Qualified: A Sports Romance

by Croix, Ada

  “I apologize, Everett.” Allie twisted her fingers together and hovered beside the extra chair without sitting down. “I wasn’t feeling well. It was awhile before I was ready to make the drive back.”

  Apparently a simple apology wasn’t what Everett was after. He gestured for her to take a seat. “I know there was trouble the last time you were out late with Marc.”

  Allie took a deep breath and looked down to find her way into the chair. “I’m fine.” She smoothed out the creases of her trousers with far more care than was necessary.

  “I’m glad to hear that.” The desk creaked from Everett leaning his weight onto his forearms. “But we have two weeks before my team goes to the qualifying tournament, and you’re not my primary concern.”

  Allie had been so busy feeling sorry for herself that she hadn’t considered that someone else might be protective of Marc. She looked up at the team manager, her eyes wide.

  “Is there anything I should know about Marc?” Everett adjusted the fold of his hands. He blinked a patient pause. “Is there anything I should know about you and Marc?”

  “I don’t …” Allie had to stop herself from gaping. “No?”

  “I would prefer to know now. I don’t want to find out when I’m forwarded some salacious news item regarding one of my team members.” Everett tilted his head down to stare at her from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. “You are probably aware that Marc has had problems in the past that have threatened his place on the roster.”

  Allie swallowed and talked herself through a steadying breath. She straightened her posture and tried to be as dauntless as Violet. “I don’t believe you have any reason to question Marc’s place on this team.”

  Those shaggy eyebrows lifted. “Is that so.”

  She nodded. “In my time knowing him … This is what he lives for. Yesterday was … it was entirely my fault.” She took a breath that was shakier than she could have hoped and looked down at the twiddle of her fingers. “I had some bad news, and Marc was nothing but supportive.” She could feel the heat in her cheeks but plowed on. “I have no complaints regarding his behavior.” She looked up to see if that seemed enough of an answer to satisfy Everett.

  The team manager was studying her with narrowed eyes. “Last time the kid got himself all tied up over a girl, we had that mess in Beijing.” His look held a moment before he broke away with a sigh to scrub his hand over his forehead. “I don’t expect you to tell me the details.” And by the sour twist of his mouth, surely he did not want them. “But I hope you can understand that I don’t want my Center imploding before a game because …” Everett frowned and waved his hand in her general direction.

  “You’re talking about Natalie,” Allie found herself saying. It was disturbing to think that Everett might believe she would cause scenes like Marc’s ex had in the club.

  Everett’s attention sharpened back onto her. “How much do you know about that situation?”

  Allie shook her head and looked down. Really all she knew was what Marc had told her. She wasn’t sure any more if she could trust what he had said.

  “You’re very young, Allie. Perhaps I ought to remind you that this is a job and not a dating service.”

  “I know that.” It was exactly the sort of reminder that Allie was supposed to be giving herself. Her career was her priority and professionalism was important. It stung having someone else point out her failure.

  After a weighted pause, Everett shifted back in his chair and moved on with business. “We have been discussing whether or not you should be accompanying the team to the tournament. I think it would be best if you don’t. I’m not saying you would be at fault.” He tried to soften his words with a gesture. “But I want to remove any chance that Marc will have unnecessary distractions. I need him stable and I need his focus entirely on the game.”

  Allie stared at her hands and nodded her head slowly as her stomach knotted in on itself. First the authorship was taken away from her, and now she wouldn’t even have the tournament experience to put on her CV. It was all her fault. What was she thinking, getting tangled up with Marc? Everyone had told her he was trouble. And sure enough, he had left once he had gotten what he wanted. It was only what she should have expected.

  “Officially, we will say that it was too difficult to secure the additional budgeting for your travel and board. It isn’t far from the truth. It has been questionable, whether we would be able to bring you.” Everett sat straighter and started shifting papers around on his desk. “Your work with us has been excellent, Allie, and I will be happy to attest to that in letters of recommendation or in person. I understand you’ll be doing school applications for next year.”

