by LJ Evans
“When am I going to get to rename you?” I asked, because Ginny hadn’t had a boyfriend in a really long time. Long enough for mutterings to start behind her back about whether she was eventually going to come out of the closet. Ginny and I may not have been as close as we once were, but I was pretty damn sure I’d know if she was gay.
“About the same time you decide to turn in your bachelor card,” she teased.
But I didn’t smile back. I’d already turned in my bachelor card, happily, three years ago, to Maleena. But she’d shoved it back into my hand and run. Ginny took in my quiet nonresponse with wide eyes.
“Oh my God, I feel so bad for whomever she is.” She rolled her eyes. “Is it someone we know?”
“Not anymore,” I said, turning my back on her. “I’ll be right back, just need to run out to my car.”
I left her sputtering a nonresponse in order to put the notebook under the driver’s seat of my Roardrunner. I was determined to read it through, hoping it would help me find a way to be the man Maleena and the whole damned world seemed to want me to be.
Maleena
MERRY CHRISTMAS, DARLING
“But I can dream and in my dreams
I'm Christmasing with you.”
Performed by Carpenters
Written by Pooler / Carpenter
Dad, Mom, and Bess were laughing in the living room. They were waiting for me to come back from getting the glass of water I’d said I needed. But really, I just needed time. Time to ignore the phone call, the message, and the text that had followed. Like I’d ignored the ten others that had come before those.
“Did you forget where the glasses were or something?” Dad hollered at me, and I opened a cabinet to shake myself out of my funk.
We were playing a card game Bess normally played with her friends when they came over, but Dad had said he wanted to try it in a vain effort to connect with my little sister. The game was about werewolves and vampires, because Bess, having found an old copy of Mom’s Twilight Saga books, had recently become a huge fan of all things paranormal. Like, vintage Buffy, the Vampire Slayer shows. I loved teasing her about it, but in truth, she had a way more diverse set of interests than I’d ever had at sixteen.
I’d had one interest: football. I’d followed Dad around like he was a rock star from the time I could toddle. I’d carried his notebooks, watched all the game tapes, and majored in football in college. That was the joke, anyway. I wasn’t really majoring in football, but I was still around the locker room and Dad’s office more than anywhere else on campus.
Because I loved football. Loved the beauty of it when it all came together if the team was truly acting like a team. If they set aside their egos, their hang-ups, and their fears, and just trusted each other.
Football was my only love.
At least, it had been until Ty Waters entered my world.
“Maleena, should we skip you?” Bess hollered.
But I was stuck in the memory of meeting Ty for the first time in Dad’s office the summer before Ty’s freshman year. His eyes hadn’t left mine from the moment I’d walked in, even after Dad had said something shitty to him because of it. Ty had only looked away once I’d turned back to Dad with my heart pounding out a rhythm I’d never heard it play before. Dad had dismissed him, and Ty had left, but not before glancing my way one more time.
As an unofficial part of Dad’s team, I’d just started managing the playbook for him as I was getting ready to start my sophomore year. That day, Dad and I had made a couple of adjustments to it before I’d left the office. I’d just gotten to the lockers when I heard the starting quarterback, Maddox, talking smack about me. He was talking about my boobs, and my hips, and what he wanted to do with them—me. He’d stopped talking at the same time the lockers rattled with a huge bang, as if something, or someone, had hit them hard. I looked around the corner to find Ty with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, holding Maddox up against the metal with an arm pressed against his throat. “Watch your goddamn mouth,” Ty had said before storming off.
I’d stood there frozen for a few moments. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard similar things from any of Dad’s players. Nor would it be the last. And yet, regardless of how much they talked about wanting me, none of them had ever had the balls to ask me out. Not until Ty.
I looked down at my phone again. Please talk to me was his last text visible on my lock screen. He was relentless. It was what made him good at football and a pain in the ass to break up with. Because Ty didn’t want to break up. He wanted to announce to the world that I was his.
