Chapter 6
Notes
Gasp! I didn’t make you wait longer than a week for this update!
I also haven’t had any massive trauma this week.
The boyfriend and I are getting along. The new position is slowing down to where I think I can handle it.
My landlord fixed the plumbing issue I was having in my tub.
Which, you know, not actually something I’d mentioned before.
Milo
“Another beer!” Liam called out, slamming his empty bottle down on the sticky table of the dive bar the team had invaded after our victory against the Portland Bears.
When we’d gotten there, the place had been empty.
There’d just been three bartenders watching SEN highlights and two old men chatting in the corner over a pitcher.
Now, it was filled to the brim with Scorpions players, all eager to celebrate our first victory of the season.
Would it have been a better celebration if we were in Tucson?
Sure. We wouldn’t have had to pay for our own drinks, and we’d have fans celebrating with us.
We’d also be at the team’s favorite bar, one that always had good music and a dance floor and game day drink specials named after plays and players.
It was fun going to a bar and ordering a Milo Tobitt.
This bar was not like that. It had sticky tables and stickier floors, neon signs on the wall—half of which didn’t actually light up—and old televisions playing SEN highlights.
The music was quiet and I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard a song that had come out in the past decade.
But the vibes were high and the team was celebrating.
It had been a good game. Our first victory of the season had been a definitive one, not one that the SEN broadcasters could call a fluke or a stroke of luck like they would have if we’d won by a field goal or a score in the final moments.
Don’t get me wrong, those victories were the most exciting, but after the season we’d been having so far?
We needed a solid victory, an undisputed one.
We’d gotten it, keeping the lead the whole game and winning by seventeen points.
“Think it’s your turn,” Jonesy shouted, nudging me out of my thoughts.
His boyfriend was looking between me and his bottle of beer. I grinned and slid off the high seat I’d claimed when we’d come into the bar. “Same again?” I asked them.
Liam nodded, but Jonesy asked for a different beer.
I wasn’t surprised by that. He had a habit of trying a different beer every round when we went to a new bar, especially if they had local brews.
He had the same habit of trying to find new restaurants and interesting food no matter where we traveled.
How he managed to do that and stick to the nutritionist’s diet plan for him was beyond me, but then, I wasn’t a foodie like him.
I wandered over to the bar and wedged in between two offensive linemen.
While I waited for the bartender to come over, I chatted with them about their kids.
They both had sons around the same time three years ago, and the boys were constantly together.
They were their own little parenting group, and sometimes, I felt kind of jealous of it.
Until they started talking about the gross things their kids were doing—like the time one of their sons thought earthworms were gummy worms and ate three of them—and that cleared right up.
Maybe kids weren’t for me.
I still loved hearing about theirs and chasing them around when they’d come to team practices.
The bartender came over and I ordered our beers. A few minutes later, I was back at the table, half-listening to Liam and Jonesy talk about the restaurant they’d tried the night before. The other half of my attention was across the room.
Rowan was sitting at a table alone, looking down at his phone and sipping on some dark liquid in a glass.
He was the only person sitting alone in the entire bar.
I knew he talked to our teammates, but I didn’t think he’d found any close friends yet.
All of his close friends were in Fayetteville.
I hated seeing him look so isolated, especially when he’d been part of the reason the Bears running back hadn’t been able to make any of his signature breakaway runs.
Whatever Jonesy had said to him and whatever we’d practiced the other day had clearly worked, but he wasn’t celebrating with the team. He was there, but he wasn’t celebrating.
No one else was pulling him into the celebrations, so it looked like it was going to be down to me. I knew I’d earned my Captain’s badge for a reason, and a good part of the reason was the fact that I was friendly and good for the vibes. It was time to prove it.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told Jonesy and Liam as I once again slid from my seat. I made it half a step before turning back with a grin. “Maybe. Probably. Depends on if I can drag him back over here.”
“Him? Him who?” Liam questioned, head swiveling around comically.
“Rangecroft,” I answered before skipping off, weaving through tables of my teammates.
I had only one destination in mind, and it was Rowan’s table.