  Allie found a smile to lift to him. “Thank you for saying so. I appreciate it.”

  “All right.” Everett gave her a tight smile in return. “I’m sorry about this. I feel responsible.”

  He must have seen the quizzical fold of her brow.

  “I thought you might be a good influence on Marc. I was surprised with his interest in the study you were doing in Colorado. Though perhaps I shouldn’t have been.” His hands fell back to heavy stillness over his papers. His expression went a little sad while he searched a look over Allie. “I’ve not heard him speak highly of many people.”

  She thought back to their time at the training center and Marc’s close-lipped quiet. “He spoke highly of me?” That was startling enough, never mind her bafflement at being a good influence. Perhaps she hadn’t been completely wrong about what she read in the player’s eyes. It made her throat tighten to think of those moments when he’d looked at her and her heart felt lost.

  “Rare praise, from him,” Everett was continuing. “I’ve known Marc a long time. So … I feel responsible.”

  Allie searched Everett’s face. She wanted to know what Marc said, and why the team manager thought she’d be good for the man he’d known for over a decade. But Everett seemed like he was warning her away from a relationship with his player. Sounding like a fawning girl with a crush was probably the last thing she should do, for the sake of both her career and Marc’s.

  Fixing her smile more firmly in place, Allie resolved to avoid any more trouble. “Then you’ll be responsible for the success of this team this summer. I hope.”

  “I hope so too.” Everett’s smile looked tired.

  Her insides still ached, but Allie gathered herself together like it didn’t matter. “Was there anything else?”

  “That’s all for now. Thank you for your cooperation.” He did sound grateful. Allie tried not to think too hard about how she might compare to Natalie. “I’ll let you get back to helping Lindsey.”

  “Thank you, Everett.” It took all of Allie’s composure not to run from the embarrassing hot seat of his office. She mostly succeeded.

  40

  For the rest of the afternoon Allie couldn’t stop worrying. It didn’t even help when Marc seemed to make a point between practice sets of catching her eye and giving a flickering suggestion of the smile he’d shared with her in her room. It just made her look to see if Everett were watching them. Her infatuation had already impacted her efforts to get into graduate school. She couldn’t bear to think that something she did might jeopardize Marc’s spot on the national team’s roster.

  The days were getting longer and the trips home from the pool quieter as the teammates soaked up what moments of rest that they could. Allie assumed that Marc wasn’t going to pay her any more attention than he had that morning until he turned left with her when they reached their floor. She nearly startled at the sound of his voice at her side.

  “I’ll see you later,” Marc responded to Adam’s quizzical grunt. “There was something I had to talk to Allie about.”

  Flashing a quick smile over her shoulder to Adam, Allie fumbled with her keys and wondered how the hall could have gotten so short since the last time she’d walked down it. Which was last night. Last night, with his hands sneaking under her skirt, it had seemed like
miles before they got to her door.

  “Everett mentioned he spoke with you,” Marc said when he fell into stride beside her.

  “He did.” Allie took a breath. “Marc.” She looked up at him to find a faint frown folded onto his forehead. Her heart was screaming all the foolish things and all the fearful things she didn’t dare give voice. She put on a smile. “It’s really okay. I’m not going to cause any trouble. I know … I know. You have more important things to focus on.”

  His dark eyes never left her. She thought she saw something change in them—like a reaching hand snatched back from a slamming door. “Yeah.” An unfinished expression twitched at the edge of his mouth. Marc continued on a half step so that he could twist and face her when they stopped in front of her apartment. “I shouldn’t let myself get distracted by anything just now.” It sounded like a hollow echo of Everett.

  Allie wasn’t sure he meant it. Maybe it didn’t matter, because she was sure that Everett did. “It’s okay, Marc. You don’t have to explain to me. I understand.”

  Marc still had that faint frown tugging between his eyebrows.

