13. Isak
ISAK
Alocker room ten minutes after a long, hot, muggy Ohio afternoon practice is probably the most naked room in America. Strip clubs got nothin’ on professional football locker rooms.
A few dozen grown men walked around in various stages of toweling off, the showers still going in the back, somebody's speaker playing something with too much bass, Rutherford doing the thing where he narrates his own stretches like a nature documentary.
I had a towel in one hand, drying my nuts and the other hand on my locker while I was thinking about exactly nothing, which after a good practice is the closest thing to heaven I get.
Then the room went quiet in a wave, front to back, the way it does when a coach walks in. Except it wasn't a coach
"There he is."
I knew the voice before I turned around, the way you know a smoke alarm before you're fully awake. I turned around anyway, because the alternative was presenting Tiki Jackson with my bare ass, which I was afraid she’d smack if given the chance.
In one swift move, I wrapped that towel so tight around my waist I was going to have marks in my skin for a week.
Tiki stood in the doorway of the men's locker room — the men's locker room, a room with a sign on it, a room with a clear and federally implied dress code — in head-to-toe pink leather and heels that could core an apple, with the dog purse on her shoulder and three…
three small heads sticking out of it like a hydra that shopped at Nordstrom.
She was not looking at any of the twenty some odd other half-dressed men.
She was looking at me.
"Don't let me interrupt," she said, interrupting, walking in, stilettos clacking on the tile. The room pulled its towels a little tighter as one organism. "I'll only be a minute."
I became extremely aware of the towel. It was a good towel. It was not armor.
"Tiki, this is—" I gestured at the room, the steam, the federally implied dress code. "You can't really be in—"
"What time should I be ready Friday?"
The music cut out. I don't know if somebody turned it off or if I just stopped being able to hear anything except the question, which she had asked at full volume, in front of Coach, who had walked in two seconds earlier with his clipboard and looked around like he was checking to make sure he was in the right place.
"Ready for—" I said.
"Our date." She said it patiently. Fondly. The way you explain a thing to someone slow. "Friday. I was thinking that little place on the river, but you'll handle it. Surprise me."
She reached into the purse and tilted it toward me so all three small heads were visible, the newest one in his Tigers’ Kingman jersey riding highest, like he'd earned the view. "King Manicotti wanted to meet his namesake in person."
The dog blinked at me.
"Say hi, baby boy."
Was she talking to me or the dog?
"We don't—" My voice did a teenager squeak I was not proud of. "There's no Friday. There's no date. Tiki, I never—"
"Eight, then." She was already turning, already done, already a woman who'd gotten what she came for, which was witnesses. A whole offensive team worth of witnesses. "Wear the blue. It photographs."
And she left.
The room stayed quiet for one more full second.
Then Fox, from two lockers down, still dripping, said to the room at large, "I've got Friday-the-date-actually-happens at three-to-one.
Wedding-by-Christmas is paying out at twelve.
" He pointed a finger gun at me, delighted, the worst best friend a man ever had.
"No takesies-backsies, the book is open. "
"Fox."
"The book," Fox said, "is open, Kingman."
I put my head into my locker and groaned.
By Friday I had no less than forty-billion messages from Tiki. All unanswered.
I’d managed to avoid her for a while, but those carefully curated days were now at an end.
Today I’d learned that a small dog makes an actually kind of cute whiny sound when it has decided you are its destiny. King Manicotti, Tiki’s brand new third Chihuahua had been calling for me down the east hallway of the Tigers facility for a full minute, and it was getting closer.
Yip. Yip-yip. Whine, whine. The skitter of toenails on polished concrete. The specific click of a heel that had my name on it.
"I-saaaaak." It was a singsong of my name. Drawn out across more vowels than the two syllables had any business holding. "Where's my QB?"
I did the only sensible thing a starting quarterback and grown man can do when faced with his recently divorced half-sister half-team-owner who was making goo-goo eyes at him and chasing him down with her giant purse full of Perrier-drinking Chihuahuas.
I hid.
The film room was locked. The trainers' suite had Rutherford in it getting his ankle taped, and Rutherford could not keep a secret if you sewed his mouth shut, so that was a no.
The supply closet was an option for exactly half a second before I pictured the headline — KINGMAN FOUND DEAD IN MOP BUCKET — and kept moving.
