It was.
∞
About a week and many, many condoms later, we were holding a fairly makeshift baby shower at Davis’ house. Sam and Corinna needed their own place—right now. The situation between my mom and Sam had deteriorated considerably, with both of them lobbing insults at each other nearly constantly, and it was no good for Corinna and the baby. I was very sorry for my part in it; it sounded like full-scale warfare was imminent. My mom had vowed never to leave the house that she now swore she had always loved, and Sam self-righteously asserted that he didn’t think it was good for the baby to have to move. It had nothing to do with digging in to piss each other off, not at all.
If we could get either of them out, I didn’t care if the other one stayed in the house forever, because I was very happy where I was, thank you very much. Davis and I had gone from fairly chaste kissing to becoming overnight sex maniacs. We could not keep our hands off each other, to the point that I ended up straddling him in the front seat of the car because neither of us could wait. We were in the driveway. Like, twenty feet from the house—we couldn’t stop to go inside.
It wasn’t just the sex. I was smiling and giggling, he was not frowning, and I heard a lot more of his funny laugh. It was kind of like a switch had flipped between us. He was making his quiet jokes more often, cracking me up. And he was touching me, all the time. Like as I set down a tray of little sandwiches for the shower guests, his hand was on the back of my neck. Then it slid down to grip my ass and massage.
“We’re going to have people here, any minute,” I said, and tried not to moan as his hand moved briefly to the front.
“I know.” He bent and kissed me until I was breathless. “Just wanted to give you something to think about.”
As if my mind was ever very far away from that particular topic.
Lindy walked in with more food and smiled happily to see Davis groping me. “Lovebirds,” she cooed, and I froze. Nobody had said anything about love. I waited to see how Davis would react.
“Is Logan in the kitchen?” he asked her, then gave my butt one last squeeze and went to find him.
Lindy hugged me. “I’m so happy for you. I think you should have screwed him a long, long time ago.”
“You’re always one for the romance,” I told her. I pulled her to sit next to me on the couch in Davis’ little-used living room. “What’s going on? I texted you a bunch and I never heard back. First you wanted to talk to me, now you’re avoiding me?”
Lindy put her hand on her stomach, still flat as a board. “I’m getting all kinds of crap from our families.”
“Like what?”
“You know, about the future. They’re all worried that Logan and I are bringing a baby into a world where I don’t have a steady job and his doesn’t pay enough for us to live very well. They don’t think the catering business is going to take off. I’ve been working even harder trying to get things going, and trying to deal with my mom, Logan’s dad, all their butting-in.”
“Yeah? So that’s what has been bothering you?” I asked her. The doorbell rang, interrupting us. “Here they are. Ready?”
The upcoming Wednesday game meant that everyone had the day off, and we were expecting a crowd. There was a whole gaggle of Woodsmen Dames at the door, Rochelle, Marie, and even Denise, the one who had been BFFs with the Dame who got fired for stealing. She wasn’t anyone’s favorite due to her connection there, and I hadn’t expected her to show up. I didn’t blame anyone for coming early; I would have done the same thing at one point to get to go inside Davis’ house.
A little while later the guests of honor arrived, bringing a screaming Ida with them. Lindy took one look at the baby and booked back to hide in the butler’s pantry. Soon the house was full, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. I had decided not to make anyone play terrible games or force Sam and Corinna to wear stupid stuff, although it would have been fun to stick him in a hat made of all the ribbons from the gifts or something equally awful.
Davis was mostly hanging out with some of his teammates in the family room, but he had done his part, even trying a bit of small talk (“I’m Davis. Welcome to my house,” or to those he knew, a succinct “Hello,” and then he moved on). Lindy and Logan and I were pretty busy because I was insisting on helping her. We were in the kitchen listening to baby Ida wail in the other room with poor Corinna. “Maybe I should go in there to see if I can do something,” I said, glancing down the hall toward the room with the crying reverberating through the door.
“What if my baby is like that?” Lindy’s face was pale.
“Is that what you’ve really been worrying about?”
“That, and if I’ll be a failure as a mother.”
“You won’t be a failure! Of course you won’t be.”
“You know bad moms, Katie. Don’t let me act like that!”
I shook my head and laughed. “I know you’re going to be great,” I told her. “Look how much you care about me. Right? It’s not money or stuff, it’s love. That’s what makes a good mom, and that’s why I know, I’m absolutely sure, that you’ll be amazing.”
Speaking of a mom who wasn’t, Veronica came too, uninvited by me, and late so she could make a grand entrance. Unfortunately everyone was talking and eating so no one really saw her. As I watched through the arched doors in the kitchen, I could tell it pissed her off. I myself found it very annoying that she would crash a party meant celebrate Sam and Corinna and the baby. The one she had been calling “the ugly spawn” in her numerous texts to me.
Veronica gave up on the dramatic entrance and came over to where I was putting food on platters with Lindy. “Whose house is this?” she demanded. “I got the address from Corinna’s phone but there was no name. Why are you staying here?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, Ms. Bell,” Lindy said. “Great to have you back in Michigan.” My mom gave her a brief nod.
“This is Davis Blake’s house,” I explained. “He’s the quarterback of the Woodsmen.”
“You?” she asked me. “You, and the quarterback of the Woodsmen?” When I nodded, a little shyly, she shook her head in disbelief. “How did you manage that?”
“I got a job working for him, and things happened.” Four times last night, things had happened. I blushed thinking about it.
My mom didn’t look happy for me—she looked angry. “Well done, Katriona. You’ve landed yourself a bigger catch than I ever have.”
I calmly put down another toast point. “I don’t think about it that way. Davis isn’t a ‘catch’ to me.” She didn’t know me, not at all.
“Well, congratulations,” she snapped.
“Davis and Katie are good together,” Lindy noted. “They care about each other. They’re not interested in how they can use each other. Like other people are.” She stared pointedly at my mother.
“What?”
The scream echoed even through the noisy house and I left Lindy and my jealous mom and ran into the living room. Rochelle, the head cheerleader, was standing surrounded by a crowd of Dames. She held her phone out in front of her and stared at it as if it were poison.
“What’s going on?” I asked Sam, and then everyone was looking at their phones.
“I’m a ‘tipsy tyrant?’ I have no real friends? These aren’t real?” Rochelle pointed frantically at her breasts. “The fucking liars!”
“Oh, shit,” Sam muttered. I looked over his shoulder at his phone. With the giant font he was using, it was all too easy to read the headline of the article: “Taking an AX to the WOODSMEN!” And the picture right below it was of all the Woodsmen Dames knocking back shots of purple liquid. I reached around him and blew up the picture. “I was there that night! See? That’s my back and my butt! I was pouring out that nasty shot under the table. Scroll down!”
Sam was right in what he had said—oh, shit. The caption under the photo was a quote from the Woodsmen Family Handbook, “We expect all employees, including our players and Dames, to
comport themselves with the utmost propriety and decorum, remembering always that they represent the entire Woodsmen Family.” Then there was another picture of one of the players doing a keg stand. “The Woodsmen, always promoted as ‘The Family Team’ are really a bunch of sex-crazed drunks—and don’t forget their brushes with the law!” the lead sentence blared.
First were a few paragraphs about the players, mostly about all the women they were with, but a few of them had their issues over the years and every scandal got rehashed. Cesar had gotten a DUI. “In high school!” I heard him saying. “I learned my lesson! I’ve never done it again, and I never will.” A few more had cheated on their wives and girlfriends, and there were some grainy photos offered as proof. Probably the worst was the list of some of the things they had blown wads of money on, which I found pretty repulsive. It was their money to spend, but the article also compared how many underprivileged kids from our town could have gone to college with the money the new wide receiver had just spent on his boat. It was lot of kids.
Then the article moved on to the Woodsmen Dames. “Led by former Dame Trish Zornig-Ontstoken…” and there was a picture of Trish, red-faced and screaming at a bunch of cowering cheerleaders. She looked insane. “Family?” the article snarked. Oddly, there was nothing about how Abbi, the former Dame, had stolen from everyone, and to me that was a juicy story. But there was plenty about the sexual relationships between the cheerleaders and the players, between the cheerleaders and the owners and other people in the front office, and between the cheerleaders and other cheerleaders. There was a very graphic picture of Marie and Nicole. Sam blew that one up but I slapped his hand. They had blurred most of it out, anyway.
There was also plenty about their fights, jealousies, and backstabbing. Not one Dame came out smelling like a rose, and for Rochelle, it was truly character assassination. I mean, there was a grain of truth in everything, but it was so exaggerated! Sure, sometimes they fought and acted bitchy, but most of the Dames got along and a lot of them were very nice. It made it sound like they were all practically prostitutes, and that wasn’t true, not at all. And I was almost positive that Rochelle’s breasts were God-given.
“Oh, no,” I blurted out. The next picture down was of Sam getting dragged out of a bar by the police a few weeks ago, lip bleeding and clearly unable to walk. In big, bold letters it read, “EVEN THE MASCOTS?”
Sure, Sam had been the kind of guy who got into bar fights, and ripped down “no smoking” signs, and perhaps urinated where he shouldn’t have. I considered that he was now turning over a new leaf, but the article focused on his past. And, wow, when you put all his uh, hijinks together in one short paragraph, it really didn’t sound too good. Especially when that paragraph included a list of all the Woodmen Dames he had been with, ending with Corinna (there was a picture of her in her uniform, and it was all very hard to believe).
Sweet Jesus. “Nutty the Squirrel is played by local girl Katriona Bell.” “I’m a Chipmunk,” I said, very offended. I got increasingly angry as I read on. “What? It says we slept together!” I exclaimed to Sam. We looked at each other, horrified. “You wish,” we pronounced simultaneously. And then…there was Davis’ name. “After cutting a swath through the Woodsmen Dames, star quarterback (now injured) Davis Blake has moved onto—you may want to sit down—the mascot!” There was a picture of me, the worst picture I’d ever seen! “Oh, my Lord! That’s from my college ID card! How did they get that?” There wasn’t too much to say about me and Davis, except warnings to “stay tuned” for more developments in our relationship.
“Katie,” Sam said, nudging me. At the bottom of the article was another link: “How I Was Dumped by the Woodsmen—My Life as the Team Scapegoat!” The by-line was Abbi, the Woodsmen Dame who had been fired. It was obvious to me who the source was for most of the information in the “Ax the Woodsmen” article.
“Was it you too, Denise?” Rochelle screeched. “You were friends! Did you help her write this?” She pulled off her hoop earrings. “You bitch.”
“Watch out!” Sam yelled, and Rochelle kind of vaulted over the couch in her lovely dress and went right for Denise’s face.
There was a lot of weeping and wailing going on in the house as the party broke up. Most of the invited guests had been maligned by the article. I looked helplessly as they streamed for the door, Rochelle with an ice pack on her cheek.
Davis came to stand next to me. “Looks like Sam and Corrina got a lot of presents,” he commented, nodding at the pile of gifts.
I turned to stare at him. “Davis. Did you not notice what happened?”
He shrugged. “It got everybody out.”
I leaned my forehead into his chest and shook my head. Worst party ever. Hands down.
Chapter 16
“It’s not a big deal. It was just a lot all at once, that’s the only reason people are fucking ape shit.”
I was still kind of hiding on Davis’ body, hours after the party met its ignominious end.
“You’re used to people writing about you, speculating about you,” I told him, molded against his side as we lay in bed. “Most of us aren’t. And I still have the taste of vomit in my mouth from that line about me sleeping with Sam.”
“Everyone else has,” Davis commented.
There was no answer to that. “I hope it dies down. I can’t see how it will.”
He shifted. “I’m going down to my appointment with the surgeon in Detroit Tuesday morning. I’m going to bring Louise with me. We talked about it yesterday. We can fly back up here Tuesday night.”
I sat up on my elbows. “What? My grandma? Why?”
“I want her to see a different doctor down there. Maybe get a better idea why she’s in pain besides that she’s ‘malingering.’ That pissed me off. If you’re hurt, you’re hurt.” He scowled. I just stared at him. “You don’t need to worry about the cost. I’m paying,” he noted casually.
I couldn’t speak.
“I would have you come but you have practice and a game the next day,” he continued. “I’ll go with her to the appointment.”
I shook my head, kind of stunned, and getting teary-eyed. “How did you get her to agree to go?”
Davis frowned a little. “I told her how worried you were about her and she agreed right away.”
By then, I was fully crying. “This means a lot to me,” I said, sniffling.
“Yeah, well. They may not be able to help either.” He looked very uncomfortable. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Yes, it is. This is a very big deal to my grandma and to me.” The party, and the tabloid article, suddenly seemed a lot less important.
“I owe her. At your art show, she told me to try it with you. That maybe I had a chance.”
“She did?”
“Just don’t cry,” he kind of begged me.
“I’m not,” I told him, crying.
He turned me over onto my back and leaned over me and wiped my cheek with his hand. “Chipmunk, don’t cry. This is nothing.”
“You have a big heart,” I told him, and he bent his head and kissed me. “I’m not glad you hurt your knee, but I’m glad…I’m glad about us.”
“Yeah,” he told me. “Me too.”
He kissed me again, deeper and longer. I put my arms around his big body to hold him closer.
By Monday morning, I had gotten several emails from the team, and so had Davis. The PR department sent a set of guidelines about how to deal with the press and reporters contacting us with questions about the article. The front office sent out a long email disavowing everything that had been written and suggesting that they were pursuing “legal recourse.” Then the last email just listed a time and place for a meeting on Monday afternoon. A pit formed in my stomach after I read that one.
Right after his physical therapy, Davis went to his own meeting with most of the front office, some members of the ownership committee, and all the players. He said it was mostly reciting pieces of the handbook, telling th
em to clean up their acts. A few of the players specifically mentioned in the article had private meetings set up with the general manager, and that didn’t sound good for them.
“But they didn’t say anything to you about me?” I asked nervously.
He shook his head. “Not a word. Nothing about that swath through the Dames that I cut, either.” When I frowned, he laughed. “It’s all bullshit, chipmunk. It doesn’t matter at all.”
That didn’t make me any less nervous for my own meeting, though. I picked up Sam and we went together. I had thought we would be there with the Dames, but it was just the two of us with several executives, none of whom I had ever met before.
After it was over, I wished I had recorded it, or at least taken notes. I was in such a state of shock that I kept asking myself if what I had heard was true.
To summarize: Things were going to change at the Woodsmen organization. The “Ax the Woodsmen” article was just the latest in what they considered a string of “troubling” incidents relating to the on-field entertainers (that would include me and Sam). The Woodsmen needed to return to their core value of Family with a capital F. That was always supposed to be the guiding principle, but we had all strayed from that. The executives looked at us coldly. We apologized for our part everything.
Not only that, they told us, but times were changing. Tastes were changing.
“What does that mean?” Sam had asked. “It don’t sound good.”
They were working on re-branding, they explained. Bringing the team into the future. That meant changes in the Woodsmen Dames, who would be called “Woodsmen Dancers” next season. Changes in their uniforms, changes in personnel. The big change for us was that they had decided that the Woodsmen would not have mascots next season. Hank and Nutty would not return.
It was dead quiet in the big, cold conference room.
“That’s it,” Sam stated. “That’s it? This is my thirtieth year with the team, and that’s it.”
He would always have a place with the Woodsmen in some capacity, they told him. They were working on what that would look like.
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