Warren said. “Then go up when the game starts.”
He leaned down to kiss her. He knew she was going to be taking some notes and it’d be better for her to get this view.
He found it funny that she wanted to write a story about a football player. Not a quarterback, he said. There was no way he was going to worry he’d be compared to a hero in her book.
It was already hard enough to live up to the status the public put him on, let alone where his girlfriend’s mind went when she thought of him.
He ran out to the field and joined his teammates doing stretches and warmup exercises.
If his eyes went back to Emma a few times, he couldn’t be blamed. He was concerned that she might feel out of place.
He wasn’t sure why though, as she fit into every situation perfectly.
He should have realized that for a woman who had no problem jumping into a job she’d never done before to just learn how to do it so it came across as more authentic in her books.
Even in the past two months, she’d said she’d spent time with her cousin’s girlfriend who was a pharmacist to get an idea of how the job was done.
Then she did another ride along in a police car. When she told him she’d sat in a jail cell for four hours, he’d thought it was a joke.
It wasn’t. It just made him laugh at the lengths she’d go to for her readers to know she was giving it one hundred percent.
Maybe he was a little jealous he didn’t always feel she did the same in their relationship.
Then he had to get out of his head because she was coming to him now.
He shouldn’t expect her to do it every weekend. Hell, he wasn’t even around on the weekends now and anyone else he could be dating would have a job during the week.
It proved she was putting in the effort since she had come to him so much.
“You’ve got a little cutie over there,” Gus said. Gus Vanderroyal was one of his receivers. Been on the team for years but didn’t play the full game. He was getting toward the end of his career too and the two of them seemed to talk more than he did with other players.
“She is that,” he said.
Other players made more derogatory comments about Emma being hot or smoking once they noticed her.
Gus saw what he did.
Emma was in baggy jeans that fit her well at the waist and hips but then fell loosely to the red canvas sneakers on her feet. She was wearing his number on a fitted Patriots T-shirt. She always looked comfortable to him but stylish at the same time.
The girl next door.
“Not that I know much about her, but she at least looks like the type of woman that Caroline would get along with.”
Caroline was Gus’s college sweetheart. They’d been married for ten years and had two kids.
“I bet they would get along,” he said.
“Caroline hates talking to half the other WAGs,” Gus said, smirking.
He laughed. “Emma hasn’t met any yet.”
“She will today,” Gus said. “Did you prepare her?”
“She can handle anything,” he said confidently.
He looked over and met her eyes. She lifted her hand and waved at him excitedly and held her phone up. When others were taking pictures, texting, and scrolling through social media, he knew his girlfriend was taking notes on his career.