“I hit a growth spurt early, around fourteen. Football was really the only thing I was good at, and I loved to play. Once that growth spurt happened, I got better on the pitch. A year later, I got myself recruited by the academy in Munich, and after that…”
“After that, you dominated.”
I bite back a grin. “Well, yeah.”
“You’re fucking ridiculous,” she says.
“You don’t seem to mind.”
Rachel takes a sip of beer. “I don’t.”
Her eyes latch onto mine. A beat passes, then another. The space between us vibrates. Tightens. With the sun warm on my shoulders and the taste of the beer on my tongue and Rachel’s eyes on my eyes, I feel a contentment so wide and so deep it scares the shit out of me.
I am in over my head with this girl. I know it. I feel it.
I don’t know what to do. I want this girl so badly it hurts. She’s leaving, she isn’t the forever girl I’m looking for, but none of that seems to matter when she smiles at me while we’re talking football stats, or she looks at me with such honesty and such warmth I feel like I finally found one of my people.
I feel like I finally found my person. The person. And I did it just by being myself. My dorky, beer-obsessed self.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I try to calm down by focusing on the food. It smells delicious; the gambas al ajillo—shrimp with garlic sauce—sizzles in its small clay pot, and the freshly shaved jamón ibérico is so paper thin it looks like it will literally melt in your mouth. There’s some charred octopus, too, and a plate of tiny blackened peppers, along with wedges of manchego cheese.
“So,” Rachel says focusing her gaze on her beer. She’s worrying the top edge of her koozie with her thumbnail, her movements jerky, unsteady, like her fingers are shaking.
Holy shit, did our little staring contest overwhelm her, too? Is she feeling this connection we have as much as I am? “This big family of yours—do they all live in Germany?”
I wipe my mouth, swallowing a pepper before I respond. Her eyes flick unevenly between my face and her plate, like she’s uncertain. Afraid.
That makes two of us.
I clear my throat. “They do. In the same town, as a matter of fact. No one ever really leaves—they like to be close to one another.”
She nods. “They must miss you.”
“They do. But I try my best to stay in touch—I talk to my sister a couple times a week, and I call my mum a good bit, too. They’re really lovely people.”
“Sounds like you guys are close. Like things are easy, if that makes sense, between you. It’s awesome that you guys have such a great relationship.”
I shrug, offering Rachel the plate of manchego. She grins and takes a slice.
I almost drop the plate and take her face in my hands and kiss her right then.
I am so beyond fucked.
“Didn’t used to be,” I say. “We went through a rough patch—a really rough patch—for a couple years there.”
“Really?” She looks at me. “I would never guess that. You just seem so…nice, I guess.”
“I was—what’s the expression?—on my family’s shit list since I was fourteen.”
“That sounds intense. What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I wash down some jamón with a gulp of beer. My heart is pounding, and I can’t get it to stop. “My family always wanted me to stay in the town where I grew up. My mum hoped I would work for my aunt’s accounting firm. But I wanted to play football. I worked hard at it. Really fucking hard. And when the national German training club came knocking when I hit that growth spurt, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I moved to Munich to train, and I haven’t lived at home since. It took a while for everyone—my mum and my brothers and sister—to forgive me for that. They were so disappointed.”
Rachel’s staring at me now. Her eyes bore into mine. I feel like I’ve struck a nerve. “But they did forgive you.”
“Yes.” I finish my wine. “We get on well enough now. They know I’m happy, and that things are better for me this way.”
“That takes balls,” she says, “to go after what you want, even if it crushed your mom.”
I look back at her. Her eyes are darker now—thoughtful. “But then I would’ve been crushed if I didn’t go after my dream. It was selfish, yeah, but I think you’ve got to be, especially when it comes to the big stuff. If I’d gone the accountant route, I’d be miserable. And I know my mum never wanted me to be miserable, no matter how much they would’ve loved having me at home.”
“Wow,” she says, gaze flicking to her plate. She smiles, but it’s this sad, tight thing, not at all what I’m used to seeing on her. “Wow, that’s—that’s amazing, Fred. I admire you for being so brave. I wish…”
I wait for her to finish her thought, but she doesn’t.
I wish, more than anything, I knew what was going on inside her head. As fun and as funny and spontaneous as she can be, there’s this heaviness about her—a heaviness she carries around. I’ve caught glimpses of it, and I suspect it has something to do with her mother.
The fact that I so badly want her to let me in is terrifying. Thrilling.
“Hey,” I say, softly. “Rachel, are you all right?”
She shakes her head, even as she says, “Yeah. Yes. Sorry. I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately.”
“Like?”
“Like being damned to hell, Tournament of Kings-style. I wonder if I’ll be turned into a vampire after I die.”
It’s a shameless attempt to change the subject, and we both know it. I want to know what’s bothering her, but she clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. I mean, who the hell am I to push her on it?
“Tournament of Kings?” Yet another pop-culture reference I don’t get. Being with Rachel is making me feel like I’ve lived under a bloody rock my whole life. “Can’t say I’ve seen it.”
That gets her attention. She looks up at me in disbelief. “Okay, I kind of get how you don’t know who Christian Grey is, because you’re a guy or whatever. But you haven’t seen Tournament?”
