Alpha Foxtrot_Offensive Line

by Tracey Ward

  “Mornin’, Boss.”

  Shane’s voice doesn’t startle me, but it does surprise me. He’s not supposed to be here until seven. It’s barely six, but here he stands in the parking lot just ten feet away in shiny yellow athletic shorts and a worn gray T-shirt with the Kodiaks bear tenuously clinging to the front. His legs are intense. Thick thighs of corded muscle covered in dark hair. His kneecaps are as large as my hand and his calves bulge like cantaloupes just under his skin. You could fit both of my legs easily inside one of his, that’s how large he is. No matter how many times I meet with him, I doubt I’ll ever get over his size or my lack of it. There are inches and miles between us in a million different ways, and I don’t think I’ve ever traveled that great a distance in my life. I don’t believe I can.

  I squint up at him before shaking out my hand to look at my watch.

  “I’m early,” he confirms before I can read the exact time.

  “Why?”

  “To see you.”

  “How’d you know I’d be here this early?”

  He smiles softly. “I’m a good guesser.”

  “You don’t have to be here just because I am. Everyone else comes in at seven.”

  “I don’t mind. I’ll be up anyway. Practice is at six. I’m up before dawn almost every day.”

  “You can do whatever you want,” I mutter without inflection.

  He pauses, watching me. I can feel his eyes as sure as the sunshine on my skin. He’s working up to something. Something he’s unhappy about, and I know what it is he’s working toward because I’d be unhappy about it too. But he’s bigger than me. He says it first and he sounds more genuine than I could manage.

  “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, his voice rich with feeling. “I upset you the other night and I shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s fine,” I answer quickly.

  “It’s not.”

  “It is if we leave it alone.” I push my fingertip into the lid on my coffee. It creaks in protest, hot steam rising up into my eyes. I feel embarrassed that we’re talking about this. Like I overreacted. That’s what Eric would tell me. He says I’m pure drama, through and through. He says it’s his least favorite thing about me – the biggest thing. And then he tells me he loves me, and I don’t know north from south for all the sense it makes. “We should just forget about it.”

  He clears his throat, shifting on his feet. “Can I sit? Is that okay?”

  I look up at him, then at the cement planter I’m sitting on. The rim is thick with plenty of room for me, but two of us will be pushing it. Still, I nod agreeably.

  His bicep brushes against my shoulder as he sits. He’s crowding me, but not on purpose. That’s just what his body does – takes up space. All of it.

  “You’re scared of me,” he guesses gently.

  “If I was, I wouldn’t have said you could sit.”

  “You sounded like you were the other night.”

  “I think I scared myself the other night.” I wince, looking up at the sky to disguise it as a squint. “I do that.”

  “I would never hurt you, Sutton,” he promises solemnly.

  I nod without looking at him. “I know.”

  “I don’t think you do. But if you give me a chance, I’ll prove it to you.”

  “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  “I guess you don’t,” he replies deeply.

  The silence between us is weird. There are so many things that are being left unsaid, it makes the air thick like smog on a busy L.A. afternoon.

  “Where’s my mug?” I demand.

  Shane looks at me cluelessly. “What mug?”

  “I told you I wanted a mug with ‘Boss’ on it by Thursday. It’s Thursday.” I hold out my hand expectantly. “Where is it?”

  He chuckles, air rushing out of his body like steam from a kettle. He looks looser without it. “You know what? I actually thought about bringing you one.”

  “And?”

  “I figured you’d smash it. It felt like a waste of a good mug so I didn’t do it.”

  “Well, you were wrong.” I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly before I lower my hand to let him off the hook. “And you don’t have to be sorry.”

  “About the mug or the other night?”

  “The other night. You should feel like absolute shit about the mug.”

  His eyes dance like stars winking in the sky. “I do,” he promises, amused. “I feel like total shit.”

  “What do you smell like?” I lean in closer to him unconsciously, sniffing the air around him. It’s butter and something else. Something sweet.

  “A bakery.”

  “You got here early and you stopped off at a bakery first? You weren’t kidding. You do get up early.”

  “I had to get my breakfast somewhere.” He nods down the alley ahead of us. “I have fresh croissants in my car. Do you want one?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t eat carbs.”

  “Your loss. They’re good.”

  “I’ll survive. Somehow.”

  There’s another silence between us. More weirdness. I’m fine with it but I can tell that Shane isn’t. It makes him jittery. His leg starts to jump next to mine, his fingers playing with each other in his lap.

  “I was in a diaper in that fight on Valentine’s Day,” he tells me suddenly.

  I blink in surprise. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Shane smiles wide. He smooths his hands over his thighs, relaxing a little. “The fight with the Patriot was a football thing. It was about loyalty. He cheap shotted my quarterback and it’s my job to protect Trey. The Pat earned the punch I gave him, and it was only one. It wasn’t a fight.”

  “That’s great, but that doesn’t explain the diaper.”

