7. Grady
7
GRADY
My second round of PT is much like the first. We’re in the Red’s training facility, which feels odd, but there are people from both teams here, so I roll with it.
Elliot is all business, his thoughts occupied with information I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I never had a mind for learning, but Elliot seems to be the opposite. He hardly ever references his tablet for information, though he’s amassing a shitload of notes about me in there. I’m not sure why I feel annoyed that he’s keeping the notes to himself. They’re about me. Shouldn’t I get to see them?
“That’s enough for today,” he gives me a look that I think is meant to be a smile before turning to his tablet to type out yet another note. “Don’t forget to ice your shoulder and let me know if you have any sudden pinching or excessive fatigue.”
“Yeah, I will.”
“Great,” Elliot shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He looks like he might say something else, but after another noticeable shift, he shakes his head. “See you later.”
He’s out the door before I can even say goodbye. Frustration builds in my chest, and I snatch my sling off the bench harder than necessary. When I turn around, a groan rumbles out of my chest.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Two minutes, max.”
“You’re looking very smug,” I huff, walking past Steal. I know he’s dying to say something, so I don’t bother turning around to see if he’s following me.
Sure enough, I feel him fall into step at my side as we reach the doors. “How’s PT going?”
“Is that really what you want to ask?”
“Not even a little,” he acknowledges one of the Red’s players as we pass him in the hall. “But I was trying to be nice and ease us into that conversation.”
I roll my eyes as I shift the sling around my arm. I’ve gotten pretty good at putting it on over the last four and a half weeks, and I’m able to get it in position and strapped down while we walk. “Don’t hold back on my account.”
“Great, I won’t.” Steal steps in front of me, effectively cutting me off from leaving the training area. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Try again.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It isn’t.”
“Conrad.”
“Matthew,” he mimics my tone, putting both hands on his hips as he stares me down. Steal’s a good six inches shorter than me, but that hasn’t ever stopped him from going toe-to-toe with me or anyone else. I blame his backwoods upbringing for his total lack of survival skills when it comes to a fight, but he claims it’s an advantage.
“It’s just,” I groan, looking around to make sure we’re alone in the hall. “It’s Elliot .”
“I know,” he matches my hushed tone, leaning forward so I can hear him. “That’s why I’m checking on you.”
“He said he wanted to be friends.”
“And how is that going?”
“Well, he just ran away from me. Again,” I huff, gesturing toward the training room we just left. “So, you know. Not great.”
“Did you ever think that maybe Elliot is waiting for you to make a move?”
My eyes go wide at his words and the meaning behind them. “What?”
“Not like that. Get your head out of the gutter,” Steal rolls his eyes, turning to push through the doors to the Visitor Clubhouse. “I mean like having a conversation with him.”
“I start conversations with him all the time.”
“Since you guys talked about being friends?”
I try to think back over the last few days. “Actually, no.”
“Exactly.” Steal gives me a look that tells me I should have realized this on my own. “He went out of his comfort zone to ask you to be friends, and you haven’t tried to talk to him about anything other than your PT since then. You’ve just been waiting for him to make another move, but he’s probably waiting for the same thing from you.”
“Shit.”
“Yup.”
His succinct agreement does nothing to lessen the frustration in my chest. “When did I become such a shitty friend?”
Steal’s laughter is far louder than the situation warrants, and I glare at him until he gets himself under control. “Dude, you are not a shitty friend. I don’t think you could be a bad friend if you tried. The situation with Elliot is just different.”
“It shouldn’t be different, though.”
“But it is.” Steal stops, tugging on my sleeve to keep me from entering the locker room ahead of him. “Stop trying to think of Elliot as a guy who doesn’t like you and start thinking of him like an old friend. Whenever you’re with him, ask yourself what you would do if he weren’t Elliot.”
The idea settles into my mind, and I nod along with what he’s saying. I can do that. I can talk to Elliot like he’s one of the guys.