I hated that term. I wasn’t a package to be bought and owned. I had my own plans. I had no desire to coach football. To be one of those famous women who broke into male-dominated ranks. But I did have every desire to be on a recruitment team. To be part of the management assessing, cutting, and offering positions to players. I’d already interviewed with the Tennessee Titans’ head office. As soon as I graduated this spring, I had a job waiting for me there. I’d be the low man—or woman—on the totem pole, but the position was mine.
“Maleena!” Mom hollered.
“I’m coming,” I said.
Unfortunately, my phone let out a few notes of “We Are the Champions” just as I got back into the living room. I quickly silenced it, switching it to vibrate. But Dad knew. He knew Ty’s ringtone as well as my own.
“Ty?” Dad said, eyeballing me and the phone as I slid it into the pocket of my Vols football sweatshirt.
I nodded.
“He coming here for New Year’s?” Mom asked, referring to the annual party we had for Dad’s players if they didn’t make it to a bowl game. We’d done it for as long as I could remember. Dad figured it kept his team out of trouble.
“No. His dad and a bunch of their family and friends are turning fifty next year, so they’re doing this crazy, surprise birthday-slash-New-Year’s-Eve thing.”
“Are you going there, then?” Mom asked.
“Why would I go?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Did you two break up?” Bess asked, and I wanted to kill her. I’d never told her I was dating Ty. She had caught us in the coat closet at the end-of-the-season party last year, kissing like there was no tomorrow.
Because that was the thing about Ty and me. We were like fire and ice. We were fire when we touched, making it impossible not to keep on touching until we’d lost our clothes and our senses altogether. But we were ice when we were apart. Not only because of the secret we were trying to hide, but because he could be an egotistical asshole, and I could be a stubborn bitch.
And now…now he’d gone too far.
“Ty and I never dated,” I said, picking up the cards I’d been dealt.
Big fat lie. He’d wormed his way into my cold heart before he’d even asked me out by defending me in the locker room. He’d wormed his way farther into my heart when I’d watched him play. Ty had hands of gold. He spotted openings on the field, could read the ebb and flow of the players in a millisecond, and had stats no one on this planet had expected. He was a god of football. And I was all about football.
Didn’t hurt that he was also drop-dead gorgeous. Dark, wavy hair. Eyes that changed colors with his mood and his clothes. Dimpled smile. Attitude. So much of it. So, when he’d asked me out, I hadn’t even hesitated to say yes on the condition no one could know. He’d accepted.
Dad snorted.
“What was that for?” I asked, eyeballing him over my cards.
“Just because you didn’t want me to know, didn’t mean I couldn’t see what was going on. Besides, Murray and Kelly spilled the beans ages ago.”
That rankled my nerves. Ty’s teammates, Murray and Kelly, didn’t know shit for a fact. I’d heard the mumbled rumors about Ty and me as well as anyone. But, other than Bess, no one had actually caught us.
Dad winked at me, but that just flamed my already irritated mood into full-on nasty.
“Murray and Kelly are two of the stupidest players on your team. You really going to take anything they say as the truth?”
“Let’s just play,” Mom said, because she could feel my tension even if Dad was purposely ignoring it.
Dad put his cards down and crossed his arms across his chest in a manner that only reminded me more of Ty. “Maleena, I may be your father, I may be as old as a tin can, and I may have my head up football’s ass ninety-nine percent of the time, but even I can see the way the two of you make goo-goo eyes at each other.”
“Goo-goo eyes?” I snapped back.
He laughed.
I didn’t know who I was more pissed at: Ty, Dad, or myself. Ty for trying to change our terms, Dad for making fun of me, and myself for being in this stupid mess to begin with. And because I was angry, the words slipped out before I could stop them. “Well, I guess you don’t see everything, because he’s leaving you. He’s joining the draft.”
