Kiss Me Tonight: Put A Ring On It

by Luis, Maria

  He brought two women home that night—the first time he ever broke his hotel-only cheating policy—and Topher found his dad in bed with them the very next morning.

  I filed for divorce two weeks later.

  Miracle of all miracles, Rick finally stopped putting up a fight.

  “Mom?” Topher asks from beside me. “What are you going to do when we get to Kevin’s?”

  I keep my gaze locked on the darkening road ahead of the car. “I’m going to bring Harry home.”

  Our home.

  At least until I figure out what’s going on with Heather Blackwater.

  29

  Dominic

  The lights are on at Levi’s place when I pull into my driveway.

  I look over at the two pizza boxes sitting on my passenger’s seat. Funny what a few weeks can do for a person’s mood when life isn’t taking a massive shit on you. Or maybe it’s got nothing to do with the universe playing nice and everything to do with playing nice with the sexy woman next door.

  With only three days left to go until the calendar shoot, I’ve been all over London introducing myself to local business owners. Though my photography has always been reserved for mostly landscapes and architecture of the locations I’ve visited over the last four years, I’m strangely pumped up about trying something new.

  And what I really want to see are the Wildcats playing ball all over the city.

  In my head, it’s a fucking masterpiece. Players getting ready to hike the ball inside London’s infamous Cookies and Joe Diner that dates back to the 1950’s. In another shot, I want Harry, the football whisperer, in mid-throw at the base of the Ferris wheel down by the pier while Topher, seated on the Ferris wheel, pretends to catch the football. Maybe have Bobby and some of the D-men lined up on the beach, the sand kicking up as they move in formation.

  The calendar may have started as a joke centered around me and my dick, but I’m running with the overall idea and thinking of ways that include both my team and London life.

  I know not every kid will make the JV or varsity cut, but football—for me—gave me my first family. It’s a bond created not by blood but by common interests, and if I can do something to help these kids find that family . . . then, yeah, I’m gonna pull out all the stops.

  Stops that included calling my old Sports 24/7 boss, Steven Fairfax, to see if he might be willing to run a special about the calendar and, on a much larger scale, high school football across the country.

  And even though I hate the man’s guts for firing me, for something the network forced me to undertake, I’m thrilled he said yes.

  Yes.

  Three little letters that’ll guarantee we sell enough calendars that every kid on the team will be able to make the camping trip without needing to ask their parents for a dime.

  I grab the celebratory pizza boxes, then jump out of my truck.

  There’s a pep to my step as I head for Levi’s brick walkway. I have the entire weekend mapped out, including someone to do their hair. Not that any of the boys need a haircut, but, hey, maybe some of them will want one after I introduce them to Nick’s fiancée, Mina, who is a hairstylist down in Boston. Once I unloaded my plans on Nick, Mina happily agreed to come along and help out too.

  Stepping onto Levi’s taco-themed welcome mat, I ring the doorbell and hang back, pizza boxes tucked under one arm.

  “Coming!”

  The door swings open a moment later, and, with a wide grin on my face, I lean my shoulder against the frame. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Coach,” I drawl.

  Levi doesn’t laugh like I expect her to, though she does smile weakly when she takes in the pizza boxes. “Food?”

  I quickly scope out the entryway above her head. No Topher. Not wasting a moment, I cradle her face with my free hand and lower my mouth to hers. Heat flares up within me, and it’s all I can do not to throw the pizza into the nearby hedges and kiss her the way I want to.

  All-consuming, with her straddling my face while I feast on that hot pussy of hers.

  My cock stiffens in my shorts.

  Cursing under my breath, I pull back and touch my forehead to hers. “I have good news.”

  Her blue eyes search mine. “I have . . . I have—” Her fingers grip my T-shirt, coiling the fabric sharply between her knuckles. “I have a Harry.”

  My brows pull together. “The football whisperer? Harry’s in your house?”

  “Is that really what you call him?”

  “The kid’s gonna go far, Asp. If there’s one thing I know how to spot after all these years, it’s natural skill. Harry has it in spades.”

