Kiss Me Tonight: Put A Ring On It

by Luis, Maria

  That tremble tells a whole other story, one I’m not privy to learning.

  Because you shut her out like an asshole.

  Because you have no idea how to interact with people once the helmet’s off and your jersey is strung up.

  “What do you give a damn about?” The question is nothing more than a whisper, so low I need to strain my ears to hear every word.

  I avert my gaze. Keep my emotions in check and do my best to remember that if this woman was married to Rick Clarke, then what she knows about me can fit in the same box as the rest of society’s impression of Dominic DaSilva:

  Charming yet cynical. An unfeeling asshole.

  But still the greatest tight end the NFL has ever seen.

  If I were to die tomorrow, that’d be what’s written on my tombstone.

  In my eulogy.

  In the goddamn newspapers.

  “Nothing,” I answer after a moment, already feeling the weight of Levi’s disappointment in me as I head for the door, “You were right. I don’t give a damn about anything.”

  9

  Celebrity Tea Presents:

  Ex-NFL Player Dominic DaSilva—Fired from Sports 24/7, Recap of One-on-One Date with Savannah Rose, and More Juicy Details

  Dear Reader, America’s favorite playboy contestant has been . . . FIRED. You read that right. According to the Sports 24/7 website (and some expert sleuthing skills from yours truly), Dominic DaSilva is out of a job.

  Is his untimely departure from the network due to the scandal that went down on last night’s episode of Put A Ring On It? Probably not, due to the time lapse between filming and the airing of the show, but let’s go over the details anyway, shall we?

  Last night, millions of viewers tuned in to watch as DaSilva romanced Savannah Rose in—appropriate, I suppose, given our bachelorette’s name—Savannah, Georgia. We’re talking a swoony carriage ride along East Bay Street, a picnic for two at the famous Forsyth Park, and a candlelit dinner at the always-a-must Olde Pink House. Romance bloomed in the air, and DaSilva sealed the date with a kiss that even turned me on . . . and we all know my soul is colder than the Arctic in the dead of summer.

  Meanwhile, mayhem broke out back at the bachelor compound.

  Richard Thompson (age 35, an investment broker out of NYC) claimed that DaSilva was not on the show for “the right reasons.” (For whatever that’s worth coming from a man who showed up on the first night wearing a dinosaur onesie).

  Not only did Thompson effectively throw DaSilva under the bus to his castmates while the latter was out on his date, he then went behind the producers’ backs to sneak out of the compound before heading to Savannah’s private apartments. In his words to America’s favorite sweetheart, I quote: “You made a big mistake giving DaSilva a ring tonight. He’s not here for you. He’s only here for himself and his own fame.”

  What followed next are insane shenanigans involving flying fists, one man crying in a dinosaur onesie, and a visit from the show’s medical team. All of which was an absolute joy to witness.

  My favorite quote from the night comes from fellow castmate Joshua Hardman: “If DaSilva isn’t here for the right reasons, then I’m the president of the United States.”

  Thanks to footage leaked earlier this winter, we’re all well aware that DaSilva is one of the last two men standing on the show. We also know that Savannah Rose turned him down.

  Is this troubled moment with Thompson the catalyst that began the end of DaSilva’s reign as top dog of the season? Does it somehow correlate to DaSilva’s abrupt termination on his long-time sports show?

  As of right now, hearsay is all we have, but I’ll be back next week.

  Another episode. More grown men crying about their broken hearts. And all the spilled tea you could ever need.

  You’re welcome.

  10

  Aspen

  The whistle blows, and Bobby sprints forward, shoulders hunched, as he snatches the two-by-four foam pad out of Topher’s grasp.

  Tweet!

  Bobby takes my son’s place, and the next kid comes barreling forward to repeat the drill all over again.

  Tweet!

  And again.

