One Good Play

by Meredith St. James

  Travis carefully tucked his phone back into a pocket—the furthest one away from me that time. "She should have come out by now," he mused.

  Since he knew Wren's tutoring schedule, Travis had planned our stakeout so that I could catch her as she was leaving for a shift. Neither of us had planned so far as to what would happen when I did, but that had been the plan nonetheless.

  A quick glance at my watch proved the time for her to leave had come and gone. Somehow, we'd missed her. It was possible Travis didn't know her schedule as well as he thought he did—though I'm pretty sure I'd seen him peeking at a copy of it on his phone a few times. Or, Wren just hadn't gone back to her room between her morning class and her early afternoon shift. Either way, I was disappointed. I leaned back against the base of the nearest shrub and closed my eyes.

  I must have drifted off because the next thing I knew Travis was shaking me. "Carter, we gotta go."

  I struggled to open my eyes against the sunshine beating down on us from between the branches of our hideout. "What's the rush?" I managed to mumble out.

  Several seconds passed with no answer. I forced my eyes to open the rest of the way so I could see what Travis was doing. His expression looked guilty. I was 99% sure we were about to get busted for stalking. Instead, he blurted out, "We're late!"

  "Late?" I checked my watch and cursed. It was nearly thirty minutes past time for us to be at the football stadium. The coaches would kick our asses once they realized neither starting nor second-string quarterback were there getting ready for the game.

  "Let's go," I said, shoving Travis towards the hole in the shrubs that he'd made from climbing in and out so many times during our stakeout.

  I burst out of the shrubs behind him, doing my best not to make eye contact with the dozen or so students that were staring. Travis, however, was unfazed by the attention.

  "Hey, quarterbacks! It's game day!"

  My head jolted towards the obnoxiously loud shout. I was pretty sure the owner of the irritating voice—a guy in too-tight sweatpants—was another student-athlete, though I couldn't remember what he played. Travis gave him a quick wave of acknowledgment until I elbowed him in the gut. I ushered him away, worried that sticking around any longer would make come across to the other guy as an invitation to chat. Neither of us had time for that shit.

  We jogged in the direction of the athletic complex that housed our football field. The closer we got to the stadium, the more my feet felt like they were dragging. It was the first time in my entire athletic career that I was late to anything football related. I just couldn't bring myself to care. It was bad form as the starting quarterback, and there was no doubt I was going to catch shit about it. It wasn't like they could bench me for the game, though. The second-string quarterback was literally beside me, just as late as I was. And even if that hadn't been the case, Travis still had a long way to go before he was ready to take over the starting position.

  "Carter Scott?" I hesitated a half-step as a vaguely unfamiliar man stepped out from the shadow of the building. Travis stopped directly beside me, the kid was loyal through and through. "Surprised you weren't inside already."

  "We're on our way in right now," I said, trying to sound more casual than I felt. It was never a good sign when a man in a suit was waiting around for me.

  I didn't like feeling ambushed. The man was holding a fancy leather folder, and I could see a recognizable sport's agent logo on the front of it. He wasn't making even the slightest effort to hide it. It wasn't the first time an agent had tried intercepting me before a game. It was a sleazy tactic meant to catch a player while they were riding a pre-game high.

  "I'm looking forward to seeing you kick some ass in there."

  "Thanks." I edged away from him, with Travis taking my lead and doing the same. My eyes stayed focused on the door we needed to go through, but I continued watching the man out of the corner of my eye.

  The man strolled towards me, obtuse to my efforts to get away from him, and reached into his pocket. "I hope we can sit down sometime, talk about your future." He held a business card out to me.

  I took the card, knowing it was the quickest way to get the guy to leave me alone. Travis and I were already late enough as it was. The guy tried to keep talking, even as Travis pulled our door open, nodding to the security guard stationed there. I darted in behind my teammate, relieved when the guard pulled the door shut behind me—effectively closing the guy out. I let his card flutter to the ground. There was no change in hell I'd be calling him. The rules governing how agents and college athletes could interact were no joke.