  That makes her pause. “And Topher? Does he have it too?”

  I kiss her forehead gently. “Sometimes natural skill can get you in trouble—you lack the hustle. Topher’s like me. Dogged determination. Aggressive ambition. There’s no right or wrong way up the ladder. It all comes down to sheer will and hard work.” Fingers brushing her hip, I murmur, “You know how that goes, Ms. Lou Groza. Not every day someone I know has won the award for the best kicker in the NCAA.”

  A pretty blush stains her cheeks. “You looked me up?”

  “Had to know what sort of talent I was up against. I’m a little disappointed LSU and BC never played against each other in the bowl game. Just imagine the meet cute we could have had if we’d run into each other years ago.”

  It’s a solid attempt to make her laugh and it works. Her smile brightens even as she rolls her eyes. “The fact that you said meet cute is right up there with dillydally.”

  “Speak for yourself, Ms. Lollygag.”

  “I think I like Ms. Lou Groza better.”

  I step forward, pushing her back into the house. “I knew you would. You’re as competitive as I am. I’m still bruised from the night we went swimming. Do you know how pointy your elbows are?”

  “You big baby.”

  I glance over at her, not even bothering to hide my shit-eating grin. “Endearments, huh? Imagine what you’ll be calling me after I make you come again.”

  “Dominic!”

  “Nah, we’ve already reached a first-name basis, Aspen.” I sidestep around her, pizza boxes raised high, so I don’t knock her knickknacks off the entryway table. “Now how about we take this to the kitchen table. Call in Topher and Harry. We’ll figure out whatever is going on.”

  “Tim is here too.”

  “Timmy, you mean?”

  She gives a loose-limbed shrug. “He wants to be called Tim now.” She pauses, hand on my arm. “By the way, did you happen to tell Topher that he’s got a . . . how did he put it? A pansy name?”

  The grin I give her is all boyish innocence. “Pansy name? Nah, Coach, that wasn’t me.” Her eyes narrow suspiciously and I bop her on the nose, just to mess with her. “I believe the way I phrased it to him was, what kind of hippie-dippie name is that?”

  She rubs her hand over her mouth, raking her gaze up and down my frame like she doesn’t know what to do with me. “I should hate you for telling my son to go by the name Chris.”

  “Now that I didn’t say. The only Chris’s I’ve ever met are douchebags.”

  “Is that so?”

  “No,” I murmur, trying hard not to laugh, “but you hated me less for a solid ten seconds when I said that, didn’t you?”

  “I . . . I—”

  I lift my brows, waiting. “You . . .?”

  “You’re a piece of work.”

  “A work in progress,” I counter with a wink. “Ninety-percent completed, ten-percent chaos.”

  She shakes her head, her blond hair falling forward to frame her face. “Ten-percent chaos. There must be something dreadfully wrong with me that that’s the part of you I like best.”

  “I’m willing to roll the dice and say that you don’t regret that fact at all.”

  I regret everything.

  At the very least, I regret not having a beer to pop open once Harry sits down at the table and spills the beans.

 
; “Harry,” Levi interjects, her pizza all but forgotten on her plate, “I don’t understand. Why would your mom leave in the first place?”

  The football whisperer shovels pizza into his mouth like he hasn’t eaten in days. Which is entirely possible, given the fact that he’s been couch-surfing at all of his teammates’ houses. “I don’t think she left-left. She . . . she does this sometimes. But she always comes back.”

  He glances at Timmy, as though looking for backup. Clearly wanting to help his buddy out, Timmy bobs his head in confirmation. “I think she’s sad. Ever since your dad . . . you know.”

  Finding out Harry’s dad passed away from a heart attack the same year I retired from the NFL felt like a punch to the gut. For as long as I’ve been wandering the world, looking for something that makes me feel alive, this kid has been trying to find a safe place to call home. Red-haired, green-eyed, and pale-skinned, he’s the polar opposite of me in every single way.