  I let the whistle fall to my chest. “Guys, you need to explode from the hips and thighs! You want to end up with stress fractures in your back down the road because you took the easy way out?” I point to the second three-pound memory foam pad down by my feet. “Three pounds versus picking up Coach DaSilva. See the difference?” As one, they all check out the other side of the field where the man in question is running a different set of drills with Group B. “What’re you gonna do when you’re lifting guys his size and your arms are too weak to get the job done?”

  “Uhh, we’ll do more push-ups?” calls out a wiseass from the back of the line.

  I want to hang my head in defeat.

  We’ve been at this all morning. Honestly, I’m not sure what I expected in coming on to coach the Wildcats. Under my dad’s leadership, the team was a powerhouse—and I’m not only talking about trophies and wins. Dad fostered their love for the game while instilling in them a sharp blade of discipline. By the time they graduated, those players had all the tools they needed to succeed, both on and off the field.

  The kids staring back at me now look like the third-hand rejects off a football recreational team. I have no idea what my dad’s successor did when he came in to work every day for the last three years. From where I’m standing, it looks like he did a whole lotta nothing.

  At the rate we’re going, summer camp is going to be nothing but undoing bad habits and rehashing drills they should have perfected in the youth, Pop Warner league.

  The freshmen are a little easier to manage, considering they’re fresh-faced and on the verge of pissing their pants whenever I blow the whistle, but the juniors and seniors are something else entirely. Angsty, pimple-faced teenagers are the worst.

  I drag my palms over my sweaty face. “Again.”

  Tweet!

  I’m met with groans from all twenty-two kids in the lineup, including my own son. When they drag their feet, I blow the whistle for a second time and motion with my hands to get a move on.

  They shuffle into place with so little enthusiasm I nearly start yawning.

  The stark difference between Group A and Group B might as well be night and day. I check out the other half of the field, where Dominic is leading his group through a series of fire-out blocks that should have the kids wheezing on the ground. Should being the operative word here. Instead, every one of those boys looks like they’re having the time of their lives as they sprint from the thirty-yard line to the twenty.

  Dominic slaps the hands of the five guys who make it to the twenty-yard line first, then blows his whistle for the rest of the kids to line up in a three-point stance and wait for the pretend snap of the ball.

  Tweet!

  Dominic and I blow our whistles at the same time, our individual groups moving in sync even though we’ve barely exchanged a word in the two days since he stormed out of my house.

  Yeah, I pushed him.

  I pushed him because I care about the well-being of the kids on our team. I want them to feel as though they can come to us with whatever is on their minds—things that are happening at home, problems at school, worries about the game—without feeling as though we’re going to turn a blind eye because we don’t give a damn about them as individuals.

  Football saves people. It can change the trajectory of a person’s life forever. Give them confidence where they otherwise have none. Teach them the value of building a family that has nothing to do with bloodlines and everything to do with bonding with people who share similar goals and fears and dreams.

  And I . . . I acted like Dominic—a vet of the game—understood nothing of that.

  You were an insecure jerk and he didn’t deserve your tongue-lashing.

  I quiet my rebel conscience for no less than the fifteenth time in the last forty-eight hours and blo
w the whistle again, my gaze still fixed on my assistant coach.

  Dominic’s standing with his feet spread apart, hands squared off on his hips, a Wildcats baseball hat turned backward on his head. As I’ve come to expect from him, he’s not sporting a smile though he does call out encouragements, rooting the kids on as they race to the next benchmark.

  Does he want to be here? Really want to be here? My gut tells me no. Actually, it tells me fuck no and warns me that London is only a passing stop on his path to god-knows-where. Something I’d do well to remember the next time I grow tongue-tied around him. It’s not every day a man like him looks at a woman like me—and it’s certainly not a frequent event that a man like him nearly strips me naked in my kitchen.

  For the third time since practice started this morning, my fingers drift to my collarbone. The fabric of my Wildcats polo bunches under my touch but does nothing to eviscerate the memory of Dominic’s full lips parting on a heavy breath as he toyed with my tank top. Had he wanted to kiss me? Maybe the better question is: would I have let him?