  "Are you gonna call that guy?" Travis' frown told me all I needed to know about his opinion on the matter.

  "Of course not," I scoffed. I pointed out to him the spot behind us where I'd tossed the card. "Even if I was going to sign pro, the last thing I'd want would be an agent skirting the lines of what's allowed."

  Travis stared at me strangely. His mouth gaped open in a way that reminded me of my childhood goldfish. Mentally, I ran back over what I'd said. Almost immediately, I realized my mistake. "Don't say anything," I warned. As far as our coaches knew, my post-grad plans involved professional league football. There was still plenty of time left before I planned to tell them otherwise.

  "Say anything about what?" he asked, his face going purposefully blank.

  I clapped him on the shoulder, equal parts friendly and warning. "Thanks." I wasn't sure I completely trusted him not to blab, even if by accident, but there was nothing else I could do about it but hope for the best. I'd deal with the fallout if it came.

  "We should probably get to the locker room."

  I checked my watch for what felt like the millionth time that day. "Good call."

  The two of us dodged a flurry of activity happening behind the scenes as people got ready for game day. Stares followed us as we hurried our way in the direction of the locker rooms. No one working on that end of things dared question why we were making our way in so much later than the other players.

  It was a completely different story when we tried to sneak quietly past the door to Coach Mack's office. I cursed under my breath when I heard him shout for us to get our asses in there.

  "Afternoon, Coach," Travis greeted him casually as he pointed us towards the chairs in front of his desk. It wasn't worth brokering an argument, so I sat. Travis followed.

  "Where the hell have the two of you been?" he growled. He gave each of us a once-over. "And why are you covered in dirt?"

  I kept myself silent. There was no good way to explain to my coach where we'd been. Travis, apparently, had no such qualms.

  "Well, Mack," Coach growled at the informal address. Travis cleared his throat and tried again, "Well, Coach Mack, we had a bit of a situation."

  "What kind of situation?" Coach leaned forward in his seat. "Wait." He held up a hand. "Could there be legal ramifications for whatever the two of you did?"

  Coach Mack was looking at me, not Travis, so I answered honestly. "In theory, yes."

  He groaned so loud it echoed through the office. "Don't tell me, then. I don't want to be culpable for whatever you two dimwits got yourselves into. Just get your asses in the locker room. And don't show up late to my field ever again," he ground out from between clenched teeth.

  Coach flicked his wrist, signaling us to go. Travis and I jostled each other in our hurry to get out. Neither of us wanted to wait around and give the man a chance to change his mind. If we won our game, we'd probably never hear another word about showing up late. If we lost, there'd be hell to pay at the next practice. I could already practically feel my lungs burning from the suicides we'd no doubt be forced to run.

  The locker room was loud enough that Travis and I were able to enter mostly undetected. The few heads that raised nodded in our direction, but otherwise we were left alone. A lot of guys were shit talking, a pre-game tradition, but one that I never took part in. I passed them up in favor of a quiet moment at my locker.

>   Travis opened his locker next to mine. He turned to me and lowered his voice, "Do you think Wren will come to the game?"

  "Why would she? She hasn't come to any of the other ones." I pulled my dirty t-shirt off and stuffed it into my locker.

  "Yeah, but this week Rose had an extra ticket and invited her."

  The cleats I'd just picked up clattered to the ground. "Did she say yes?" My voice sounded desperate even to my own ears.

  "I'm not sure," Travis admitted with an apologetic shrug. "When she mentioned it to me she hadn't decided. But maybe she wants to come see you play." I had a feeling he'd only said it to make me feel better.

  "She probably wouldn't come see me play even if I paid her," I muttered crossly.

  Time to get my head in the game.

  16

  Wren

  "You can't go to a home football game wearing black." Rose looked genuinely put out by the horror that I might not wear our school color—a pretty, but unusual, shade of dark green.

  "Black is technically one of our school colors," I tried to reason.