The door at the end of the hall had a little door plate decoration on it that somebody, probably Clover, had hand crafted. This is a Cheer-o-cracy.
The light was on underneath.
I knocked with two knuckles, the way you do when you're already opening the door, and I was inside before I'd finished the knock.
"Hide me," I said.
Clover looked up from two monitors and a coffee that had gone cold enough to grow a skin. She had a pen behind one ear and a pen in her hand and a third pen she'd forgotten about stuck in her hair.
"What? No," she said.
"Clover. Please. I’ll buy you a year’s supply of weird popcorn."
She rolled her eyes and pointed toward the tin on her desk that was still half full. "I’m good, and I'm working. Get out."
"Yip," said the hallway.
Her eyes went past me to the door, and I saw the second she figured it out, which was that the thing in the hallway was Tiki Jackson and the man in her office was the lesser of two chaos agents.
"Sit down," she said. "And do not touch anything, especially my spreadsheet."
I eyeballed the space under her desk wondering if I could squeeze myself in there.
Clover's office was not large. It was a converted equipment room with one window, one desk, one file cabinet, and approximately one and a half square feet of floor that was not occupied by either furniture or me.
If Tiki opened the door, I could maybe hide behind the door, but she’d probably still see me.
The heel clacking on the floor stopped right outside, and this was do or die.
I dove under her desk and folded down into that one and a half square feet with my knees somewhere near my own ears and my back against cold metal, and I had the brief, clarifying thought that I had won championships in college and thrown for four thousand yards last season and was currently crouching under office furniture to avoid a woman and her yappy little dogs purse.
But then I turned my head and got a full view of Clover’s thighs right in front of my nose and I forgot how to think.
"This is undignified," She said, quietly.
"Shhh."
The door opened without a knock, because Tiki Jackson did not knock. Tiki Jackson arrived.
"Clover, sweetie." The sound of the purse unzipping had me frozen. If she let the dogs out, they would find me. I scooted infinitesimally closer to Clover and her thick thighs. Good god they were just so… lickable.
"Have you seen Isak? Big. Yummy. Quarterback. Possible father of my future children."
"Umm…I don’t think I have, no." She didn’t miss a beat. Even though I was possibly drooling on her. Literally. But it wasn’t like I could move to wipe my mouth. "Have you tried the weight room?"
"He's not in the weight room. I checked there and the locker room." There was a long pause that I did not like the shape of. "Why are you so flushed, sweetie? What have you been doing in this little secluded office all by yourself?"
I stopped breathing.
"I must have just done a good job on my makeup today. I love a good blush, don’t you?" Clover was trying very hard to redirect the conversation.
While I was hiding like the champion of Kingman hide and seek, I was also dying to hear about this supposed flush on her cheeks.
"Does it smell like men’s cologne in here?"
"The entire building smells like men. I must not be able to tell anymore." Not a flicker. Not a half-second of tell. "Those players and their body sprays. Better than stinky football player sweat though."
There was a silence in which I was hoping Tiki was reassessing.
Princess Cheeseburger with her dying car horn groan-bark made her annoyance known, Prince French Fries emitted a low growl, and King Manicotti had definitely caught my scent.
I could tell by the whining. Please, please, please, please don’t let those things out of the bag.
. I don’t want a Manacotti, I’m lactose intolerant. And Vito would probably eat it.
"Mm," said Tiki. "Well. If you see my guy." The purse zipped again. The heels turned. "Tell him his Tiki is looking for him."
The heels clicked away. The yipping receded down the hall like a tiny tornado moving out across the plains to wreak more havoc.
I didn’t move partly because what if Tiki came dashing back just to check that I wasn’t hiding in here, and partly because of the view. I was going to be dreaming about…
Clover slid her chair back and smacked me across the top of my head.
"You can come out now, you perv," Clover said.
I came out. It took a while. Because I was being very careful not to wrench my shoulder, or my elbow, or my eye sockets. But I finally popped up, staying on my knees, folded my arms across the lip of the desk, and propped my chin on my hands.
“You are blushing.” And I loved it. I wanted to see that rosy, pink glow in a lot more places than just her cheeks.
"You had your face between my knees, Kingman. What did you expect?” Her eyes were giving me a challenge, and man, oh, man, was I up for it.