  Allie ducked away from his scrutiny and focused on fitting her key into the lock. She shook her head and ironed her voice to sensible evenness. “I’m not going to be like Natalie. I’m not going to ruin this for you.”

  “You’re nothing like Natalie.”

  Her hand clutched desperately at the doorknob as she fought against falling into the magnetism of his gaze. Allie didn’t know what to make of his quickly-snapped reply. She didn’t dare indulge her hopes. “I mean that I’m not going to cause a scene.” She was terrified that she was simply nothing, unlike Natalie who had been important enough to Marc to hurt him. Maybe he was just making sure Everett hadn’t gotten her hopes up. “It was fun, and … maybe we should just leave it at that.”

  “Can I come in?”

  Allie was already cracking the door open in an attempt to flee before she crumbled. She could hear her roommate moving around in the kitchen. “Kelsey is home.” She couldn’t avoid sliding a glance to Marc. She prepared her answer first so she wouldn’t lose it in the captivating dark of his eyes. “I think maybe it would be best if you didn’t.”

  His jaw was tight. Like his picture from his file. Like when she first met him. “If that’s what you want.”

  Allie made herself nod. She painted on a smile and poured lighthearted cheer into her voice despite how the center of her chest ached. “I want to see you guys kick ass in two weeks. I’ll be watching.”

  “Yeah.” Marc pushed away from the wall. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Allie.”

  Kelsey was sharp enough to pick up on the significance of the exchange in the hallway. Her brows were raised even though her eyes were fixed on her continued assembly of a salad to go with the spaghetti that was waiting on the stove.

  Allie watched her roommate warily as she came over to put her purse on the counter and slump into a chair.

  “I won’t pry,” Kelsey declared after a minute of Allie remaining silent. She finally looked up, licking a splash of stray dressing off her thumb while she stepped to get plates out of the cupboard. “Do you want dinner?”

  “That’d be great,” Allie said with a thankful sigh. She stood to help get the silverware and water glasses to set at their places. It wasn’t until she was too-diligently folding paper napkins for the both of them that she worked around to confiding in her roommate. “It was Marc. In the hall.” She adjusted the point of her geometric creation so that it was square with the table’s edge. “And last night.”

  Allie didn’t really know how she expected her roommate to react. Maybe Kelsey wasn’t sure, either. She just wore that vaguely loft-browed silence again as she got herself settled into her chair.

  “You won’t say anything to your brother, will you?”

  That caused Kelsey to snort. “I think it’s safe to say that this is one of the many conversations I am not excited to have with my little brother.” She undid all of Allie’s care with the napkin when she transferred it unceremoniously into her lap. “He might ask me,” she supposed as her study scanned over Allie. “Or maybe not. There may have been plenty of rumors about Marc Belmont, but I don’t think Marc was ever the one who helped start them.”

  “There’s not much of a rumor to start now. It’s not like we’re …” It stung too much for Allie to finish. She sampled a bit of spaghetti to cover the thickness of her swallow. “Everett pulled me aside today,” was where she chose to pick back up. “Because I got his car back late. Because I reported Marc’s fighting, before. He mentioned Natalie. Sort of.” Now it was her turn to study Kelsey’s paused expression. “I still don’t really understand what happened between the two of them. Marc said she cheated on him, but if that’s what happened then why does she still seem so angry?”

  Kelsey let her fork clatter to rest across her plate while she puffed a sigh through her cheeks and reached for her water glass. “First off, I was barely twenty at the time and feeling pretty lucky to have made it to the games at all. I was only vaguely aware of who Marc Belmont was, and Natalie was definitely too cool to be friends with me.” Eight years later and she was still rolling her eyes. “I mean, I wasn’t getting any extra media attention or event invites, so who was I.”

