Hail Mary

by Nicola Rendell

  “I everything stalked you.”

  Oh shit. Yeah. I like that. A lot. “Well, let’s just hope I’m worth your stalking skills after Sunday.”

  Her eyes get serious, and worried. “You really think they’ll fire you? I don’t see how that’s fair. Or possible.”

  I know it’s not fair, but it’s more than possible. “We’ll just have to see. But no need to worry about that now,” I say, smiling at her. I’ve had a lot of practice of reassuring people of good things when there’s nothing but a shit load of trouble coming down the pike. Like, pretty much every huddle pep talk I’ve given in the last five games.

  But she doesn’t push. We don’t get stuck on work, which I appreciate. A whole hell of a lot.

  “If you could do anything,” I ask her once they finish plating the entrées, “What would it be?”

  She looks thoughtfully at the table, at the spread of tiny little towers of food. “I don’t know.” She lifts her eyes to me. “I’m pretty happy as I am. Manny is looking for someone to partner with him at the gym, though, so I’d like to help with that. If I had the money.”

  God, the gym. It seems so long ago, but it’s only been a few days. That’s what falling hard and fast will do to a guy. Warp time completely. And I don’t mind a bit.

  “What about you?” she asks, and balances half a quail egg on her fork.

  She places it into her mouth. Every single thing she does seems sexier than the last. “Win a Super Bowl and get the hell off the field.”

  For the first time since I’ve known her, she actually talks with her mouth full, just long enough to say, “Yeah?”

  “Maybe have a family,” I add. “You know. One day.”

  It’s like it catches her off guard. She blots her lips with her napkin. “Kids?”

  “Yeah. Kids. Maybe. One day. If I find the right person. You know. One day.” I stare right at her. I couldn’t be any clearer about this if I spelled it out in Scrabble, or if I dragged my finger through the sauces on the plate and wrote the word YOU. But she looks a little nervous. So I ease up on the gas.

  Not long after, one of the businessmen starts to get belligerent. Nothing crazy, nothing out of control, but as he starts to raise his voice, I watch Mary stiffen in her chair and tighten her hands into fists in her lap. Her eyes keep darting over, wide and afraid. Within minutes, though, the manager comes and says a word in the guy’s ear, probably something along the lines of, This isn’t a bar, sir, and we’d like you to leave. The guy whacks the table so hard it sends a wine glass tumbling. Out of pure reflex, I stand up, my chair squeaking on the floor. But the manager has it in hand, and the guy is gone before he can cause any trouble.

  Mary, though, she’s rattled. Her wine is shivering in the glass, and she’s gripping the edge of the table tight.

  “You okay?” I ask her, sitting down again.

  Her eyes flit to the door and back to me again. “I just can’t take that sort of thing, Jimmy. It’s like I freeze up inside.”

  “Anger, you mean?”

  She nods. “Anger, violence. Tempers.” She shivers, blinks hard, and then raises her eyes to me. “My ex was that way. I can’t have that in my life.”

  The thought of it—her hurting, her in danger—it makes me insane. Whoever he was, it’s a damn good thing that he isn’t around now. “You don’t have to worry about that with me, pussycat.”

  “I know,” she says softly, smiling and rotating her glass by the stem a quarter turn. “And I’m really, really glad.”

  When the bill comes, I make sure that the amount is hidden behind the candle. Something tells me she’d kill me for dropping this kind of cash on dinner. But as far as I’m concerned, money is made for nights exactly like this.

  As I put my wallet back in my jacket, I pull out a white envelope and slide it across the table to her.

  She places one finger on it and looks at me, puzzled. “What’s this?”

  I slide it closer. “Open it.”

  What I really wanted to do was to get two tickets to Belize, but I can’t pull off that kind of romance until the off-season, so for now, this will have to do.

  She opens up the envelope, watching me all the time, and pulls out two tickets for Sunday’s game.

  “To come see you?” Her smile is bright and big.

  “If you want. If you’ll have me.”

