The Big Hit

by Jamie Bennett

  “Come on over and watch the second half with us,” she started calling as she let herself in. She didn’t lower her volume even when the door was open. “Just me and Jerry, and I made him put some pants on, so it’s all good! I made seven-layer dip and you’ll put on five pounds just by looking at it. In the right places,” Shelby assured me, pointing to my chest and around the back to my butt.

  “Ok,” I said.

  “No, come on…” she started, but stopped herself. “Did you say yes?”

  I nodded. “Thank you, I’d like to come over, especially if everyone has pants on.”

  Shelby laughed uproariously. “Then I’ll keep mine zipped.” She put her arm through mine and told me about the problems her perm was giving her on the few steps over to her cottage. As promised, Jerry did have on his bottoms, so I settled next to him on their couch, dug into the dip, and watched the second half. The reserves did keep the lead and the Woodsmen got the win.

  “That’s a wrap on the first game of the preseason and I think we saw some surprises for both teams,” the TV announcer said. The big network crew was a lot smoother and more polished than our local Woodsmen radio guys, but I didn’t enjoy them half as much. “The Dukes’ offense was not as potent as we expected, but that’s certainly due in large part to how the Woodsmen defense showed up today.”

  Jerry held up his hand and I gave him a high-five. “Go Woodsmen!” Shelby yelled. The camera trained on the Woodsmen players making their way from the field to the tunnel that led to the locker rooms at Yucca Stadium.

  “Knox Lynch had himself one quality half of football,” the color commentator remarked as the camera homed in on him. Knox had pulled off his helmet and I could see his face looked a little tired. Maybe it wasn’t obvious, since he was doing the marble statue impression, but it was definitely there. And as we listened to the announcer praise him, some of the Dukes’ fans leaned over the barriers above and poured out cups of liquid onto the Woodsmen players walking into the tunnel. Onto Knox.

  He barely reacted and the color commentator chuckled, “Looks like a beer shower for the Woodsmen. Knox Lynch just took a soaking!” Pure fury engulfed me.

  “What in the ever-living hell is wrong with them?” I was on my feet and yelling before I knew I was doing it. “Why would they act like that? Don’t they have any respect for a veteran player? Or, what about that you shouldn’t do that to anyone, ever? Is sportsmanship dead in Yucca Stadium? Those assholes!”

  Jerry and Shelby had their mouths hanging open. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said admiringly. “Julia told me you had some piss and vinegar in you. I’m glad to see it!”

  Jerry also nodded approvingly. “That’s no way to treat our Woodsmen.”

  “It’s no way to treat anyone,” I said, “especially not someone who works very hard and just played an incredible game and…” And to my horror, I got choked up, and my words garbled and squeaked because of the tears.

  Jerry and Shelby just stared harder. “You take football very, very personally,” Shelby said. “You ok, hon?”

  “I’m ok.” I pulled over my t-shirt sleeve to wipe my eyes. “I really love the Woodsmen.”

  “Maybe you’ve been working too hard,” Shelby said. Her forehead crinkled.

  “Maybe,” I agreed. Domenico and I had been sequestered in the attic for most of the morning, but there hadn’t been any furor over the Channel 67 “news” report on the art collection as he had anticipated. The only change was that some of the college’s art history teachers suddenly expressed interest in helping us out with the unpacking. Remembering how they had spurned our requests for assistance earlier, the professor had haughtily told them no.

  “Tatum related to me the famous American story of the cat who made the croissants, and I mentioned it to the art history department!” he had explained to me. It took me a long time to understand that Tatum had really meant the story of the little red hen, the one who wouldn’t share the bread she’d made with the other animals after they hadn’t helped her with the chore of making it.

  But I was still standing in Shelby’s living room, raising my fist at the TV, with Jerry and Shelby still gaping at me. I lowered my hand and stretched out my fingers. “I get emotional about the Woodsmen,” I explained, my voice back under control.

