He kept trying to tell himself that this whole shit show was a blessing in disguise. He’d been really psyched to be pursued by some of the top universities in the country, but all the time he was deciding and accepting all those gifts, a voice inside him had been repeating, “But do you love playing?” And the truth was he did. But he didn’t know if it was something he wanted to spend his adult life doing. He loved the accolades and the attention. He loved making his mom proud and feeling important, but suiting up and getting on the field were only a means to an end for him. All he’d ever wanted was to get out of Henderson and start providing for his mom. Get a proper degree from a proper school, so he could get a decent job after his football career was done.
And he always knew it would be done. Whether he busted a shoulder like Thomas Tyler, took a bad tackle like Dante Love, or was just plain dropped from the team, he didn’t care, as long as he had the degree to get a job afterward.
But the final whistle had already blown on that whole fantasy. A football scholarship was out, and there was no way he would get one based just on his grades, no matter how much he studied. And since his dad had left them, he and his mom had been turned down by the bank over and over.
How many times had he watched his mother try to bargain with a debt collector for another month to find the money? Call the bank and beg for a loan to hold them over? Too many. He wasn’t going to have her go through that again—especially not for him. Not for school. His family didn’t need more debt.
No loan, no scholarship. Just a job. And playing football again, just to feel normal again. It should be enough, but it wasn’t. The ease he’d felt while catching the ball with Avery brought back so many memories of the comfort and pleasure he’d always taken from football. It should be simpler than this. There had to be something he could do. Something to help him see a future that he couldn’t even visualize. His head pounded with the effort.
He tried to calm down and pay attention to the screen, but boy had he picked the wrong movie to relax to. He clenched his fists as the Ewoks appeared on the screen. How did a bunch of teddy bears beat the most elite team of Stormtroopers? And if they could beat them, why only choose that moment to do it? Why not while the Stormtroopers were building their base? And who the hell builds another Death Star with exactly the same fatal flaw? And when it explodes, how does it not cover Endor in debris and kill everyone with your basic Armageddon fallout?
Swear to God, if he found out this was Avery’s favorite Star Wars movie, he would never, ever speak to her again.
Football be damned.
…
Avery had to tell Lucas where to meet her by stuffing a folded-up note in the vent in his locker. She really had to ask him for his cell phone number, or maybe he should have asked for hers by now.
She’d stayed up way past her regular bedtime, carefully writing out flashcards for Lucas. Every index card had one of her dad’s favorite plays on it. The top twenty anyway, plus the last-ditch Hail Mary that they rarely used but that Lucas definitely needed to know.
So she grabbed her dad’s car from the school parking lot while he was in his third-Thursday-of-every-month faculty meeting and headed out to the Sonic by the mall.
It wasn’t until she pulled into the parking lot that she remembered that she’d heard her ex-boyfriend, Blaine, had just been hired there. She hoped he wasn’t on shift. She grimaced to herself at the thought of bumping into him.
Okay. She’d just wait in the parking lot—
Damn.
Blaine was working behind the counter, and just as she tried to duck away, he looked up and saw her. Well, crap. She couldn’t not go in now. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. With his ego, he was sure to think she was there for him. Not in a million years.
They’d dated comfortably for nine months, and then he’d said he “wanted to take their relationship to the next level.”
Avery had been ready for it. She knew what it meant and that, after dating someone for so long, it was the natural thing to do. So they’d had sex. Afterward, he said that it had been “okay.” Music to a girl’s ears. And then the following evening, he’d dumped her by text, saying she was “vanilla.” She’d been devastated, but it had slipped into insignificance with what had come after. First Blaine, then her mother, and now a year later the feeling that her family’s hard fought-for normalcy could slip away.
Taking one last look over her shoulder to see if Lucas was in sight, she went in, pasting a fake smile on her face.
Seriously? There was no one in the whole place except Mrs. Diaz, who was a Thursday regular.
“Hello, Mrs. Diaz,” she said brightly, ignoring Blaine for as long as she could.
“Well, what a surprise,” she said, looking up from her hot dog. “Are you two an item again?” She beamed at Blaine. “I always thought you two looked—”
“No. No, we’re not,” Avery said quickly. “We’re still just friends.” She’d never told anyone—except Lexi—how Blaine had stomped on her heart and left it for dead. So the town still thought Blaine was a great guy and that they’d just grown apart.
The truth was slightly different, but she was so over it now. Why, why had she suggested Sonic to meet Lucas?
She ordered a lemonade from a grinning Blaine and sat at a table toward the back. Please don’t let Blaine think I’m here to see him. Please let Lucas arrive soon. Please let Lucas have actually seen my locker note.
Avery dug her flashcards out from her bag and levered off the plastic lid to her lemonade so she could stir the icy pebbles in her drink.
She looked up when Mrs. Diaz got up to leave, and to her horror, Blaine was walking toward her, wiping his hands on a napkin and smiling.
Oh God, he does think I’m here to see him.
She looked down blankly. What should I say, what should I say?