  “Yes!” she says. “Of course! I wouldn’t miss it for the entire world.” She sets down the tickets and places her hand over mine. “I really am sorry I bolted when your brother was there. There was no excuse for it. And I’m sorry I busted your garage door.”

  “Hang on.” I pat down my jacket where I find the other surprise I grabbed for her. Across the table, I slide a spare key to my apartment and the garage door opener too.

  She gives me a sort of back it up, buddy stare.

  “Take it. You don’t ever have to use it. But at least you’ll have it. Right?”

  Her eyes move to the table. She touches the edge of the key and the button of the opener, just gently running her fingertip along the bump at the top. “I’ll take this,” she says, taking the opener. “But not the key.”

  It sits here, on the table, between us. I want to just press it into her palm, make her keep it, but I don’t. I take it back, and put it in my pocket, and reach out to hold her hand again. “Deal. So now here’s what’s going to happen.”

  She gets serious and tucks the tickets into her lap. Her chest rises and falls with anticipation. I want to put my tongue on that collarbone. I need my hands on that skin.

  But no. Nope. I remember that text like it’s seared into my brain. We need to take a step back.

  “We’re not going to go to bed together. I’m going to see you home. I’m going to kiss you before you go. And then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Her fingers press into mine. She takes a deep breath and nods. “Thanks,” she whispers. Then she leans forward, making the candle flicker with her breath. I watch the seams of her dress shift against her stomach.

  She has no fucking idea how she overwhelms me. That dress is making me feel like I have a concussion. “Can I just ask what color underwear you’re wearing?”

  She narrows her pretty eyes and hesitates. “I’m not. Which you well know. Because I saw you looking down my dress. And there’s no room for a bra in this, so I’m naked as you know me under here.”

  Fuck me. Fuck it.

  “I want you. So bad,” I say, back in that growl that only she seems to be able to pull from me.

  “Jimmy.” She tilts her head slightly. “Slow.”

  Christ. I fold my napkin. I get my bearings. “I know. I’m good. Just had a moment of weakness there. I’m only human.”

  And that’s when she gives me that smile. I watch her fingers move along the edge of the table, trailing over the very corner with the tips, same as when she touches me. If she wants to go slow, I’ll go slow. Painfully slow. Agonizingly slow. Torture. I’ll do it. For her.

  I stand up and offer my hand, and she takes it. Again, as we leave, the whole place goes silent. “That has nothing to do with me,” I whisper in her ear.

  Outside, I hand the valet my number card and he takes off down the street. But I see her eyes are worried. “I think I’ll take a cab home, if that’s okay? You and me alone in a car. We know how that goes.”

  I take her face in my hands, bringing my fingers around to the back of that pretty, slim neck. The kiss is intense, just as strong from me as from her. I want her. I need her. Inside her, over her. Everywhere. But not yet. Not now. The strength it takes to pull away, it’s more self-control than I thought I had, but I do it. I let her go, just as a cab pulls into the valet slot, waiting. “Thank you for coming out tonight. This was really…”

  God, I don’t even know the word. Awesome? Nice? Lovely? Have I ever even said the word lovely out loud? I open the door for her, and she slides into the back seat.

  “It was perfect,” she says, finishing my sentence and s
miling up at me. “Just perfect. See you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be looking for you. I’ll be the guy wearing number 6,” I tell her and then shut her door and give the roof of the cab a thump with my fist.

  30

  Mary

  I have a temporary tattoo of the Bears logo on my cheek and a parmesan pretzel in my hand. I follow Bridget down the web of stairways and tunnels through the stadium until we find our seats. Which are right behind the Bears players, front row. It’s almost like we’re on the field. We’re that close.

  “If I could find a man to spoil me half this rotten…” Bridget says, biting into her bright blue cotton candy. “You Geminis. You’ve got all the goddamned luck.”

  So, what I don’t tell Bridget, and I certainly didn’t tell Jimmy, was that I’ve never actually seen a football game before. I know nothing at all about it, which I’m pretty sure makes me totally un-American, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.

  “See, home games are great. They wear those white pants.” She nibbles her cotton candy. “Look at those tushes. God.”

  It’s true, they’re exquisite. But the one I’m looking for isn’t immediately obvious. I scan the sidelines, taking in the hulking mass of muscle and burly men that mill around, some stretching, some talking, some drinking water from tiny cups and crumpling them in their hands. I see Radovic pacing back and forth. He’s still in the warm-up pants, but now also in boots and a big duffel coat, complete with a Russian fur hat, high on his head, so his forehead looks enormous.

  “Where’s Jimmy?” I ask her.

  She pauses with cotton candy spilling from her mouth like a cloud. “You are really just so cute. He’s the big man on campus. You’ll know when he gets here. Promise.”

  Within seconds, Bridget’s prediction is confirmed, as fog machines start making haze around one of the tunnels that leads onto the field. It’s surrounded with balloons in an archway, in Bears’ blue and orange.

  They announce one player after another, their entrance met with roars and cheers and claps louder than anything I’ve ever heard in my life. And then the PA announcer booms, “And number 6. Quarterback Jimmy Falconi!”

  Which isn’t met by cheers. Nope. Instead, a low boooooooooo fills the stadium.

  I stare at Bridget. “What? Why are they booing?”

  She leans into me, deflating our down parkas against each other. “They love him when he wins. They hate him when he doesn’t.”

  The anger inside me is so intense I have to sit down for a second. Assholes. Seventy thousand assholes. May someone topple their Old Styles straight into every single one of their laps… “I can’t watch this.”

  But then Jimmy jogs past me, looks up and winks. For that one instant, there is nobody else in the world but him and me. He looks adorable, and sexy, and beautiful. And deep inside me, I feel some greedy, primal corner of my soul say, “That man is mine.”

  He disappears into the wall of players. I swallow hard and double-check that I’m not actually drooling. I’m not, fortunately. Yet.

  “Settle in, girl,” Bridget says, nestling into her parka. “Because we’re not going anywhere until one of us has to pee so bad it hurts.”

  I think the thing that startles me most about the game is the noise of the players colliding with each other. That bone-crunching, muscle-tearing, lung-compressing force of grown men running at full speed, and at full testosterone octane, into one another, over and over and over again. Bridget keeps trying to explain the rules to me, but she’s such a fan that she can’t finish a single informative sentence before getting caught up in the game. I really can’t make sense of any of it. But every time they start playing, when they crash into each other, all I can think of is sprains, bone bruises, broken tibias, and rattled brains. Jimmy’s, most of all.

  At one point, after a few minutes in the half—quarter? third?—he goes back to throw. He gestures down the field at a very tall guy with braids. But before he can throw, a guy roughly the size and dimensions of the Kool-Aid man tackles him so viciously I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  But Bridget says that’s the game, that’s football. That’s just how it goes. “If you’re going to date the quarterback, you’re going to have to learn to love it.”

  Date him? Am I dating him? I watch him jog down the sidelines and huddle together with Valdez. I look at his beautiful buns. The narrowness of his waist. I watch him pull off his helmet and rub down his face with a towel. And that’s when he glances over at me and smiles that HEY GIRL smile right at me.

  Gulp.

  Yes. I’m dating him. I definitely am.

  Later, when the Jets are on offense, a term I’ve learned from Bridget, I sit down and pull out my phone. I Google RULES OF AMERICAN FOOTBALL.

  I scroll. And scroll. And scroll.

  “This game is insane!” I’ve never seen anything like it in my life except for once when I asked Wikipedia about THE LINE OF SUCCESSION TO THE BRITISH THRONE. But this? This is much, much worse because it’s so chock-full of jargon I can’t make sense of anything whatsoever. And whatever is happening with those X and O diagrams, I can’t even say.

  But Bridget doesn’t answer. Because right in front of us, the Bears have taken the field. They get in position—that has to be the term—along some sort of imaginary line that seems very important. The big guy, Valdez, tosses the ball between his legs to Jimmy—this seems to be SOP, in Curtis-speak. Players crash into each other everywhere around him.

  And then he turns with the ball in his hand and glances at me. It is as if everything on the planet stops. Someone has hit PAUSE on the Netflix stream of reality. His eyes meet mine, and I stare back at him.