  And yet, when he looks at me, I see myself staring back. The eleven-year-old version of myself. The hunger. The fear. The desperation that led me to do stupid things because I wanted to fit in—to find a family—and also because I was so damn tired of being shuffled from house to house, San Francisco suburb to San Francisco suburb.

  Until one day, a group of older boys asked me to rob a convenience store with them. They wanted the money from the register. I didn’t know what I wanted. Money didn’t sound like a bad idea. Money meant food, security, brotherhood—at least, it did if I ran with those kids.

  They handed me a gun and I took it.

  Like an eleven-year-old idiot, who thinks he knows everything there is to know about the world.

  I stormed into that convenience store, trembling all the way down to my tattered shoes, and pointed the gun at the clerk. Like I was some big, bad baller who mugged people instead of the parentless, oftentimes homeless kid whose stomach growled late at night and who had only ever known the comfort of a couch and never a bed.

  Unfortunately, waving guns around like I did is a surefire, guaranteed way to find yourself in juvenile detention. It’s also a first-step indoctrination to things like wearing ankle monitors because society deems you a criminal, skipping school when the “boys” need you to help them out with risky, stupid shit, and learning, the hard way, that making something of yourself after years of only making trouble will be a herculean task you’ll fail more times than not.

  Feeling like there’s an anvil on my chest that I can’t shake off, I grind out, “You don’t want to be me, kid.”

  Everyone at the table, including Levi, looks at me.

  Grasping the glass of milk from beside my plate, I pretend it’s a Bud Light and drain it in one go. “My dad died, too.” Drug overdose, from what I understand. I found it in the San Francisco online newspaper archives when I was at LSU. “I was two at the time. I never knew him.”

  “Coach,” Harry says, pizza slice hovering halfway to his mouth, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what that has to do with me.”

  “Let him tell you this.”

  It’s Levi who utters the words, and I search out her gaze diagonal from me. Thank you, I want to tell her. And sure enough, it’s like I can read her without speaking. I have you, those blue eyes of hers tell me. I have you and I trust you.

  I swallow, hard. Drop my eyes to my untouched pizza before I push the plate away. “What little I know of my mother isn’t fit for mixed company. But she left when I was five and never came back.”

  “My mom will come back,” Harry cuts in vehemently. “She always comes back. Sometimes she needs some time away to think—to, I don’t know, do whatever she does, but she never leaves for that long.”

  I don’t beat around the bush. “Has she ever been gone for two weeks before?”

  Slowly, Harry shakes his head. He whispers, “No,” like it’s the last thing he wants to admit.

  “And I bet this time, when she was gone longer than expected, you stayed in your house alone, didn’t you?”

  Harry’s eyes don’t waver from my face. “Yeah.”

  “How long?”

  “Six days. That’s . . . that’s the longest she’s ever been gone before.”

  It takes me a moment to realize that Levi has gathered up Topher and Timmy and left the kitchen. Their plates are gone, along with one of the pizza boxes, and I want to thank her for giving Harry privacy. A cataclysmic moment like this isn’t easy to admit even to yourself, never mind in front of a group of people.

  When I hear Topher’s familiar voice shushing someone, I know they haven’t gone far. The three of them are probably listening in, and that’s okay too. Harry’s gonna need people in his corner and he can’t go wrong in trusting Levi or Topher. Timmy, too. At practice, I’ve watched the younger boy take a page out of Topher’s book and talk to the teammates who tend to stick to themselves.

  Taking off my ball cap, I toss it on the table and run a hand through my hair. “Harry, I don’t know how much you know about all of this, but you can’t keep crashing on your friends’ couches.”

  “I know.” His ears turn a burnished red that matches the color of his hair. “And I know that you and Coach Levi are gonna need to tell the police about what’s going on.”

  I remember the first time the cops walked into our tired apartment with its creaky steps and moldy walls. I’d stayed there for a little under a month before a neighbor reported my mom as missing. She wasn’t missing—just chose a different lifestyle, one that didn’t include her five-year-old son. The police had all agreed that it was a miracle I’d survived that long. But that was me to a T: scrappy and resilient to the bitter end.