“Well, I’ve heard of it—some of the lads on the squad are always talking about this show where a king murders his wife, you know, the queen, and then he runs off to sleep with, like, all her sisters or something—or was it nuns? Maybe witches? I don’t know. And then the queen comes back from the dead as a vampire and drowns him in his own shit or something? That sound right?”
“It was gargoyle shit, but yeah, that’s the show,” she replies, laughing. “It’s so good. You should definitely check it out.”
She’s grinning again. I want to keep that grin there, make it bigger.
The idea pops into my head, fully formed, in the space of a single heartbeat.
I should let our time together end when I drop off Rachel at her dorm in Madrid. I should get the check and get out of here before she makes another Quidditch reference or charms more of my fans.
I should.
I should.
I really fucking should.
But it’s too late. It was too late the moment she picked up the phone this morning and started talking hat tricks.
“Want to watch it together?” I blurt. “At my flat, I mean. Tournament of Kings. Maybe have a few more beers or something? Could be fun.”
“There’s a lot of boobs in it,” she replies, teasing. “I don’t know if you’ll like it.”
“Boobs? Pssssh. Who likes those?”
Biting her bottom lip, she studies my face. A beat passes, then another. My pulse goes wild.
This was a bad idea. Nothing good can come of extending our day together. If she comes over, all bets are off. I don’t trust myself with her. Not anymore.
“All right,” she says. “Let’s do it.”
My heart seizes. Holy shit.
Holy shit. How am I going to keep it together if she’s next to me on the sofa? Do I even want to keep it together?
“All right,” I
manage, sucking in a breath. “You free tonight? Unless you’re getting sick of me…”
“I am,” she says at last. “I mean, I’m free tonight, not that I’m getting sick of you.”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so high, or so terrified, after a victory before—and that’s coming from a guy who won a league title last year.
When the waiter comes, I hand him a huge Euro bill and tell him to keep the change. He asks for a photo, and, hyped up on adrenaline, I wrap an arm around his shoulder and ask him to bring all the staff looking at us through that window over there so they can be in the picture, too.
Cracking a dirty joke in Spanish, Rachel charms them all as she snaps the photos. Of course.
She’s charmed me, too. Charmed me so thoroughly I’m breaking one rule after the next with her. I can’t keep throwing caution to the wind like this. I’ve got to draw a line somewhere, or I’m going to get burned.
The thing is, though—it’s too easy not to think about that burn when you’re having so much damn fun playing with fire.
Chapter 6
Rachel
It’s just past four when we leave Salamanca. Tucked into the warmth of my heated seat, I watch over my shoulder as the sun ducks behind the city’s pale walls, leaving behind a wide-open sky of blue and purple and amber.
My heart swells inside my chest. I feel…really full, I guess. Like I can’t possibly process all the awesomeness that happened today. The soccer fans and Fred’s giant, genuine smile and the gorgeous light that floods the city during the day, making a silvery mirror out of the river and burnishing every wall and building a uniquely Spanish shade of orangey-red.
We hit the highway, and I turn back to look at Fred. He’s driving with one enormous hand on the wheel, the other on the gear shift. He took off his hat, and his hair is a wreck, sticking up every which way.
He couldn’t care less.
God help me, I like this guy. A lot.
He is handsome and huge and hilarious. It’s been a struggle not to touch him all day. I want to. Badly. So freaking badly.
I don’t know what his invitation to go back to his place means. If it were an invitation from any other guy, I’d think for sure we were going to make out on his couch tonight.
Fred, however, told me he isn’t interested in that kind of thing. Sure, we’ve been doing a lot of flirting. And every once in a while he’ll spear me with this soft, almost tortured look that’s got my stomach doing this weird little somersault move. But there hasn’t been any of the touchy-feely fun between us that usually happens when people are interested in each other. Fred’s just been so open and honest with me about everything—his family, his past, his passions—that I have to assume he’s honest about keeping things friendly between us, too.
So, yeah. Maybe he really does want to watch Tournament. Maybe he doesn’t want to be lonely, so he invited me over as a friend to keep him company—in a platonic way, of course.
I’m onboard with that. I guess.
“You all right?” Fred asks. He’s turned his head to glance at me.
I blink.
Fuck, I’ve been staring at him. I look away, quickly, my cheeks burning.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry. Just, um. Thinking.”
He readjusts himself in his seat, clearing his throat. I notice the knuckles on his hand—the one on the steering wheel—are white.
A shiver darts up my spine. I try not to suck in a breath. We’re having such a great day together. If he finds out how badly I want to touch him, it will just scare him off. I don’t want to go home to an empty dorm room tonight any more than Fred wants go to home to an empty apartment. Not when I could have some more beers with him, maybe shoot the shit about the match he has coming up next weekend.
“Thinking about what?” he says.
“Thinking about today,” I say. “How much fun I had.”
He grins. “It’s not over yet, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I’m glad you’re coming over.”
“Me too.”
I mean that. I enjoy talking to Fred, picking his brain. What he said about the problems he had with his mom—that obviously cut really close to home. I wasn’t lying when I said I admired his courage.