  He chuckles, lowering his head. “The Valentine’s Day thing was a real fight. I was at a bar with friends and I was dressed like Cupid. Diaper, wings, bow and arrows. The whole nine yards. It got late and I got drunk. Not wasted, but definitely buzzed. I was chatting up a girl at the bar, thinking I was getting somewhere and maybe I wasn’t going home alone on V Day, when this guy comes up all pissed off at nothing, yelling that I need to get a shirt on. ‘No shoes, no shirt, no service!’. He’s completely blitzed and shouting at everyone, even the girl. He starts talking shit to her, calling her a skank and a gold digger. He says I’m probably impotent from the steroids. Everything. Every insult you can think of, he’s hurling at me and this girl. But then he put his hands on her and that was it for me. I punched him in the face and he and his buddies jumped me. Three of them against me and there’s this girl screaming in the middle of it.

  “The cops got called. We all got arrested, and because I’m in the NFL and I’m bigger than all of them, I got slapped with an Assault charge. My lawyer told me it doesn’t matter that three of them jumped me because I threw the first punch and I had the lesser injuries. He said any judge would say it was my fault, so I settled out of court to avoid having it on my record. The arrest is still there but the Assault charges were dropped.”

  “How much?”

  Shane shakes his head, confused. “How much what? How much did I have to pay?”

  “Yes.”

  “A lot.”

  “A lot as in I could buy a new car with the money or a new house?”

  “Why?” he laughs. “You looking for a payday? I’m not hitting you so you can upgrade your ride.”

  I smirk. “You can’t upgrade my ride.”

  “It’s that good, huh?”

  “It’s over there.” I nod to the first row of spaces in front of the studio where my fire engine red Fiat sits gleaming in the sun.

  Shane laughs when he sees it; a sound so full I feel it pushing against me harder than his shoulder. I taste it in the sugar in my coffee. “That’s not a car. It’s a Matchbox.”

  “No, it’s not!” I cry defensively. “It’s beautiful.”

  “How many clowns can you fit in that?”

  I laugh, hugging my coffee
against my chest. “Shut up. I bought that the first day I was in L.A. I’ve never been so excited in my life.”

  “A golf cart would have been cheaper. And faster.”

  “Alright, Vin Diesel, what do you drive?”

  He gestures far down the alley between the buildings to a Jeep with the top popped off and wheels as tall as I am. “That’s my baby.”

  “I like the color,” I concede, admiring the red. “That’s about it.”

  “Nah, that’s just the outside. She’s so much more inside.”

  “If your croissants are inside, they won’t be for long. Without a roof, a bird or a squirrel is going to sneak in there and steal them.”

  “They can have them. They probably need them more than I do.”

  My smile softens as my insides start to thaw under the warming sun. It’s getting close to seven. I can feel it in the air. In the way the birds are chirping overhead in the trees above us. The lot will be loud soon, but for now, just for a few minutes more, it’s peaceful. Just Shane and me and our awkwardness slowly evaporating into nothing.

  It makes me uneasy, that easy feeling. I’ve never trusted it.

  I take a short breath that tastes bitter on my tongue. “I’m sorry too.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “I’m sorry I went after you at the club. I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry I was late to the park. And that I blamed you for the package.”

  “What package?”

  I try not to be irritated. Even if he’d been better briefed on the show, he still might not know what a ‘package’ is. I should try to be patient because he came here eating humble pie this morning. The best I can do is not throw it in his face. “It’s a production term. Our meeting was a package. Our rehearsals will be packages. It’s an edited series of videos that will be put together to tell a short story.”

  “We were interviewed for a documentary last year and I never heard that term.”

  “They probably never used it around you so they wouldn’t have to explain it.”

  “I guess they weren’t as good a teacher as you,” he replies lightly.

  I look at him sideways, not sure if he’s being sarcastic or not. He stares down at me innocently and I can’t tell. It’s frustrating. “Anyway, it was your first time shooting a package. You didn’t know the rules. Someone should have told you, the same way someone should have told me the right time.”

  “Did you ever figure out who gave you the wrong one?”

  “Yeah,” I answer heavily. “I know who it was.”

  “Are you going to bite their head off or forgive them?”

  “I don’t forgive easily.”

  Gently, he bumps my leg with his. “So, are we cool?”

  “Yeah, we’re cool.” I bump his leg back, adding dryly, “For now.”

  “Good enough. For now.”

  His smile makes me warm inside. It makes me pliant in a way I shouldn’t be. I hate the feeling because I like it, and I like it because it’s nice. Who hates nice things?

  A girl who was never allowed to have them, that’s who.

  I look away from Shane, turning to my drink because we have a perfect relationship; coffee and me. We are bitter and sweet with just the right amount of sugar. Just enough heat to keep me happy. Shane, on the other hand, is going to be confusing. He’s going to be difficult. All sugar all the time with so much heat I can feel it in my belly before I’ve even taken a sip.

  “You’ll have to meet with wardrobe today,” I tell him, getting our ship back on course. Steering us into familiar waters that I know how to navigate. “They want to get your measurements.”

  He nods amicably. “Just show me where to go.”

  “And here I was worried you wouldn’t be able to take orders.”

  He chuckles. “I’m in the NFL, Boss. All I do is take orders.”

  “And hit people.”

  “When they tell me to.”