  “You sure do. I don’t want to be around you when they lose!” Shelby gave me a hug.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I told them, and walked across my yard, noting a flash of grey from my would-be cat friend. I stopped and we watched each other for a moment, but I didn’t have time to linger. I yanked my phone out of my pocket and called Knox the minute I slammed closed the sliding glass door behind myself.

  “This is Daisy. McKenzie!” I said, when it went to his voicemail. “I just saw someone pour beer on you and I can’t believe that happened. They must have someone like Lyle the security guard there to arrest people for bad behavior. Or maybe it’s assault! You could have been blinded!” I stopped, breathing hard. “I’m really angry about it. Very, very angry! And I hope you’re ok. And…I forgot if I said that this is Daisy. McKenzie.” Yes, I thought I had already mentioned that, so I hung up and turned on Channel 67’s 24-hour pre- and postgame Woodsman coverage.

  I didn’t hear back from Knox, but I watched the team go from the hotel to the private plane that would fly them home, large, shadowy figures moving across the tarmac. At this point, it was very, very late, and Channel 67 started to replay the game until they could pick up coverage with the flight landing at Cherry Capital Airport.

  “Why are you so tired?” Domenico asked me the next morning. He looked over my shoulder at the page of the catalog as I tried to add a few quick entries to keep ourselves organized. “You’ve typed the word ‘flaking’ three times about that Flemish landscape.”

  I looked down at the page in the typewriter and saw that I had, so I picked up the white-out that I always kept nearby while I typed. “Sorry,” I said, and dabbed. “I stayed up late.” I had slept right through my early seminar class because I’d been too keyed up to close my eyes the night before after the game and the beer-pour incident. Domenico was still keyed up from the news report about the collection, and the fact that the president of the college was getting up in his business about the portrait, which she had come to realize was a big deal. The two of us were a snappish, yawning pair this morning.

  He picked up his cup of coconut iced coffee and spilled it across the desk. We both leaped to try to contain the damage, me mopping and him spreading it by mistake. And when I had gotten a handle on the coffee lake and looked up, Knox was standing in the doorway.

  This time, the professor screamed. More like yelped, and then went off about the door locks being broken and how had this man gotten in and we were going to be robbed.

  “It was unlocked,” Knox said. “I just turned the handle.”

  “Daisy!” The professor turned on me, disappointed that I had forgotten to guard our art, but I pointed to the iced coffee cup. He had been the last one into the room, after he had gone down to the Campus Canteen get his drink. “Oh,” he sighed. He stood and knocked over the cup again, spilling what was left of the contents onto his pants. And that brought me right back to thinking about the beer incident after the game, but Knox was looking fine, not blinded at all. In fact, he was smiling at me, but I still hadn’t opened my mouth to speak.

  “Hi,” he said to me. “Can you take a break?”

  I glanced at Domenico, but he was busily sponging at his pants with one of the pages from the catalog that I had typed that morning. “Go ahead,” he said, sighing again. “I’m going down for another coffee.” He nodded at Knox as he left, locking us in and setting the alarm.

  “Daisy,” Knox said, and when I walked to him, he put both his hands on my shoulders and smiled down at me, so he really was fine, besides the big strawberry I had already spotted on his leg from the artificial turf at Yucca Stadium. Then he put his hands on either side of my face, holding my cheek
s. “You got worked up about the beer, huh?”

  Anger fizzed in my chest and forced out words. “That was terrible. Did they get in trouble?”

  “That stuff happens,” he said, very calmly. “We won the game and the Dukes played like shit, even the new running back who they gave the big contract to, even the new linemen who were going to save the quarterback from getting put on his ass by me. It pissed off the fans.”

  “You had a good game,” I said. I was finding it hard to talk again, but because of his hands. Not that they were preventing my speech, but they were just so warm and with him touching me like that, we had to stand so close.

  “I played ok. I got your message when I got on the bus, you spitting nails because some dumbasses gave me a beer shower.” He laughed quietly. “Best thing I’ve heard in a long time.” He leaned a little nearer.