I could feel Liam and Jonesy watching me the whole short walk, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t like seeing him sitting alone. I didn’t like knowing that he wasn’t involved, and if no one else was going to drag him into the bosom of team activity, then I would.
After all, he’d chosen to come out to the bar with everyone.
I slid into one of the empty seats at his table and reached over to pluck the phone from his hands, hitting the side button to darken the screen without looking at whatever he’d been focusing on.
“What the fuck?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me as he reached for his phone.
“We are here to celebrate,” I reminded him, “not play on our phones.” I looked down at the darkened device in my hand. “Wait, you weren’t doing anything important were you?” I really needed to learn to curb my impulsive nature.
He looked down at his phone and extended his hand toward me, palm up. I sighed and rested the phone on it. I expected him to turn it back on, but he didn’t. He slipped it into his pocket. “No. I was just playing some stupid game.”
He was playing a game? Why? We were at a bar celebrating our first victory of the season, and instead of joining in, he was playing a game on his phone. It was a very good thing that I’d come over to rescue him, because that simply would not do.
“You should come sit with me, Liam, and Jonesy,” I told him, motioning toward the table where Liam and Jonesy were sitting, very obviously staring at me.
What the heck was that about? The moment I made eye contact, they waved.
Maybe they were just trying to be friendly and make it clear to Rowan that he was invited.
“It doesn’t look very celebratory if our newest teammate is sitting over here all by his lonesome. ”
Rowan looked over at the table and then back at me before shrugging. “Guess I haven’t been very social, have I?”
“Nope,” I declared. “You’ve been too busy playing on your phone.
C’mon. Or you don’t have to, I guess, but I’ll probably just hang out over here instead, and there won’t be anyone to distract me, so you’ll have to bear the entire brunt of me talking your ear off.
” I offered him what I hoped was a charming smile.
It seemed to work because he grabbed his drink and stood up. “Okay, let’s go. I’ll be social.”
Rowan followed me to the other table. Before long, Liam and Jonesy had him roped into conversation.
Other team members came by our table. Most of them just came by for a quick chat, but enough pulled up seats to stay awhile that soon, Rowan’s seat was scooted as close to mine as was humanly possible.
His leg pressed against mine under the table, and I found it hard to focus on the conversations around me.
Luckily, I doubted anything important was going to be said around a sticky table at a dive bar in Portland.
Drinks flowed, and I began to lose track of the number of drinks I’d had.
Especially as his leg stayed pressed to mine.
I was painfully aware of him. I caught a whiff of his body wash when he’d shift—the standard hotel body wash I refused to use.
There was another scent mixed with it, something that reminded me of leather and wood and somehow blended with the generic hotel soap.
I kept stealing glances at him, and when I did, I’d lose my train of thought.
I noticed little details about him, a habit I’d somehow started after he’d landed on top of me in our solo practice the other day.
Things like the way the five o’clock shadow on his jaw made his face look more angular and the way that, in the dim bar lighting, his eyes looked almost brown.
In our practice, I’d noticed flecks of gold and green in them.
I also noticed the way his long fingers wrapped fully around the thick glass he’d been sipping from most of the night.
Clearly, I was buzzed. Drunk, maybe.
I kept noticing things about him as the crowd of my teammates started to thin.
Liam and Jonesy left. The offensive linemen I’d talked to at the bar left.
Rowan and I were among the last to leave, and even then, it was only because Rowan pointed out the time.
I didn’t really want to leave. The drinks Rowan had consumed loosened his tongue, and even with other people around us, I was reminded of the way he’d talked the day I’d gotten locked out of my apartment.
I liked getting to know him.
The Portland air was biting as we stepped outside, a far cry from the heat of Tucson. I wrapped my arms around myself and wished I’d had the foresight to grab a jacket. That was always on the list of items I forgot to pack for trips, especially in the fall.
“You okay?” Rowan asked as we started down the sidewalk back to the hotel.
“Bit chilly,” I confessed, “but it’s what, only a ten-minute walk? I’ll be fine.”