As if by magic, the door to the restaurant popped open, and Lucas appeared. He spotted her immediately—of course it wasn’t hard with Avery being the only customer there—and he smiled as he held the door open for Mrs. Diaz to leave.
“I’ll be with you in just a second,” Blaine said, holding his finger up toward Lucas but keeping his eyes on her.
“Er, okay?” Lucas replied.
At his voice, Blaine looked at him and dropped his finger. Then he looked at Avery again, and Lucas’s trajectory toward her and not the counter, and he hesitated.
Lucas stopped in his tracks, as did Blaine.
Chapter Eleven
For a second, it felt like a standoff. A million thoughts went through Lucas’s head. Did Avery have a boyfriend? And if so, was this him? Should Lucas introduce himself? Why did Avery look so surprised to see him? He did have the correct day, right? Or was she surprised to see the other guy?
Wait, did Avery really have a boyfriend?
A weight settled on his chest as he looked between them.
No wait, the dude was wearing a Sonic uniform, and he was clearly about the same age, so obviously he went to the same high school—it being the only one in the county.
“How ya’ doin’?” Lucas said to the guy, moving past him to Avery’s table. As soon as he pulled the plastic seat back to sit down, the guy went back to the counter. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure what had just happened.
“Did I just interrupt…?” He pointed between the guy and Avery.
“Oh God, no,” she said, her gaze firmly set on her straw circling in her drink.
Lucas looked back at the guy, who was now cleaning the counter, sneaking looks at Lucas and Avery. “Well, there’s obviously a story there,” he said, unwilling to wonder why he was pressing her instead of ignoring the weird situation he’d walked into.
She sighed and sat back in her chair. “He’s my ex. Blaine.”
Relief pumped through him. His muscles relaxed, surprising him, as he hadn’t realized that he was
tense. Ex-boyfriend was okay. More than okay. “Really?” he said slowly, turning back to take a good look at the guy. This was the kind of guy she liked? Tall, blond, lean, and clean cut. Something pinged inside him when he realized he couldn’t really be more opposite to Blaine in every way. Except being tall. Lucas was dark, a bit scruffy—at least that’s what his mom had always said—and not so wiry.
“Stop looking,” she hissed at him.
Lucas spun around, unable to help himself grinning at her. “Why is he your ex?” Why are you interested, dude? Ha! You know why.
“He dumped me,” she said with a blank, slightly accusatory look on her face. “Happy now?”
Oh shit. Had Blaine-or-whatever-his-name-was hurt her? He’d like to freaking… What? Hit him? What’s wrong with you? Drop the subject. Drop the damn subject.
“Are you sure he hasn’t changed his mind? The look on his face when I came in was something, I tell ya.” He couldn’t help but look back at him again. What was wrong with the guy that he’d dumped her?
“Oh my God, can you just stop? We’re here to talk about football,” she said, pushing a set of cards over to him.
The fact that he was torn between switching to football and finding out why Avery’s relationship had broken up surprised him. He obviously waited too long thinking about her and Blaine, because as his hand grabbed for the cards, she was already pulling them away. His hand landed on hers, and he froze.
So did she.
Her hand was warm under his, and although by any measure of normality both of them should have snatched their hands away, neither of them did. They just stared at each other, basically holding hands.
Should he take his hand away first or just enjoy touching her for as long…
She pulled her hand away but left the cards in place. He cleared his throat and pretended nothing had just happened.
“What are these?” He pulled them to him and flipped them over.
“Dad’s playbook. The plays that Colin calls the most. I thought it would be easier for you to remember them if you used flashcards,” she said, her gaze now fixed on the cards in his hand.
There were about twenty cards. On one side was the name of the play, and on the other was the diagram of the play. All the plays were named after towns. Jacksonville, Clarksville, Austin, Amarillo. She had marked his position with a red cross on the diagram. No shit, this was going to help a lot. Like a whole lot.
“This is amazing. Thank you.” He didn’t know what else to say. When he’d asked for her help, he’d figured she would tell him the kind of thing her father liked, how to get on his good side, but this was far above and beyond. He’d have no trouble learning these before the game tomorrow. “What made you think of doing this?” he asked, holding the cards up.
There was a strange beat of silence before she replied. “My mom made me SAT vocab flashcards—okay she made like, some SAT flashcards. She, er…she didn’t get further than ‘e,’ but my dad reminded me about them yesterday. That’s all.”
“You took your SATs?” he asked, not really knowing how to talk to her about her mom.
“No. Later this year,” she said. “Anyway, do you want to go through them now for a few minutes?” She looked at her planner and punched a button on her phone then corrected herself. “Seven minutes?”
He really wanted to talk to her about how she planned her time. Was that why she and blondy had broken up? Because she scheduled time with him right down to the last second and then bailed to go do something else? “Sure,” he said. “That would be great.”
She picked up the cards and fanned them in her hand and picked one. “This is the Hail Mary. Jacksonville Five. I can’t remember the last time it was called. It’s only used when we’re up against the clock and tied, but it’s probably the first one you should learn.” She flipped the card over, and his eyes boggled at the complicated play. It was like a draw play. A fake-out throw down the field and a hand pass to the running back, who then threw it tight down the line to the receiver while Colin got sacked. It was a sacrifice move.