  "But it's not the one we wear." Rose stamped her foot on the hard dorm floor. "Never in a million years did I think dressing you for the game would be harder than convincing you to go in the first place."

  Her dramatics earned an eye roll from me. "It's a football game, not a fashion show."

  The amount of time we'd spent arguing over my wardrobe choices had started to get ridiculous. Nearly every item from my closet had been discarded to the bed or the floor. Apparently, none of the regular clothes I owned were worthy of front row football seats.

  "Just wear the jersey," Rose huffed, tossing it at my face.

  She was an awfully demanding little thing for someone who was three years younger than me. I decided the easiest thing, though, was just to indulge her. She'd been kind enough not to press me with questions about my relationship with her brother. Sometimes she stared at me like she was bursting at the seams to ask about it, but she'd stayed mercifully quiet on the subject.

  "Are you gonna leave while I change?" I asked when she didn't offer to give me any privacy. She shook her head as she stayed resolutely standing in the doorway.

  "And give you a chance to change into another boring shirt instead? Not a chance." She crossed her arms. I was starting to realize that was her way of trying to appear more serious.

  What could I say? I was used to dressing for comfort, not for showing off. "Suit yourself," I smirked.

  I shimmied my arms out from the long sleeved black shirt I'd had on, and then pulled it from over my head. My sheer black bra popped into view, offering up a healthy dose of cleavage to Rose's horror.

  "Ew, no! Boobs!" she shrieked as she ran from the room.

  My laughter filled the entire dorm, following her out. It took me a minute to catch my breath so I could actually pull the jersey on.

  After I had, I went to the mirror to examine myself. My cheeks were flushed and my hair hadn't been done yet, so it was flying all over the place. That, coupled with the sight of Carter's jersey...it was exactly how I'd looked when I'd snuck back to the dorms the morning after having marathon sex with Carter.

  It wasn't like I'd needed to steal the jersey from his closet. I'd done the walk of shame in the night before's outfit a couple times before, so it wasn't like it was a foreign concept to me. I think I'd assumed taking his jersey to wear would give me an excuse to take it back to him later, but that plan had gone to hell on an express train after our weird showdown at The Hub.

  Carter had been avoiding me. At first, I'd thought it was a fluke. Like maybe his schedule had been busy, and that was why I didn't see him hanging around campus in the normal spots at the normal time. When he'd missed not one—but two of our scheduled tutoring sessions? I'd finally had to accept that he was actively staying away. The idea of showing up at his house to confront him was too embarrassing, which was why I'd reluctantly accepted Rose's proposal to join her at a football game. The chances were slim to none that Carter would even know I was there but I was getting desperate.

  "Well, I'm not a lesbian," Rose announced as she returned to the room.

  "You're just now realizing that?" Normally I hated to assume anything when it came to that kind of thing, but the girl literally spent 90% of our time together talking about dicks. The male anatomy didn't just fascinate her—she was obsessed.

  "Moving on," she said, waving her hands wildly around like that could make the topic disappear. "I forgot to mention my parents are going to the game with us."

  The amused smile that had been on my face fell instantaneously. "What?"

  "Please don't hate me," she begged.

  "You never said anything about your parents." I was going to throw up. Or faint. Maybe both. Possibly at the same time. Going to a football game with Carter's entire family had not been on my agenda for the day. Or any day. In fact, the best case scenario was that I would never have to get closer to them than seeing their pictures on Rose's walls.

  "My parents are great. I promise it won't be weird at all."

  Oh, hey, I just one-night-standed your son. No worries, I'm commitment-phobic but I've got a heart of gold. Nice to meet you?

  "Nope, they'll hate me. I'm not going." I crossed my arms so she would know I was serious.

  She rolled her eyes at me. My serious face didn't even phase her. "I'm pretty sure my parents only hate Hitler and global warming. I think you're safe. And if it makes you feel better, I haven't mentioned anything to them about the fact that you totally boned my brother."

  I let out a gasp that would make a nineteenth-century nun proud. I fingered the hem of the oversized jersey. "We are so not going there."

  "Listen here," she waved her pointer finger in my face, "You're going or I'm going to spread a rumor all over this campus that you went off to Vegas and eloped with my brother. And I'll be so convincing that there won't be a single guy on campus willing to look your way for the next four years. So, you're going. The end."

  My jaw went slack. Rose was normally so hard to take seriously, she was like a kitten. But apparently, she was one kitten who knew when to draw out the claws. I pictured trying to explain to my dad why I had an elopement rumor running rampant over campus.

  Hell no.

  Knowing I'd already lost, I grumbled out, "What time are we meeting them?"

  "Actually—"

  My heart plummeted somewhere down to the region of my feet as a whimsical, rhythmic knock came from the general direction of our front door. I shot Rose the dirtiest look I could muster. She half-heartedly shrugged before bounding off to loudly and excitedly greet her parents.

  Seeing no other choice, I stepped out from my bedroom. Mr. and Mrs. Scott both turned to me in synchronicity with horror-movie-like precision. I wondered if that was reason enough to flee the uncomfortable situation I'd gotten myself into. Behind them, Rose did that weird finger to eye thing that told me she was watching me.

  "Hi." I attempted to smile, though I wasn't convinced it didn't come off looking more like a demented scowl.

  Mrs. Scott looked nervously at her husband. It looked like she was considering the fleeing option as well.

  "Don't worry, she's just nervous. Give her a few minutes and she'll prove she's an actual functioning human being," Rose announced cheerfully to the room.

  My cheeks heated. I attempted to kick my manners up into high gear. "I'm sorry, you all just happened to take me by surprise. Rose didn't mention I'd be meeting her parents today."

  It didn't escape my notice that Mr. Scott elbowed Mrs. Scott. "I'd say her nerves have more to do with us being Carter's parents than Rose's," he said out of the side of his mouth. I was pretty sure he'd only meant to say it loud enough for his wife to hear, but his voice carried.

  "David," she whispered.

  "Yes?"

  She hooted out a big, whopping laugh. "Everyone heard you, dear." It was Mr. Scott's turn for flushed cheeks. His wife patted the side of his face fondly.<
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  Mrs. Scott approached me with arms wide open. Before I could react, she was wrapping me up in a hug too familiar for two people that had just met. It felt so much like a mother's hug. Emotion welled up in my throat. Maybe she felt it because she squeezed me extra hard then.

  "Carter has told us so much about you," she gushed. "Rose, too, of course. But Carter was the one that blabbed if you can believe that."

  "They've both told me a lot about the two of you, as well." It was the only thing I could think to say. My brain was buzzing over the fact that Carter had been talking to his parents about me. And talking about me a lot, apparently.

  "He said you were pretty." She wistfully touched a stray strand of my hair. Her voice got quiet when she said, "I would love redheaded grandchildren."

  "Seriously, Mom?" Rose groaned. She intercepted the weird exchange, pulling me with her in the direction of the bathroom.

  "Where are you going?" her mom pouted.

  "To finish helping Wren get ready, and to try convincing her not to bail on us now that you've both been sufficiently creepy."

  The sounds of their protests became muffled as Rose slammed the bathroom door with us on the other side of it. She pressed her back against it and sagged like she was exhausted. Then, she took a deep breath and collected herself.

  "Okay," she said, "I may not have sufficiently prepared you for spending time with my parents."

  "No kidding?" I joked.

  I watched with trepidation as she plugged in a curling iron. My version of doing my hair usually only went as far as brushing it, and sometimes I even skipped that. I straightened it sometimes, but never would I have imagined doing that for a football game. Even if we ended up going somewhere afterward, surely the wind would destroy whatever work Rose was preparing to do.

  "Here's the thing, my parents are weird even on a good day. Not, like, lock you in our basement as a pet kind of weird. More like, run-of-the-mill, way too involved, weird. But I think a lot of it is just because they adopted us and feel like that means there's more pressure to prove they like us."