  “We’ll go down there together,” I tell Harry, keeping my tone level, the same way I always talked to the kids who matched with Junior Buccaneers. Like frightened animals, kids can be skittish. I know I used to be. “Me and you. How’s that sound?”

  “Did they take you away?” His shoulders curl in tightly, a sixteen-year-old reduced to the emotions of someone so much younger. I know how he feels. Acutely. “When the police came, did they put you in . . . foster care?”

  There’s little point in lying to him. “Yeah, Harry, they did. But I was only five. No dad, a mom who had left for good. No other family to take me in. Our situations aren’t nearly the same. Your aunt, she comes to some of the practices, doesn’t she?”

  Looking startled, as if surprised to know I’ve been paying attention, Harry bites down on his thumb. “Yeah. My great-aunt. She’s . . . weird.”

  Weird isn’t synonymous with awful. Clearly, the woman cares enough about her great-nephew to show up to our scrimmages and cheer him on. “Does she know that your mom leaves?” When Harry shakes his head, I sigh. “Kid, just because she’s weird doesn’t mean she’s not family. What’s so weird about her?”

  “Her house smells like cat pee.”

  Unfortunate, but not the end of the world. “What else?”

  Harry flicks his gaze away from my face, as though he’s thinking hard on that. “She really, really likes takeout.”

  I bark out a laugh. “Harry, most of the world prefers takeout. You know how well this pizza joint knows me?” I point to the boxes. “I order out from them at least three times a week.”

  “She also has dolls! Weird, creepy dolls. Coach, I swear their beady little eyes follow me whenever I sleep at her house.”

  I can’t stem the laughter reverberating in my chest. It rolls out of me, boisterous and hearty. “Do they talk?” I manage on a short breath.

  “I think some of them do . . . maybe. One time, when I was a kid, I ripped out their batteries and they still didn’t stop talking. Aunt Gloria is weird.”

  “Well, we can’t have you staying there then.” I bump a fist against the table, rattling my silverware. “Who knows, kid? One day you might be at practice when those dolls kidnap you to another planet.”

  Finally, that pinched, fearful look dissipates from his face. “You’re making fun of me.”

/>   “All I’m saying is, there are worse things out there in the world than cat pee, takeout, and creepy dolls.” Dropping my voice to a serious note, I lean forward, propped up on my forearms. “I don’t want you to ever have to face those worse things, kid. I don’t want you to ever go through what I went through.”

  “When you went into foster care . . . did you like the families they put you with?”

  I think of Mrs. Ramirez and the countless other people I stayed with until I graduated high school. Only one home resonated with me—the last one I ever lived in before I turned eighteen. Mr. and Mrs. Halloway. Elderly couple in their seventies. Good-natured souls. They’d had their hands full with me, but they knew how to harness my anger and bad attitude. Football was my saving grace, and, in a way, it was theirs too. Both the team and the game kept me out of trouble.

  “Some,” I say evenly. “But every person I lived with made me who I am today. And if I wasn’t me, then I wouldn’t be here right now, sitting at this table with you.”

  30

  Aspen

  The boys, including Harry Blackwater, are tucked in bed when I sneak out my back door sometime around one in the morning.

  I don’t know what Dominic told the police about Heather Blackwater or Harry’s crazy aunt who I never noticed attending our practices. But Dominic noticed—the man who the world views as unfeeling, saw what I failed to. Even more, he spoke to Harry on a wavelength I never could, getting to the heart of the matter within mere minutes. When Dominic dropped Harry off at my house, it was with a faraway glaze to his dark eyes and a softly spoken, “I’ll pick him up in the morning and bring him to his aunt’s. We already filled her in about what’s going on at the station.”

  He left as quickly as he appeared.

  So here I am.

  Barefoot, dressed in the same clothes from earlier, skirting around the shoulder-high hedges that separate our two courtyards. Turnaround is fair play—if Dominic thinks he can stop by whenever he wants, then I can certainly return the favor.