“Yeah, you see why you need to learn this first. If you”—she looked around and dropped her voice to a whisper—“fuck it up when Colin’s taken a hit like that, you will never hear the end of it. Probably never play again.”
She was right. Colin was agile; he could run and scramble and still keep his eye on where the ball was supposed to go. Linebackers probably spent the game gagging to rush a QB like that. If Colin gave them the opportunity to, they were going to take it, leaving the running back wide open to take a good few seconds to throw the ball without anyone around to intercept. He gave a low whistle. “Yeah, got it.” He memorized his position. “Jacksonville Five. Got it.”
She showed him Austin Eight next and then Williamsburg Ten. With each one he learned, he actually felt as if he were becoming more a part of the team. He looked up at her and just watched as she talked through every play, sometimes animated, sometimes joking, enjoying how the different tones showed on her face. She was telling him the times the play had gone wrong and why and how they’d fixed it for the next time. All he could concentrate on was her mouth. The more she talked, the more he wanted to be pressing her against a wall, kissing the hell out of her.
“You’re not listening to me, are you?”
It was a second before he realized that she’d stopped talking him through the cards. “Of course I am.” He scrambled. “I was just wondering how hard LeVonn hits the defense? Hard enough to stay down or so I still have to keep an eye on them?”
She paused, and frustration flashed across her face. She knew his mind had drifted and was pissed that he could pull a legit question out of thin air. Frankly, it was the first impressive thing he’d done since he’d arrived in Hillside. Maybe he hadn’t lost all his mojo.
She leaned over the table and squinted her eyes slowly at him. “You’re lucky. I would have been out of here so fast…” She sat back up. “But you don’t get up when LeVonn tackles you,” she said with a half smile as if she knew something about LeVonn’s strength.
He grabbed the cards and read through them fast, appreciating the time and effort they must’ve taken. “How can I thank you for this?” But even as he said the words, he had an idea how he could thank her. It would take some time and some studying—maybe a trip to the library—but he was prepared to put the work in.
She put her hands over his and the cards. His blood rushed through him, and for a second, all he could hear was it pumping in his ears. Was she going to ask him out? Maybe. He’d be saying yes, whatever she asked.
“Play well, and win for…the Hammers,” she said, squeezing his hands briefly before removing them.
Damn. Was she going to say “win for me?” Because he was all over that.
“I will or die trying,” he replied, suddenly serious. He’d study those cards until he couldn’t see straight. Whatever it took to prove himself worthy of her time.
Suddenly her eyes widened, and she pressed a button on her phone. “Oh my God, it’s nearly seven.” She grabbed her planner and pulled it toward her.
He tried to see what was written in it. Was he in there?
She flipped a page frantically. “Oh my God, I lost track of time. I’m late for dinner, and I left Dad deserted at school with no car. I was supposed to have the car back by six p.m.” She jumped up, grabbing her bag with one hand and sticking the planner under her arm, and took three strides toward the door before she turned around. “Oh. Good luck tomorrow.”
Good luck?
Oh. Shit.
Tomorrow was game day.
Chapter Twelve
Friday night had always been everything to him. Every second of every other day in the week led to Friday night. Every sit-up, every sprint, every tire he ran through, every pull-up, every breath, every protein drink, every morsel of food led to Friday night.
&nbs
p; But this week had been different. This Friday night, he was petrified.
The heavy clunk of the floodlights switching on, the chatter and laughter of the people filling the stands, the flashing ads surrounding the football field, all the things that used to psych him up were now psyching him out.
Colin sat next to him on the bench. “Hey, bud, whatcha doin’?”
“Just soaking it all in,” he lied.
“Soaking it all in or crapping your pants?” he asked, stretching his legs in front of him and rotating his ankles.
“I’m multitasking, man. I can do both at the same time.” Lucas took a deep breath and blew out a puff of visible, cold air. He hated Texas winters. Sweating your balls off during the day and freezing them off at night.
“You’re our first transfer in three years, you know that?”
No, he hadn’t, but it didn’t surprise him. Good players transferred out of schools like this and transferred into schools like the one he’d left in disgrace. “Really?” He stared at the numbers flashing up on the scoreboard. Someone was obviously punching all the numbers to make sure all the lights worked, and the crowd was screaming and cheering every time the score for the home team was higher than the visiting team.
If he were on top of his game, he’d be reveling in the crowd excitement. But now he just wanted to hide.
“No one expects too much from you, okay? No one’s expecting you to be great or flashy. Just be solid. And be good to my fucking balls, okay?” Colin’s gentle tone took the sting out of the order.
“I will do my best,” he said. After a pause, he added, “You didn’t actually sound those words out first, did you? I mean, you do know how that sounded out loud, right?”
Colin looked out at the field and held his toes to stretch his hamstrings. “Yeah, pretty much as soon as I said it.”
“You know I’m going to put ‘be good to my fucking balls’ on a T-shirt and make you wear it when I take your weak-ass ball and score a touchdown, right?”
The Love Playbook Page 7