  Now is not the time to be thinking about that.

  Wrenching my gaze away from his bulky form, I tuck the whistle between my lips and blow.

  Tweet-tweet!

  The kids nudge each other as they tromp over to the cooler setup by the bleachers. Each morning, I’ve arrived early to put together a snack station for the team. Granola bars on the first day. Veggie sticks on the second. Back in Pittsburgh, I came across too many of my players whose parents either didn’t have the funds to send their kids to practice with something to eat or who simply couldn’t be bothered.

  Either way, my heart couldn’t bear watching some kids snack away while others sipped water from the cooler and pretended they weren’t as hungry as their teammates.

  It was a nonnegotiable tradition that I couldn’t give up in returning to London.

  Satisfaction skips through me now as I watch Timmy reach into one of the cardboard boxes for a bag of carrots and a bottle of blue Gatorade. I hide a smile behind my hand.

  “Timmy’s mom works two different jobs,” says a familiar, dark voice to my left.

  Dominic.

  My chest expands with a sharp breath. That’s four more words than we’ve exchanged at any given time since the other day. Keeping my attention on the team—and noting the way my baby boy takes a seat next to Timmy—I strive for complete nonchalance when I reply, “Being a single mom isn’t easy.” Don’t look at him. But I can’t not, especially when I catch the delicious scent of aftershave and sandalwood. His bicep brushes my shoulder, he’s so much taller than me. “Did you—”

  “Ask him?” He slips his hands into the pockets of his black mesh shorts. “I pushed him to elaborate after he dropped a hint on granola-bar day. Casually mentioned how his mom works at a late-night joint over in Bar Harbor in addition to waitressing at Cookies and Joe Diner in the mornings. I didn’t get much else out of him before he asked if he could have two bars since his mom hadn’t had time to make him anything to eat before she dropped him off at practice.”

  And there goes my heart.

  I glance over to where Timmy and Topher are laughing together. My son’s resting his forearms on his thighs, head bowed as he shoves a baby carrot into his mouth. As if sensing my stare, he looks up and gives me a short wave.

  It’s his we’re-at-practice-but-I-still-want-to-acknowledge-you wave.

  I kick my chin up in return, my silent I-love-you all he needs before he grins happily and turns back to his conversation with Timmy.

  “Thank you for letting me know,” I tell Dominic softly. “About Timmy, I mean. It breaks my heart to know that not all of these boys have it the best at home, though I’m sure Timmy’s mom is doing everything in her power to give her kid whatever he needs.” Despite her brash attitude on the first day of camp, she’s never been late to pick her son up from practice, and I’ve even overheard her suggesting that Harry, a redheaded junior, spend the night when Timmy mentioned Harry’s mom being out of town. “Raising him alone can’t be easy for her, and I really appreciate you looking out for—”

  “I was the Timmy back in grade school.”

  I jerk back, caught off guard by the gruff note in Dominic’s voice. “I don’t understand.”

  “Except that I didn’t even have an overworked mom on my side. I won’t bore you with the details.” He lifts his hat up by the brim, then settles it back down over his head. After being outside in the sun every day, his olive skin appears even more golden now than it did a week ago. “Back then, I would have done pretty much anything to have a coach like you bringing in snacks and drinks. It would have appeased the hunger, especially during some of the rougher years.”

  Something tells me I’m not sure I want to know what he means by the “rougher years.”

  I remember reading something online about how Dominic grew up in the foster-care system out in California. Back in Pittsburgh, one of my best friends, Mariah, takes in kids. She dotes on them all and has even adopted three—a little girl and two teenage boys—and still continues to do as much work in that world as she feasibly can, considering her day job keeps her continuously busy. The boys, especially the eldest, Zach, has been Topher’s best friend since his adoption four years ago.