Except I don’t get a chance to talk to Elliot for the rest of the day. He’s not in the locker room as we prepare for the game. Then I’m in the dugout with everyone, but Elliot isn’t there either. After the game, we all pile into the Clubhouse for the postgame buffet, but I don’t see Elliot anywhere.
It isn’t until we’re getting on the plane to Philadelphia that I catch his dark blond hair disappearing up the stairway. He’s talking to another one of the trainers, a guy I barely know whose name I’m ninety percent sure is Colton. Their conversation looks serious, so I leave them to it while we’re all boarding.
Twenty minutes into the hour-and-a-half-long flight, and everyone is asleep. I get out of my seat, careful not to jostle Steal’s head as I move toward the curtain separating first-class from coach. Elliot is sitting in one of the window seats along the back row, and the spot next to him is empty. I scan the rest of first class, and everyone is accounted for, making me think the seat is up for grabs.
Stepping forward, I plan to say something interesting like, “ Hey, did you know modern airplanes are completely lightning proof? ” Or, you know, maybe something that doesn’t allude to a plane crash while we’re thirty-one thousand feet in the air, but I get distracted by the book in Elliot’s hand.
It’s smaller than most books I’ve read, and the pages have an odd, yellowed quality to them. Elliot turns the page he’s on, and my eye catches on the word “cock”. I lean forward, trying to get a better look because there’s no way that’s actually what I saw. Or maybe it was “cock”, but in the sense of a rooster and not a male appendage.
No, it’s definitely a male appendage, and it is currently in use. The descriptions are generalized, but I know a sex scene when I read one.
“That’s hot,” I drop into the seat next to Elliot, making him jump nearly a foot in the air. He slams the book to his chest, panic flooding his wide green eyes.
“Wh-what?”
“Your book,” I lean forward enough to read the title. “Wow, that cover is straight out of the nineties. What’s it about?”
“It’s just, uh, it’s…what are you doing?”
“Talking to you about your book.”
“Why?”
“Because I read some of it, and now I’m interested in the rest.”
Elliot’s eyes narrow as if he isn’t sure he believes me. I don’t blame him, but I do my best to put his worries at ease by keeping my face as neutral-positive as possible.
“It’s about a woman who gets married off to a Highlander, and she puts on a chastity belt to avoid having sex with him.” He says the sentence so fast that I lose a few words in the middle, but I catch back up at the end.
“Well, that clearly didn’t work.” I nod at the book in his hand, remembering the lines I read. “There were zero chastity belts involved in that .”
Elliot chuckles, pulling the book away from his chest to look at the page he had been reading. “It worked at first, but…you know.”
He trails off, and I wait for him to continue for a moment. I gently nudge him with my elbow when it becomes evident he isn’t going to say anything else. “I don’t know.”
“It’s just…well, it’s a romance novel. They always end up together.”
“Yeah, but isn’t finding out how they end up together half the fun?” Elliot blushes, and I tamp down my immediate desire to run my fingers along the heated skin of his throat. I will not hit on Elliot. He is my friend, just like Steal and Mills. “What got you into reading romance novels?”
He frowns at me. “What’s happening right now?”
“I believe we are two friends talking about their hobbies.”
Something shifts in Elliot’s eyes, and he nods slowly. “I started reading them in college. The, uh…the first time I went to college.”
The way he mumbles the second part tells me it’s a touchy subject, so I try to avoid it. “Did someone recommend them to you?”
“No, I just kind of found them on my own. I was,” he stops mid sentence, his teeth closing on his lower lip for a moment before he continues. “Ellie was my only real friend in college, and she was in a different program than me, so I hardly saw her. I spent a lot of time hiding in the library, and one day, I stumbled upon a shelf with a bunch of these books on it.”
He holds up the tiny book, shaking it gently back and forth. “Books this size are called mass market paperbacks, and they were the primary way that romance novels were printed throughout history. At one point, most paperback books were printed like this, but only a few genres took off in this size through the years. Romance novels did so well because they had these covers,” he points to the dark-haired man in a kilt holding up a woman who appears to be mid-swoon. “They were attention-grabbing, and that’s a major step toward getting people to buy books. The fact that the sexy covers matched the equally sexy words inside only served to drive sales.”