  “It’s pretty hot in here,” I said, because either I had developed a fever or the heatwave was back. The attic felt like it was on fire. I waved my hand in front of my face to try to stir some air and my fingers brushed across his chest. He was so close.

  “I think it feels good. Really good,” Knox said, and leaned down just a tiny bit more, erasing the distance between our mouths. His lips pressed to mine and my arms went automatically around his neck, just like before, when it had felt as natural as breathing.

  But the last time he had kissed me, it had been sweet and soft. Now, his hands moved to my hips, pulling me tightly to him, then they roamed up to my back to press me firmly against his hard chest. And his mouth…and his tongue. It teased my lips until I parted them and then it moved with mine, and I went up on my tiptoes to get even more. To push myself even closer.

  Knox broke away first. He rubbed my back, digging in with his fingers to massage. A sound of happiness and contentment came out of my throat. My mind went to the underwear I had hidden in the bottom of my drawer, after marveling for a while at the nipple cutouts. Maybe I was going to need those little bits of silk and lace. The thought of wearing those things, of Knox wearing less, made me squirm against him.

  He immediately let go of me and stepped back. “Sorry.”

  “No! No, don’t be sorry.” I was still holding up my arms as if they were around his neck, and he moved forward back into them. That was much better. “I was just thinking about something that happened after Fan Day. Tatum got me new underwear.”

  His mouth opened. Oh, God.

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with you!” I said quickly. “She went through my underwear drawer and went shopping for underwear. Just some black underwear, and red, and lace underwear,” and I had to stop saying that word. I had to leave off this entire topic.

  “I’m not sure what it means that you were thinking about that while I was kissing you, but I’ll take it as a positive,” he said, and tilted my chin with his fingers so he could do something to my ear with his lips. Something soft, and I felt his breath on my neck. He slid around my jaw, kissing. “I was thinking about you last night. The whole way home on the plane, thinking about you.”

  “I was thinking about you, too. I couldn’t sleep that well,” I confessed. My voice was high and feathery. “I was worried.”

  “About the beer? Or the underwear?” He sounded confused.

  I was talking like Tatum. No wonder he didn’t understand me. “I was worried about the fans mistreating you, but mostly, I was worried about the football game. It was so rough.”

  He stopped the things he was doing with his lips to look into my eyes and his fingers stilled, too. “You just noticed that football is rough?”

  “No, I had noticed that before! But before, I never thought much about the guys actually playing. I didn’t want them to get hurt, of course, but now it’s you.” His eyes fascinated me; so close, they did seem almost silver. I let myself do what I had been thinking about for a long time: I ran my fingers through his black hair, tucking it back behind his ears. It was as thick as I had imagined, but softer, too. “I could really do some great braids,” I murmured.

  “Braids?” He hugged me. “Braiding my hair, did I hear you right?”

  My ear was against his chest, and I listened to his heart. I felt his strong arms around me, and I felt a smile reach across my face. “We can do that later.”

  “I don’t get hurt when I play,” he said. “We have on all those pads. I barely even feel a thing.”

  I picked up my head. “Is that true?”

  He pressed my cheek back down. “We do wear the pads, that’s true. The line about all the gear used to make my grandma feel better about the hits I took.”

  “I’d prefer honesty,” I said. “And next time I watch you play, I’m going to have to have someone with me to hold my hand. I almost lost it in the first half.”

  “You could come to the stadium. Plenty of company there.”

  I didn’t answer, but Knox started rubbing my back again. “Or maybe Tatum’s available on Sunday,” he commented. “You don’t need to go to the stadium.”

  “I want to, but…”

  “Everybody has limits. You should see me trying to fit into a regular airplane seat. And next game, I’ll know you’re watching and I’ll be very careful. I won’t let anyone touch me.”

  “I think I said that I preferred honesty,” I told him, and I felt his body shake a little as he laughed.

  The alarm pad beeped outside of the door, and Knox dropped his arms and stepped back from me. But I reached out to him, so we were holding hands when the professor came back in.

  “Oh!” he said when he saw us. “Well, that is good news. And if you’re here…” He looked at Knox.