  But I’m not so naïve as to think that all situations are as good as Zach and his foster siblings have had it with Mariah, and I can’t quite stop my heart from plummeting at the thought of Dominic struggling as a child.

  Without thinking, I loop my hand around his muscular forearm. “You can be that coach, too.”

  He grunts out something beneath his breath before his big hand slips over mine. His palm is rough, calloused from years of playing professional football. Once upon a time, mine would have been a perfect match. I never had been all that good about wearing my gloves, unless it was game time. Even now, if you look closely, you can see the scarred, bubbled tissue from years of lifting dumbbells and grappling with knotted, weighted ropes for conditioning.

  Then Dominic’s knuckles slide between mine, and I forget all about training and exercise as I stare at my paleness interlocked with his bronzed skin. The two of us are quite a pair—opposite in every way and yet forced to unite in order to lead a team of forty-plus teenage boys.

  The team.

  In touching him at practice, however unintentional, I crossed a boundary. I know it. He knows it.

  And then he slips out of my grasp, putting respectable space between us again.

  Right.

  Right.

  I sneak a peek to see if any of the kids witnessed our exchange, but they’re all too wrapped up in their own conversations to notice. I swallow, hard, and peer up at Dominic’s face. Cynical, dark eyes. A firm, unsmiling mouth. Sharp-as-glass cheekbones. I wonder if there’s a soul out there in the world whom he freely gives his smiles to.

  If such a person exists, they’re incredibly lucky.

  “We gonna switch drills and then wind down with some stretching?” he asks, fisting the whistle hanging from a black lanyard around his neck.

  Get your head in the game, girl. Do what you do best—coach. “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll work.”

  Dominic nods. “Sounds good, Coach.”

  Coach.

  Tweet! His whistle explodes. “Let’s get goin’, guys! One more hour and then you’re free to go home and play video games for the rest of the day.”

  That earns him some raucous laughter and high fives out of the kids. They ditch their water and Gatorade bottles on the metal bleachers, then toss their trash in the nearby garbage can.

  I watch as Dominic turns away, his broad shoulders appearing even more massive today since his T-shirt is a little snug. My gaze falls to his round bubble butt. The man must do leg presses and squats all day to get impressive glutes like that.

  Maybe working out is his escape from reality, what he does when I see his pickup truck parked in his driveway and heavy rock music blasting from his house. The music is loud and
angry but every night when I climb into bed, I can’t help but think that it also sounds a little lonely.

  Like he’s lonely.

  Which is an absolutely absurd thought. Dominic DaSilva might be hiding out in Maine, but he still has the world at his fingertips. He could literally snap them and half of London would come scurrying over, despite the fact that he’s an enemy of the New England Patriots, having played for Tampa Bay for over a decade.

  I don’t want to think more about Dominic than I need to, and I certainly don’t want to be giving him any more of my headspace than he deserves. He’s my assistant coach. He technically works for me. Who the hell cares if he’s lonely?

  You do.

  Dammit.

  “DaSilva!”

  I’m not even sure what I’m going to say until he’s wheeling around, hands lifted to the back of his head, where he’s playing with his ball cap again. His T-shirt lifts, revealing a dark happy trail that disappears down into his shorts.

  My heart jerks.

  Or maybe that’s just my starved libido thrashing around like a beached whale.

  I can’t make out his dark eyes from here, but his tense body language conveys all I need to know: he’s on edge, ready to release the coil and spring, and I’m . . .

  Curious.

  “Why did you bring up the . . . rougher years?”

  The heavy ropes of his arm muscles visibly tighten as he whips off his hat and slaps it against the outside of his thigh. He did that the other day too, when we first officially met after Topher drove right into his truck. A nervous tick, maybe?

  After a moment, he shoves the ball cap back on his head, this time with the brim facing forward. Like at the Golden Fleece, the upper half of his face is concealed, leaving me in the dark about his inner thoughts.