“You know a lot about this, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he rubs a hand against his neck, letting out a self-deprecating chuckle. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I asked, and I’m genuinely interested. Are romance novels still printed like this?”
“Some are, but publishing follows trends like anything else. A lot of modern novels are printed in a larger size, even the ones with shirtless dudes on the covers. That particular fashion never really fades, though there has been an uptick in ‘discreet’ covers over the last few years.”
“What do you prefer?”
“I’m a sucker for the clinch covers.”
At my questioning look, he taps the book in his hand. “Got it,” I smile, shifting to face him more. The fact that I can shift in this seat at all is a relief. I seriously hate sitting in coach. “Do you ever read the other books? The modern ones?”
“Oh, all the time. I mostly read those on my eReader, though.”
Elliot smiles at the blank look I’m giving him, leaning forward to pull something out of the bag under the seat in front of him. He hands the little black rectangle to me, turning the screen on so I can see it’s a digital book.
“This is cool,” I nod to the eReader, swiping my thumb back and forth along the screen. I make sure to end on the page the book was open to when he handed it to me. “I think I would read more if I had something like that.”
“You can get the app on your phone,” Elliot says, taking the device back from me and dropping it and the book he had been reading into his bag. Something about the fact that he puts both of them away sends a warm feeling through my chest. “You could start reading that way, and if you enjoy it and you end up getting an eReader, all your books would sync over to it.”
“Really?” I immediately pull out my phone, unlock it and click on the app center. “What’s it called?”
Elliot walks me through downloading the app and even helps me find a few books. He tries to get me to tell him what I’m interested in, but I want to read the books he’s read.
“That way, we can talk about them.” I try to sound nonchalant when I say it, but I think I’ve missed the mark based on the way Elliot is looking at me.
“Yeah, okay,” he clears his throat, taking the phone from my hand and searching for a few titles. “There are going to be things that aren’t to your taste or possibly even trigger you in these books. If something doesn’t feel right, stop reading. I won’t be upset if you don’t like the books I like, okay?”
“Okay.” I nod, trying to really listen to what he’s saying. I have no idea what he means by triggers outside of the traditional sense of the word. I make a mental note to google it in case it means something different when it comes to romance novels.
By the time he finishes downloading a few books to my phone over the airplane’s slow-as-shit Wi-Fi, the pilot is calling for everyone to prepare for landing. I take my phone back, giving Elliot a grateful smile.
“Hey, I was thinking,” he stops me when I’m halfway out of the seat, and I quickly sit back down, turning my full attention toward him. “Maybe we could grab food or something in Philly.”
I’m so surprised by the offer that I don’t say anything at first. After five solid seconds without a response, Elliot’s eyes flood with panic, and he quickly fills the silence between us. “I mean, if you want to. You don’t have to, obviously. I just thought we have a lot of downtime while the guys are doing all their pre-game stuff since I’m only here to do your PT, and you’re clearly not playing…shit, I didn’t mean it like that. I know you would rather be playing. I just thought, since you can’t, since you aren’t, you might want to, or not. You’re fine. This is fine. I’m just?—”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah, I’d like to grab some food with you.” When Elliot continues to watch me wearily, I force myself to add, “I can’t think of a better way to kill time than having a meal with my friend.”
The words feel wrong in my mouth, but they manage to put Elliot at ease. The tension immediately drops from his shoulders, and he nods a few times. “Great. Okay, then, I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Sounds good,” I smile reassuringly at him before standing up to go back to my seat. “Thanks for hanging out with me.”
“Thanks for listening to me info-dump about books.” Elliot’s soft laugh follows me back to my seat, and I can’t seem to wipe the smile from my face.
“What are you grinning about?” Steal’s voice is rough from his nap, and I turn to see him rubbing sleep from his eyes.
I shrug, looking down at the little library of books Elliot put on my phone. “I made a move.”