  “Knox Lynch,” I supplied.

  “Yes, as long as you’re staying, Knox, maybe you’d want to help us with some boxes?”

  “Unless you have something else to do,” I put in.

  “I’d rather be here,” Knox said, and picked up a crate. The hot, dirty attic really did seem like the best place in the whole world.

  Chapter 11

  The little screen lit up underneath the lip of the circulation desk where it was invisible to the library patrons, and out of habit, I looked down at it.

  Cinderella: You guys aren’t going to believe this one. Guess who I bagged last night?

  Dory: Bagged sounds so negative!

  Tatum: Scottish women say they pumped a guy.

  Guru: I really want to hear more about your trip. When I was in Scotland two years ago I took a vinyasa class and I could barely understand the instructor. I kept asking what language she was speaking until she got mad.

  That was what Guru had done in Scotland, gone to a yoga class? That was the same thing she did in Michigan.

  Cinderella: Everyone shut the hell up! Ok, guess who I pumped last night? Nico Williams! The Woodsmen player, the one who’s so hot in those deodorant ads.

  Oh, God. Tatum. I ignored the man trying to check out a stack of books about gastropods and immediately called her.

  “Hi, Daisy, what’s up?” she answered breezily.

  I was sure she had seen Cinderella’s news, but I decided to let her bring it up first. “I’m not doing too much, just working at the library.” I smiled a little at the guy patiently waiting with his snail books and took the first volume, The World of Whelks, off the pile. “I was wondering if you wanted to come over here.”

  “Oh, not right now. I’m just leaving to meet up with some friends to drive to Toronto. There’s a club there they were talking about that sounds awesome.”

  I knew she would do something crazy after she saw that text about Nico! “Don’t go to Toronto.”

  “I’m Clive,” the snail book guy said to me. “What’s your name?”

  “Uh, Daisy. How about we hang out?” I shook my head at Clive and pointed to the phone. “I meant my friend, sorry. I’m going later to meet Knox at his new house,” I continued to Tatum. “We could swim together.” Clive opened his mouth to speak but I pointed to the phone again. I wasn’t asking him to go for a s
wim.

  “Well, I can’t find my passport, so maybe I could come by. I didn’t really want to sneak over the border, again.”

  “No, don’t break international laws. That’s a really bad idea.”

  “Maybe Knox could ask some friends to come,” Tatum suggested. “I’ll bring a bunch of booze.”

  “Well…” It was supposed to have been just me and Knox hanging out, but after reading the thing about Cinderella pumping Nico, I thought that Tatum needed to have eyes on her. But I really wanted to see Knox, too. His days were so full, with practices, walk-throughs, lifting, sessions with the trainer, watching film, and everything else that he had to do for the team, that we hadn’t been together since he’d come by the attic and kissed me, our second kiss. Today was the first block of time he’d had free to just hang out. And maybe do other things, too.

  I was standing there thinking about the kiss, and Clive was waiting for his Multitude of Mollusks book. “Have a good afternoon,” I said, and pushed the stack over to him. “Just come hang out and we’ll talk. Sorry, I meant my friend on the phone again,” I told Clive, who had stopped picking up the books and was accepting my invitation. “Goodbye. No, not you, Tatum.” Clive left to read about snails, and Tatum agreed to come to the library but said she was stopping along the way at the party store for booze and ice. She also reminded me to have Knox invite people.

  “We’ll make it fun!” she said, sounding very determined. “I’ll bring food, too.”

  Then I had to tell Knox that we would have a guest with us, and from the text he sent back (“What? Fine”) he didn’t seem the happiest about it. I slid my finger under the neck of my t-shirt to feel the lace strap of the bra I was wearing for the first time, the black one that Tatum had given me. Not the one with the nipple cut-outs, because when I had put that on, it had been truly obscene. After one glance at myself in the mirror, my face had turned the same color red as the silky fabric and the bra had gone right back in the drawer. I had thought that maybe Knox would see me in this one, with my nipples fully covered. Now, probably not—at least, not today.