  That all said, Kelsey tipped her hand to relent to the question. “The drama was that on the night of Natalie’s most important PR event, Marc was seen out cheating on her with the biggest media darling from Australia. It totally ruined her human interest story,” heavy air-quotes were wielded, “of being the perfect princess who stole the heart of the wild boy and all of America. She flipped out, there was ugly crying, and it was a real bad look that I’m sure haunts her to this day.”

  “But.” Allie was frowning. “Then why did Marc tell me she cheated on him?”

  “Well that’s the thing.” Kelsey picked up her fork again to make a flourishing point. “The team managers sat us all down to discourage us from adding any fuel to the fire. But the rumor that they hoped we didn’t know, which I didn’t at the time, and that they really didn’t want getting out? Was that Natalie had been fucking the married captain of the men’s team for months.”

  “Chad?” Luckily Allie had long since stopped chewing because her mouth gaped open.

  “No.” Kelsey shook her head and her smile was lopsided. “Simon was the captain back then. I don’t think you got a chance to meet him at the club night. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have both him and Marc in the same zip code ought to have their head examined. Even Blake should have known. He was around the year when Marc and Simon couldn’t get through a whole practice without being at each other’s throats.”

  “You mean twenty-eleven,” Allie realized. “Marc said he was dismissed for fighting.” Her forehead tightened in a frown. “I guess he was still upset about Natalie.”

  “Or Simon was still pissed that Marc told his wife. They divorced not long after we all got back from the games.”

  “But why did they make Marc leave?” Allie wanted to know. “If Natalie started it, then why doesn’t anyone seem to trust him?”

  “Allie.” Kelsey leaned to squeeze at her arm. “I know you must like him. But you have to know that Marc comes off as kind of a dick.” Her nose wrinkled apologetically. “I’m sure he’s given the team’s staff headaches on multiple occasions. I mean, you had to report him to Everett this year, right? And he used to be worse.”

  It’s true, you know. Marc had told her himself. Allie couldn’t argue even if it made her feel sick. She nodded reluctantly to her roommate’s point.

  “And everyone loved Simon. He was the heart of the team. So.” Kelsey shrugged and rocked back into her seat. “Sacrificing the college dropout to the news cycle was unfortunate, but it probably seemed like the best option. As for the team’s roster—who would you want on your side? The guy who gets along with everyone, or the one who only seems to care about himself?”

  41

 
In the days before the team left for the qualifying tournament, Marc didn’t try to follow Allie back to her apartment again. He did start sitting in the front passenger seat of the car while she drove.

  It was somewhat reminiscent of her first day with him in Colorado. This time when he seemed self-absorbed, tapping away at his phone, it was partly because he was sending her messages. Apparently Adam’s singalong repertoire was quite extensive. She was informed that the sampling she got in the car was nothing to the full performance set enjoyed in their apartment.

  It was almost like they were friends. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Allie didn’t ache at the memory of the glimpse of more which she thought she’d shared with him in her bed. But if she told him about that, she was worried she would chase him away entirely. After what Everett said, she was a little afraid to do anything at all but go along with the fiction that they were casual associates.

  But at night, she could still smell him on her pillow and she would dream of him clutched between her legs.

  The Monday before the team was scheduled to leave for the tournament, there was an event at the city’s aquarium in conjunction with some of the local schools. Allie had been helping Everett coordinate with the sponsors so that the national water polo team could be a partner for the day. They’d even arranged to have Chad fitted into the seal show for an act involving a water polo ball.

  Those seals were probably better trained than the guys. Allie wasn’t sure how serious he was, but she put in real effort to talk Adam out of his idea of diving into the otter enclosure. Just to be on the safe side. It was while she was standing beside the large glass wall with her arms crossed, making sure Kelsey’s brother was truly on his way somewhere else, that Lindsey found her.

  “You look like you could use a break.” The older woman shared a knowing smile with Allie while she handed over a bottled water. “I saw the way you were looking at the aviary earlier. Why don’t you spend some time in there with some actual birdbrains? They have cups of nectar that you can feed them so that they’ll come perch on your arm.”