  “Does it hurt,” I ask curiously.

  “What? Taking a hit or doling one out?”

  “Either.”

  He considers it for a second before shrugging. “Nah. It did, at first, but you get used to it. It’s probably like dancing in those heels you were wearing at the Carousel. They look like murder to me but I bet you can’t even feel ‘em on your feet.”

  “No, I feel them,” I chuckle darkly. “And they hurt.”

  “Why do you wear them?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “But do you like them?”

  I cast him a wary glance. “Do you like hitting people?”

  “Kind of, yeah,” he admits, unashamed.

  I shake my head in amazement. “I can’t understand that.”

  “And I can’t understand those shoes.”

  “I can’t exactly win going out there in flip flops.”

  “Winning is important to you?”

  “It’s not important to you?” I fire back.

  He nods as though he understands. I think he actually does. We want to win at different things, but we both want it badly enough to become accustomed to pain for it. If you’re willing to ache for a thing, you have to love it. It’s the only kind of love I can understand.

  In the distance, I hear the whir of an electric engine. My heart races and stalls, falling flat on its face inside my chest. I’m grateful I’m not so translucent today. Shane doesn’t see it. All he sees is the gleaming white golf cart headed our way.

  “Who’s the big shot in the wheels?” he asks.

  “Eric Croft,” I answer evenly. “The Executive Producer.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “A producer.”

  “Bossy?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Bossier than you, Boss?”

  I smile mildly. “No one is bossier than me.”

  Eric isn’t driving the golf cart. He has Taj chauffeuring him while he clicks away on his phone. He looks fresh, like he only just got up, and I wonder if he slept here last night. I wonder if he stayed home with his wife. I wonder how I feel about it if he did, but the feeling doesn’t come. I reach for my reaction but all I find is empty air.

  “Is that him riding shotgun?” Shane mutters to me. “The aging Adam Levine?”

  I laugh into my coffee. Eric would hate to hear him say that. The Voice is stiff competition for us and Adam Levine is a thorn embedded deep in Eric’s side.

  “That’s him,” I whisper.

  “Do we love him or hate him?”

  “We are not a we.”

  “Sure we are, Sutton,” he corrects me matter-of-fact. “We’re a team, aren’t we? We’re in this together.”

  “We are, are we?”

  “That’s how I’m playing it.”

  “Then I guess that’s what we are.”

  “So? Love him or hate him?”

  Isn’t that the question? Easy answer is, I hate him. But if I look a little deeper and really consider my feelings – our past, our present, and our future – well, then, I really fucking hate him. I hate him with every ounce of blood inside my body. I hate him with the pieces he’s left inside of me, because he hasn’t always been so careful and calculating as he was the other night. There have times he’s been downright reckless.

  “Eric loves himself enough for everyone,” I tell Shane quietly.

  Eric spots us. He immediately paints on his happy face.

  “Shane Lowry,” he calls. He steps out of the cart before Taj has it to a full stop because he thinks he’s cool and busy and too much for everyone and everything.

  Shane stands to meet him. He towers over Eric, sparking a strange sense of glee inside me. “That’s me. It’s nice to meet you, Eric.”

  “My reputation has preceded me again.”

  “Sutton has been talking about you.”

  “All good things, I hope.”

  “Sutton only ever says good things.”

  Eric laughs at what a lie that is. “She’s our brightest star,” he tells Shane as though it�
�s an agreement. As though my talent is a testament to my character. “She has you here early. I know she likes to crack the whip, but not this hard this soon.”

  “I want people to take their job seriously,” I explain coldly. “That doesn’t seem like it should qualify me as a slave driver.”

  Eric grins at Shane. “See what I mean?”

  “She’s really passionate about the show,” Shane sidesteps neatly. He glances down at me with that smile of his; the warm one that makes me vulnerable. Like a turtle without its shell.

  “You’re a lucky man,” Eric promises. “She’s our reigning champion on the show. Did she show you The Wall? It’s where we have photos of all of our winners.”

  “I haven’t seen it yet, no.”

  “Let’s do it now. We have some time before everyone else gets here. You can have the Grand Tour.”

  Shane glances at me furtively, checking on me. Asking me what I want because whatever my answer is, he’ll follow. I feel it without needing to ask. He’s letting me lead because he’s seen something I wish he wouldn’t notice; Eric isn’t looking at me. Eric is talking only to him, acting as though I’m not even here. What he doesn’t know is that this is normal. This is what Eric and I do after we’ve slept together – we ignore each other.

  I wish the silence could go on forever.

  I want to say that Shane’s concern annoys me or that I don’t want his pity, but that’s not what it feels like. When he looks at me, waiting for my marching orders, it feels like solidarity. Like a partner in my incredibly isolated world. And that feels absolutely amazing.

  It also feels so foreign I don’t know how to handle it.

  “Let’s get it over with so we can get to work,” I agree bitingly.

  Shane waits for me to fall in line behind Eric before bringing up the rear. He keeps a good distance but I can feel him at my back. His heat, his presence – it presses against me like a warm wind rushing up from the ocean.

  It’s a sharp contrast to the arctic chill coming off Eric.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHANE