by Leslie North
The video started: field view, late day, Giants’ G on the opposition helmet.
Christ. It was last Sunday’s game. Snap one. From his perspective.
“How did you…? What did you…?”
“Sterling allowed me to mount a camera prior to the game. Tiny, high-def, panoramic. Best that money can buy. I thought you might have broken it when you slammed your helmet down in the hallway.”
A subtle dig at his temper? He would never apologize for his passion. Never.
“The NFL owns this footage, by the way,” she added. “It doesn’t leave this room.”
“And sound?”
“No mic. So I won’t know how many times you cursed me out.”
Marcus’s mouth twitched into a smile. At least twenty. As much as he had felt the intrusion of the camera and would have liked to know it was there, the clarity and scope of the video was mind-boggling—like nothing he’d ever seen. He could even make out the sweat beads on the opposing players. His eyes trained all the way through the opening offensive play, a boost to his confidence. It had been an up-tempo, running back blast between the offensive guard and tackle for a gain of fifteen.
“I have the data your helmet sensors picked up from the game—your pattern of eye shifts, blinks per minute, the angle of your vision at any given time. Today we’re going to run through virtual scenarios that challenge what your eyes take in to see if we can elevate your mental game. Then I’ll overlay the new data and we’ll see where we are. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“On the next play, pay attention to the camera’s angle. It was mounted dead-center above your face mask so it gives a good indication of your visual focus.”
He watched the play through, almost as if it was new footage. Of course, he had lived it, but it was like rewinding a moment of your life you barely remembered just to relive the intensity. When the play died, another eight-yard gain, she stopped the footage and rewound.
“What did you notice?”
“The Giants’ defensive line makes too much money. That was pathetic.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Watch again.”
Claire rewound the recording. This time, Marcus glanced around at the widest angles. The first time, he’d seen Hewitt, Keane, and Chagai, but he missed a wide open Wolcott downfield.
“I had a guy open.”
“Number sixteen…”
“Wolcott.”
“Wolcott was in your immediate left sight line. Now watch the next three plays.”
Marcus did, hyper-focused now on his sight patterns. Fucked if he ever looked close left.
“Shit. How long have I been doing that?”
“Most likely it was a habit developed in your early days of football. Out of sixty-eight plays Sunday, this deficiency in your sight line came up thirty-one times. A full forty-five percent. These patterns can be hard to break. The first step is awareness.”
“Give me something else.” The new knowledge electrified his nerves. He sat forward on his cushion, anticipating another secret.
The screen faded to black then blinked to life late in the third quarter. In the far corner, she had overlaid the visual with game stats. He zeroed in on the down and the game clock to refresh his memory. He recalled the running play seconds before it unfolded on the screen.
“Six blinks. The average is fifteen to twenty per minute. Being on the high end of that on a fifteen-second play given the conditions of lighting and grass, isn’t out of the norm. Now the next one.”
She forwarded to the start of the next play. An incomplete pass.
“Take a guess how many blinks.”
“Ten.”
“Twenty.”
A graphic superimposed over the stopped recording compared the number of blinks during running plays versus passing plays. On nearly every passing play, his blinks doubled.
“But that’s involuntary, right? Nothing I can do.”
“Not entirely. If you’re aware it’s happening, you can start to minimize. And we can look at ways for the tech to mitigate the light reaching your eye without obstructing your vision.”
“Why do I do that?”
“Most likely on a passing play the angle of your head or helmet changes. You take in more stadium light—or in the case of day games, sunlight. I’d be willing to bet this stat is drastically different on games with precip or cloudy conditions.”
The next graphic showed the accumulated time lost on the game clock to blinks: forty-two seconds. In NFL time, almost an entire possession.
“Unbelievable. What other numbers do you have?”
“Seems like I recall someone saying numbers aren’t the way to greatness.”
“That someone knew nothing of your witchcraft.”
Claire laughed, a rich string of hiccupping notes that filled the room. The sound eased his blood pressure and gave him the space to be himself. He wanted to hear more, so he pushed more. If this tech playground was what gave her joy, he wanted to run free in this space, if only for a little while.
They ran through the game, start to finish. This time, Marcus put himself squarely in the game, engrossed in eye movement and blinks. He improved his data considerably, enough that Claire’s enthusiasm proved infectious.
“What else can this tech do?”
“In case you ever play in Barrow, Alaska.”
She ran a second quarter down, his best of the game—a thirty-five-yard bomb—but this time superimposed near-white–out conditions on the field, complete with puffs of intermittent smoke emitting from the helmets of other players.
“Damn, that got polar.”
“You blinked seventeen times on that play.”
“Wind chill.” He had played football for seventeen years. Never had he had so much fun running through tapes. “What’s next?”
From behind him, the sound of mad typing skills on a laptop.
Same play. This time, locusts replaced snowflakes.
“Awww, man. I gotta close my mouth. That’s nasty.”
“No, this is nasty.”
Same play. Raining Keane heads.
Marcus removed his helmet and devolved into body-racking laughs. His stomach cramped around his recent meal.
In a million years, he wouldn’t have guessed this side of Claire Wynifred existed. Her laughter was infectious, innocent, uninhibited. He still didn’t believe her tech would make much of a difference, but he enjoyed the process. Too much.
She swiped beneath the heavy makeup at her eyes in her recovery, slow to catch her breath.
Tension effectively broken, he dared to ask.
“Tell me what you wanted to say last night, Claire.”
Her joyous expression sobered. He didn’t want the looseness between them to slip away, so he made his way to her, trying to hold onto their newfound connection.
“Tell me,” he prompted again, this time a whisper.
She pressed her lips together, much as she had the day before. A tell when she grew nervous. The room grew quiet but for the faint hum of her computers.
“I think you’re used to women falling all over themselves to be with you, so if you blamed the kiss on me, you wouldn’t have to admit you felt something, too. And maybe away from this place, this situation, I didn’t measure up. Putting the kiss on me absolved you of poor judgement. And you’re careful about letting people close because of who you are and where you came from.”
“You wanted to say all that?”
Claire nodded.
“Mostly insightful. Partly wrong. But you missed the real truth.”
“What’s that?”
“That I was waiting for you to kiss me first.”
She broke eye contact. Her gaze slipped low and lingered on his lips before breaking free to somewhere beyond his shoulder, somewhere reason resided.
“To feed your ego?”
Her words should have sparked annoyance. They didn’t. The question was hushed, a bit brea
thless, barely there. From a place of curiosity, not judgment.
“To be sure. My entire football career, I’ve been surrounded by yes people. People who let me have my way, who don’t challenge what I say or do or think. People who aren’t honest. I learned a long time ago to let people come to me.”
“I can’t do this. We shouldn’t do this.”
“It’s just a kiss, Claire. Not a free-agency trade.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Marcus chuckled. “All right. It’s not a catastrophic systems failure.”
“That I understand.”
She leaned in and kissed him.
He expected a chaste union, something befitting her careful personality, her calculated and organized world. What he got took him from playfully amused to rock hard and panting for more faster than it took her to coax his tongue free. She entered into the kiss with the poise of a center, the fire of a punt returner, and the commitment of a seasoned veteran.
With great effort, Marcus pushed his need away. This wasn’t about sex, and she wasn’t just any woman who had drifted into his world. She was Claire, a brilliant mind in a spellbinding package who believed she was unworthy of him. This was about proving her wrong. Always proving her wrong.
He deepened the kiss, wondering how long she would allow him free rein inside the warm, sweet playground of her mouth, praying for ten seconds then ten more. He ached to devour her, knowing this might be all she would ever allow but wanting her to believe, without question, she was desired.
Almost as soon as the kiss began, it ended. She withdrew, her lips swollen and glossy.
And he felt something. Something not tied to his gratefulness for her help on the field or the trip he got when unattainable women felt the rush of kissing someone famous for the first time. He felt something completely unrelated to the game of football.
Marcus felt himself.
And no debilitating injury or bad press or catastrophic failure between end zones could rival the terror in that. He had come from nothing; he was still nothing when the game was taken away. By younger, healthier players. By owners who didn’t share his vision. By a woman who had the power to strip him of his instincts and the image he had created.
“I have practice.” Not for an hour, but she didn’t have to know that. He grabbed his helmet and trash and headed for the door. “I’ll see you.”
Claire nodded, her lips pressed into a thin, defeated line.
He couldn’t leave her that way—damned near killed him—so he smiled, hoping she would do the same.
She didn’t.
6
Every Wednesday, the road leading into the practice facility turned into food-truck row. Sterling encouraged the team to partake, to mix with fans who had a special invitation to come out to watch practice, and to give back to the local businesses for their unyielding support.
Marcus had the shittiest practice in recent memory. He couldn’t blame Claire—he always took responsibility, even when poor outcomes clearly fell to other sources—but he did blame the way he handled the kiss. Every spare thought not on the game returned to her.
After showers, Keane suggested they hit up their favorite hoagie truck. Lobsters flown in overnight from Maine. Best sausage on wheels. But even the rare sun peeking through the early January clouds did little to brighten Marcus’s mood.
Until he saw Claire.
“What the hell is she doing?” said Keane.
Marcus’s first spicy bite of Italian meatball on sourdough stalled in his mouth. Beyond a few statues and architectural features of the nearby park, under a thick canopy of two-hundred-year-old American elms, Claire contorted her body into unbelievable yoga poses, all supported on one foot like a plastic flamingo staked in a lush lawn. Her clothes were understated, earthy grays and browns, decidedly un-Claire-like in their ordinariness. Despite her attire’s full-length, its snug fabric left little of her trim, lithe body to the imagination.
Keane gave his elbow a shove. “You got a little…” He swiped his finger across his chin.
“Sauce?”
“Drool, my friend.”
“Come on.” Still, Marcus touched the back of his hand to his chin. In case.