But Fred made it sound so simple, this choice between his happiness and his parents’. Between his dreams and theirs. It doesn’t hurt that he absolutely knocked it out of the park with his football career; hard to argue that wasn’t the right choice when he’s taking his team to glory and making millions while doing it.
I can’t help but wonder if the choice was easy—well, easier—for Fred because he’s a guy. I’ve noticed it’s easier for guys to be selfish; most haven’t been raised as people-pleasers, or care takers, like I have. Like most girls I know have. It’s almost like dudes are expected to go out into the world and lose touch with their parents and do their own thing, while girls are expected to stay close to home, to take their family’s needs into consideration before their own.
Not to say the choice isn’t hard for everyone. But the fact that Fred’s a guy, and that he has siblings to help bear the brunt of the hurt his decisions cause his parents, is really a game changer.
I’m jealous. Jealous he made his choice and that it worked out for him.
I’m scared, I guess, that whatever choice I make won’t work out. There’s always a chance of failure, of regret. What if I go the plastic surgery route, like mom wants me to, and I turn into one of the appearance obsessed bullshitters who populate her office? What if I flunk the MCAT, or I just generally suck at surgery?
And what if I do sports medicine, but it doesn’t pay well and I’m broke forever, or mom and dad disown me and I’m lonely without them, and I spend all my time wishing I’d listened to mom and done the surgery thing?
What if, like mom tells me, I’m not living up to my full potential by going after something as unexciting as authenticity or a healthy work-life balance?
I know I’ll never get the guarantee I’m looking for—the guarantee that things will work out. But damn if I wouldn’t give my left arm for it.
Damn if I wouldn’t give anything for just a smidge of Fred’s courage. His certainty.
No wonder I’ve felt so great all day. I didn’t realize just how heavy all this stuff was until I had to pick it up again after setting it down. After getting lost in Fred and his laugh and those squinty eyes of his and his dreams of playing seeker for a Quidditch team.
Needless to say, I’m excited about tonight, even if nothing is going to happen between me and Fred. I don’t need to get naked to have fun with him. We could just talk, and I know I’d have a great time.
But getting naked with him—I mean, yeah, that would be awesome, too.
***
I step inside the warm quiet of Fred’s apartment behind him. I’m immediately hit by a clean smell—like freshly laundered sheets and just-washed floors. I know then that I’m in a real man’s apartment; a literal and figurative world away from my ex-boyfriend’s dorm room, which smelled like feet and was packed with the detritus of three sophomore dudes with questionable hygiene habits.
He helps me with my coat, and then I follow him into the kitchen. It’s huge, with a massive, granite-topped island and a fancy French range that’s as big as my entire dorm room.
Like the rest of his apartment, the kitchen is spotless.
“Fred, this is gorgeous,” I say, allowing him to help me out of my coat. His finger brushes the nape of my neck. The muscles in the small of my back tighten; I ignore the throb of heat between my legs.
“Thanks,” he replies. His voice is weirdly gruff. “Are you hungry?”
I can’t meet his eyes, but I notice his cheeks are flushed. Is that from the cold? Or is it from me?
Not like it matters. I can’t touch Fred tonight, and he can’t touch me, either.
I just…I guess didn’t think the chemistry between us would be so intense. I didn’t think Fred was any diff
erent from other guys I’ve admired but couldn’t have.
Here’s the thing, though—Fred is different, in every way imaginable. He gets me. He likes what I like. He genuinely gives a shit about getting to know me. He genuinely doesn’t give a shit about what anyone else thinks. Connecting with someone like this is uncharted territory for me. I’m not entirely sure how to navigate what’s going on here.
“A little,” I say, even though I’m so on edge—I’m so freaking turned on—the thought of eating makes my stomach hurt.
“Shall we order in some dinner? There’s a place around the corner—”
“Why don’t we just cook here?” I say.
He looks at me like I just suggested we eat each other for dinner. “Cook? Here?”
“Yeah. Why not? You’ve got this gorgeous kitchen that’s begging to be used. Have you never cooked before?”
“I used to, back home. I loved being in the kitchen with my mum. But cooking for one just isn’t the same, I suppose. And football just keeps me—”
“So busy. You keep saying that. But you’re not busy tonight. So, let’s cook.”
He grins, and we finally look at each other.
Jesus, those eyes. I can’t.
“I don’t have much—some pasta in the pantry and maybe some tomato sauce, I think—but all right,” he says. “I’m in.”
***
Fred
As luck would have it, I’ve got pasta, red sauce and a fresh block of parmesan cheese in the fridge. I’m so elated, I’d kiss my housekeeper if she were here; she always keeps my flat stocked with the essentials I need to get through the week.
Rachel sets her beer on the counter and dips a spoon into the pot on the stove, fishing out a squiggle of pasta.
“Don’t think it’s ready yet,” she says, biting into a noodle. “Needs another minute or two.”
I look up from the parmesan I’m grating. “So you’re the master of al dente now?” I say.
“I am. I mean, I know my way around a packet of ramen, and ramen is practically the same thing as pasta, so…”
Lessons In Losing It (Study Abroad Book 4) Page 7