  You can do it. You know you can do it.

  The world suddenly roars to life and goes back into full speed. Jimmy holds the ball close to his chest. And then, by some miracle, finds a gap in the players, through which he runs. And runs. And runs.

  The crowd goes absolutely freaking insane as he sprints across the finish line. Bridget’s arms shoot up into the air, and random strangers everywhere seize each other with such utter, pure joy that I feel goose bumps all over me.

  And the Bears take the lead. 6-3, says the scoreboard.

  Then there’s all kinds of commotion, people taking different positions. I’m really not paying attention to any of it because on the enormous screen at the end of the stadium is a slow-motion replay of Jimmy running. That body, oh, for the love of everything, that body, in slow motion, in white pants. Every time his foot hits the ground, a ripple moves up his thighs, his ass. That ass that I’ve gripped and scratched and had my hands all over.

  Now on the field, a fairly clean-looking, slim guy jogs out. He’s got a different helmet and looks thinner and shorter than the rest of the players, more like a soccer player. Jimmy isn’t on the field, but is pacing the sidelines with his helmet halfway on his head. I can’t see his face, but I can tell from his posture he’s nervous. And suddenly, I am too.

  The slim guy wallops the ball from a little stand, and it goes end-over-end through the air. As it passes through the big metal U, everybody explodes in joy again.

  I look up at the scoreboard, feeling proud of myself. That’ll make it 9-3, if a kick is worth three. Which it was, when the Jets did it.

  But inexplicably, it goes to 7-3. “What! I don’t…a kick is worth three!”

  Bridget turns to me. Deadpan. “And an extra point is worth…”

  “An extra point?”

  “Heyooooooo!” she says. “C’mon. A minute until halftime. Let’s go tinkle.”

  We stand in line for the bathroom near a bratwurst stand, which smells so good I have to dab at my saliva with my pretzel napkin from my pocket. The line is immense but quick-moving. I watch various people pass by in different jerseys from different players.

  As we advance closer to the door, with Bridget wiggling her knees because she has to pee so bad—I warned her not to get that extra-large hot cocoa, I warned her—I hear a
ruckus behind me and turn around.

  For about one millisecond, I think it’s Jimmy in a flannel-lined coat with a Carhartt cap on, screaming in a stranger’s face.

  But it isn’t.

  “Oh my God. That’s Jimmy’s brother,” I whisper into Bridget’s ear.

  “Man. That guy could use some anger management classes stat.”

  No kidding. Michael is snarling at another fan, and their respective friends are pulling them apart. The other fan, I notice, is wearing a FALCONI jersey. Of course. I can’t hear what they’re screaming, but I’ve got a feeling that whatever Michael is saying, it doesn’t fall under the category of brotherly love.

  That’s when Michael lets loose with a totally amateur ham-fisted suckerpunch that, much to my utter astonishment, connects with the face of the guy in the jersey. The guy goes staggering backward, a stream of blood pouring from his nose.

  “Oh fuck,” mutters Bridget, taking a tighter hold of my elbow in the crook of hers. “Don’t get involved.”

  But as Michael loads up for another punch, I realize what I need to be worried about right now hasn’t got anything to do with me or Jimmy or Michael. Because as the crowds part for the fight, the gap reveals little Annie standing there, watching it all. She gets shuffled off to the side by the commotion and lands on her tush on the hard, cold concrete. She doesn’t react to whatever pain she feels from the fall, but just stares, round-eyed, at her dad. The Bears fan lands a straight jab to Michael’s stomach, and Michael screams, “You motherfucker!” Which is when big tears spring to Annie’s eyes.

  I push through the crowds, shouldering my way through streams of people going in both directions, parting around the fight mostly, though some stop to egg them on. She is in the middle of a world of feet and boots and pants. Of snow and ice-melting salt and kitty litter. I kneel to the cold ground and scoop her up. As I wrap my arms her, she jumps, startled. Then her eyes soften as she recognizes me. With her on my hip, I hold my other hand out to keep the people away, and bring her to safety over by an out-of-order water fountain.