In one moment, Claire leaned forward, hand to the earth, ankle curled to the branches above. In the next, she was on tiptoes or bending in half like a lawn chair.
“You should talk to her,” said Keane. “Woman like that gets under your skin, we are all screwed for Sunday’s game.”
“She’s not under my skin.”
“No? Since when are you the first one on the practice field?”
“Since Sterling wants to replace me.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but Jada seems to. Woman’s got radar for shit like this. Claire’s good people, man.” He indicated toward her with a nod of his chin. “Probably the first thing she has done for herself in a long time.”
Marcus took another robust bite. His body nearly collapsed at the foodgasm in his mouth. Muscle fatigue, he told himself. And just the right amount of red pepper.
At that moment, a man and his son walked up, pad of paper and pen in hand. Keane ran interference, loudly joking that his autograph was worth more than Kingston’s and pulling promotional tickets to Sunday’s game out of his jacket pocket, all smiles. The fans gushed and reached for their phones. Marcus seized the opportunity to slip away.
He approached Claire as he would have a delicate fawn with a startle reflex. The last thing he wanted was to upset her balance and send her toppling, though he wouldn’t mind the opportunity to make a catch worthy of the next day’s highlight reel. Rogues QB Turns Running Back, Epic Catch of Fan’s Yoga Pretzel. She reached and struck a pose that stretched her out like a bow. At each hold, her eyes slipped closed and her chest rose and fell, but on this one, her gaze fell upon him as he approached.
Claire untangled her limbs and repositioned herself to standing on two feet.
To say Marcus was disappointed was an understatement. Of course, he didn’t consider yoga athletic, but to know she took care of her body immediately tapped into his earlier drive to be close to her.
He wouldn’t have blamed her for being icy, but she smiled—genuine, peaceful, an expression that included her eyes—and it nearly staked his heart.
“Eating again, I see.”
“Forty-five hundred calories a day during the season.” He indicated his sandwich, still steaming despite the chilly air. “Best sandwiches in the city. Want a bite?”
Twenty-plus women over the course of his dating history would have balked at the messiness, asked a million questions about ingredients and organic content, or given a five-minute oration about the fat-to-protein ratio. Not Claire. She took a ravenous bite and made a distracting show of mopping up the detritus with her tongue and moaning her pork and beef adoration.
Between the creative sex poses and the meatball-as-foreplay, Marcus nearly fed his sandwich to the pigeons. He had to get something solid beneath him.
“Let’s sit.” He indicated a nearby bench and they settled in to watch a nearby three-on-three game of touch football. They alternated bites until the sandwich was gone.
“I’m sure that happens everywhere you go.”
“Women eating my food?”
Claire laughed and indicated a cluster of teenage boys walking by, trying to snap a covert photo. Marcus hadn’t noticed. He stood and shook each of their hands and posed for proper photos then rejoined her.
“You get used to it.”
“I’m not sure I could. I like my privacy.”
“You learn ways to protect it. When I’m here, near the practice dome or the stadium or out doing community events, pretty much everywhere during the season, I sort of belong to them, the city. When it’s off-season, I tend to be selfish.”
“That was one reason Clay was such a big fan of yours. Said you were one of the first to volunteer on the USO tour during your draft year.”
“I thought he was a Seahawks fan.”
“That’s the jersey he left behind. He took your number eleven with him.”
Marcus felt like his ribs had cracked open to let in the cold. “I’m honored he was a fan. What I do is nothing compared to what those men and women do. Nothing I do will ever matter like that.”
“Look what you just did for those boys.”
“Photos?”
“Memories. Sometimes that’s all any of us have to get through the hard times.”
“Tell me about him. Something besides his stellar choice in athletes.”
She grinned and took in the movement of the touch game in the distance. Her gaze turned wistful. “Clay wanted to be a nurse. Said doctors were too hands-off for his taste. Patient contact was where he wanted to make a difference. He learned sign language because he fell in love with a deaf girl, and he learned Chinese because he made friends with a heart transplant patient named Jinhai. Never met a stranger.”
“He sounds amazing.”
“He was killed in a small arms battle with the Taliban. We never got definitive word about what that meant. Close quarters. Urban warfare, I suppose. I always felt like the army hid something. Like they hadn’t told us the truth.”
Marcus was drawn to her eyes. She didn’t blink, far from the fifteen-to-twenty-per-minute average—almost trance-like. He wondered if she wore the extra smudges of makeup beneath her lashes to mask her grief.
“One of his fellow soldiers, Nathan, wrote my father a letter not too long after. Said their night vision equipment was intermittent that night. Radios were down. A sandstorm had rolled in. Better wearable tech and all five of those men would be home now.”
And with that, her mission cemented. Why she worked so hard for a game she cared nothing about. Why she wore her professionalism like body armor. Why she lived and breathed for what she had created. She couldn’t bring Clay back, but she could ensure others would not live with the same loss. He remembered his caustic words when they’d met.
And what is it you want, Miss Wynifred? A fat bank account? A title at some Ivy League school? People to notice you for something other than the way you dress?