As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I saw the hurt flit across his face as he registered my words, and I knew it would hurt Ty, too. He’d wanted to tell my dad in person. He knew my dad had put his heart and soul into him, and now he was abandoning ship. He cared about my dad as much as my dad cared about him.
“He’s what?” Dad’s growl was barely contained.
I looked down at the cards and then threw them on the table. “He’s declaring.”
Part of me couldn’t blame Ty. Not only had our defensive line sucked this year, but our offensive line was all seniors, and the crew coming up behind them weren’t that hot. Ty was worried his stats would take a hit that would impact his draft spot if next season was as shitty as we both suspected it would be. Dropping out of college now and declaring he was entering the pro football draft was a smart play even if it was life-changing for all of us.
“I knew he was invited. He’s been invited every year,” Dad said with a sigh. “He’s really considering it?”
I didn’t have to answer.
Dad’s cards joined mine on the table, and he went to the liquor cabinet. He poured himself a drink, downed it, and then poured another. “You think there’s any chance I can convince him to stay?”
I shook my head.
“Any chance you can convince him to stay?” Dad asked.
“Me? No.”
“But you could…you know…use your feminine wiles on him.”
“Walter!” Mom exclaimed.
“I’m not saying to have sex with him, Carla. Maleena is the only one who’s ever been able to talk sense into him. He’s like a rock nailed to a mountain.”
Bess busted out laughing, throwing herself back on the couch and holding her stomach. I tried to frown at her, but her giggles were too much for me.
“This is your fault.” I reached over, smiling, and tickled her until she was crying and turning blue.
♫ ♫ ♫
The next morning, when I went downstairs, Dad had a bowl with brownies and milk in it. I smirked because he could only do it because Mom was still sleeping. Since his heart attack, five years ago, she kept his food clean and healthy.
“Don’t tell,” he whispered.
“Your secret is safe with me—unlike some secrets.”
“If you had wanted to keep you and Ty a secret, you shouldn’t have been seen together so often.”
“We’re friends.”
“I’m married and in my fifties, I’m not dead. I know how these things work. Doesn’t mean I want to think about it. You. Him.” Dad shuddered. “Not things I want anyone to think about my daughter. But you’re a grown-ass woman. I get that.”
Which was a really nice thing to say in some ways. Mom hated when he cussed around me, but I’d been in and out of the locker room with him my whole life. I’d seen boy body parts before I’d even known the names for all of them. Dad had treated me…not quite like a son, but not quite like a daughter. Some strange mix of in-between.
I poured coffee from the pot my dad insisted on using because he drank the stuff by the gallon, before grabbing a piece of pumpkin bread and sitting next to him at the table.
“If he doesn’t come back, my whole offense is doomed on top of our shitty defense. I’ll be royally screwed. Could mean my job in addition to Edgars’.”
Dad had done his best to shield Coach Edgars in the last couple of years. He’d tried to help him with the defensive line, but Edgars was old-school. He hadn’t changed with the times, and the UTK board had demanded his head after the season’s glorious losses.
“The board loves you,” I said. “They aren’t going to let you go.”
“If I lose my entire offense and defense in one go…” He trailed off, putting down the spoon and looking out the window.
“They’ll give you a chance to prove yourself with a new team,” I said, but a piece of me started to panic. The thought of Dad losing his job had never even entered my brain when Ty had talked about leaving.
“You have more faith in them than I do,” Dad said, pushing away his bowl of brownie, half-uneaten. He pulled at the collar on his Vols polo shirt. “I’m too old for this―”
“No, you’re not. You’re good at this.”
“High compliment from my skeptical daughter,” he said with a grimace.
Dad looked more tired than I’d seen him in a really long time. Like, suddenly, the years he’d been holding off for a century had caught up to him. Some black hole of time had coalesced into this moment, hitting him like a stone marker.
“I shouldn’t have said anything about it. Ty may still change his mind. He was going to tell his family over break. Maybe they’ll talk him out of it.”
