“One, two, three…Go Eagles!” we all yelled at the top of our lungs.
***
It was really distracting having someone I cared about in the stands. Not that I didn’t care about Tanner. He came to all my games, which was really nice of him. But I didn’t care about him the same way I cared about Penny.
Mason and Rob teased me about having a crush on her. So much so that I knew Penny had worried about it before. She’d even confronted me about it. But I’d told her they were idiots. And that the two of us were just friends. It was mostly true. I fantasized about her. But I knew it was just a patch on a wound. I didn’t love her. I didn’t love anyone. My friends refused to drop it though. They just kept on teasing me. And James’ teasing felt a lot more like threats. He’d made it clear several times that Penny was off-limits. It was probably why I kept thinking about her. I always wanted what I couldn’t have.
Although in this case, maybe I could have Penny. Because I could feel her staring at me. And it made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
I turned around to look at her. But instead of Penny staring at me, there was another woman’s gaze pointed at me. She looked vaguely familiar. But I couldn’t place her.
A smile crossed her face and she lifted her hand and waved to me.
Fuck.I swallowed hard. I remembered. Specifically, I remembered that hand around my cock a few months ago. We’d met at some bar. We’d fucked at a nearby hotel. And I’d left in the middle of the night like I always did. No exchanged numbers. No promise of ever speaking again. I always bounced while they were sleeping. To avoid an awkward next morning. To avoid ever seeing them again. Yet…here she was.
I immediately turned back to the field. Jesus, was she stalking me? I tried to discreetly look back over my shoulder. She wasstill staring and smiling. She waved again. And a little farther up in the stands, Penny was deep in conversation with Tanner.
Now I had some one-night stand hereandTanner talking to Penny. Could this night get any worse?
I watched as Jefferson’s extra point sailed way to the right, nearly crashing through a window of a nearby skyrise. It bounced off the brick wall and then knocked into one of the floodlights.
Damn it.
He came running off the field.
“Good try, Jefferson.” I put my fist out for him to bump and he awkwardly shook it.This poor kid.“Did it hit your laces again?”
He looked down at his cleats and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I tried to make contact with my instep like you said. Did it look like I hit my laces instead?”
I honestly wasn’t sure. Because I was too busy thinking about what Tanner was saying to Penny. And whether or not I had a stalker situation I needed to deal with.
“We’ll keep working on it next week.” I tried to give him an encouraging smile.
“Have you tried a cookie yet?” he asked.
“Oh. No. Let me try one.”
I took a bite. “This is great.” I finally got to tell him something positive and truly mean it. His cookies were delicious. Which was good, because if they were as bad as his kicking, I’d for sure get food poisoning.
The rest of the game was painfully slow. Tanner and Penny had not stopped talking for a second. And to make matters worse, Scarlett was sound asleep on her lap. Which meant Tanner was probably grilling Penny about her sex life or inviting her to his sex club or something else wildly inappropriate.
Empire High won by two touchdowns, but only by twelve points, thanks to missed PATs by Jefferson.
As the team came off the field celebrating, I gestured toward the cookies. “Great game, guys. To celebrate the win, Jefferson brought us all a treat. Go Eagles!”
“If only he could kick a field goal,” someone said under their breath.
I didn’t see who said it or I would have called them out. “It’s a team win. We celebrate as a team.”
“Jefferson sucks,” added someone else through a fake cough.
The whole team laughed.
“We’re celebrating our team win together right now,” I said more firmly.
Smith rolled his eyes at me. And not in a cute way like Penny did. But in a disrespectful way.
“Everyone eat a damn cookie or I’ll have you running sprints until Monday morning!” I wasn’t sure what made me snap. Maybe it was the frustration of not being able to help Jefferson fit in. That I just kept making it worse somehow. Or maybe it was the stress of who was in the stands. I didn’t know. But I did know what it was like to be on the team. They’d all be going to a house party tonight. Drinks. Drugs. They didn’t want cookies. I’d basically set Jefferson up for failure.