“He’s as stubborn as you are. If he’s got it in his head that this is what he wants, I doubt his family is going to change it.”
The few bites of pumpkin bread I’d taken turned into sludge in my stomach. I didn’t want Dad to lose his job because of one arrogant asshole. The asshole who needed to brush the chip off his shoulder and take one for the team.
I knew what I had to do. I also knew what it meant for me. Because if I did it, I’d get sucked back into the vortex that was Ty Waters. But staring at my dad’s face, dejected and tired, I couldn’t not do it. I had to at least try.
“I think I might head out to Ty’s after all,” I told him after a minute.
Dad’s whole face lit up. “Really?”
I nodded.
“You’d do that for me?”
“I’m not having sex with him to win him over, Dad. Jeez. Most dads are telling their daughters not to have sex, and here you are, all, ‘Let him use your body if it gets him to come back,’” I teased.
“I do not want you to barter your body for an agreement! But if you can kiss him into insanity and then get him to agree? I’m all for that.”
I laughed.
I wasn’t anywhere near ready to see Ty again. I hadn’t put up enough guardrails. I hadn’t built up my playbook. And the thing about Ty was, he’d know it. He could read me as easily as he could read the field, which just meant I was his touchdown waiting to happen.
Ty
IT’S FINALLY CHRISTMAS
“There's mistletoe,
Don't you know,
That I'm gonna kiss you.”
Performed by 33 Miles
Written by Lockwood / Cartee / Stoddard
I woke to someone pounding on my bedroom door. It wasn’t Ginny because she would have just stormed in, and even if she was home, Eliza avoided my room like the plague. Mom never ventured this way since the one time she’d come in when I was thirteen and had found me mid-stroke. She’d turned a thousand shades of red and green at the same time and ran.
Dad might knock, but I was pretty sure he was already in the studio. He, Uncle Lonnie, and Mayson had been working hard on the new album. It meant they were up before the ass-crack of dawn and were still awake long after midnight. Dad’s focus, when he was working on an album, was all one-way. It
never seemed to bother Mom. It had never really bothered any of us, because we had enough grandparents, siblings, and cousins crawling around all the time if we needed someone’s attention.
My eyes drifted closed again. They were gritty with a lack of sleep. I’d finally coasted off somewhere in the wee hours with Aunt Cam’s notebook still on my chest. While I felt slightly guilty about reading it, it had been calling for me to pick it back up. It was full of words she’d basically written to Uncle Jake. For him. Through it, I’d gotten a good sense of him. He’d definitely been more Southern knight than I ever could stand to be. He’d been her protector. Her left arm. Her world.
It made me think a lot about Stephen and Khiley. How they’d been each other’s whole worlds since before they could talk.
The pounding on my door repeated.
“What?!” I yelled out, not bothering to move.
When the doorknob started to turn, I yelled, “I didn’t say to come in.”
The sun glared behind the person entering, but even cast in shadows, I knew who it was. The sun had turned her blonde hair into a glorious halo. Like the halo around the Madonna in all those paintings in Art 101. Maleena was a blonde-haired comet with eyes the color of golden stars, especially when she was eyeballing me—whether that eyeballing occurred while we were taking our clothes off or while fuming at me because I’d ticked her off.
As soon as it registered who it was, I wanted to jump up and haul her beautiful curves up against mine. I wanted to devour her lips until they were battered and bruised as punishment for ghosting me. But as she came farther into the room, I knew I didn’t dare.
She was full of fire and brimstone. Anger in her eyes that I knew she wanted to work out on me. Work out with me. That made me smile. My lazy smile, which just caused those eyes of hers to ignite more.
“You’re even a jerk to your family, I see,” she said.
“Close the door and get your ass over here,” I growled.
She did close the door, but she didn’t join me on the bed. Instead, she went to the desk chair. She sat in it, eyeing me as if I’d done something more than be my normal, arrogant self. Like I’d hurt her best friend or cheated on her, which I’d never do.