by Timms, Lexy
Chapter 8
“Wow!” George let out a long, low whistle as they sat down in the stadium. Amanda had managed to make it through the flight and limo to the stadium with her body intact. Her dignity, not so much. “These are prime seats! How much did this cost you?” George whistled again.
“Actually,” Amanda said, squaring her shoulders a bit and allowing more than a hint of smugness out in her smile and her tone, “they were a gift, so you can just relax and enjoy the game.”
“We’re on the 50-yard line in the front row!” George was back on his feet, peering down the field and then turning to look at how many rows of seats were piled behind him. “There’s no way NOT to enjoy it!”
Amanda laughed and pulled on his arm, trying to bring him back down to earth. “Well, you’re the only one in the entire family who actually cares about football, so I thought of you. Besides, who else do I know in L.A.?”
“Yeah, and you’re the sister I never had, too.” He grinned, and flagged down a guy selling who-knows-what.
“Oh, come on!” Amanda had to shout to be heard over the crowd. Was it just her or were they getting louder? “We practically grew up together! And it’s not just because you’re my only cousin, either. I’m sure that…since when do you drink soda?”
“Soda?” George blinked and looked at the plastic cup he’d just gotten for a minute before passing it over to her. “You drink it. I just wanted the commemorative cup. Be sure to give it to me when you’re done.”
She opened her mouth to protest but George was already on his feet, screaming with the rest of the losers…er… fans. The Broncos football team was filing out onto the field from the… place-under-the-stands-that-they-were-in-whatever-it’s-called.
She stood, albeit reluctantly, taking a sip of overly-sweet soda and almost choking when it turned out to be cherry cola. The players came storming out onto the field and ran up along the side. She recognized Billy, who caught her eye. He nudged Nick and they trotted over to where she stood at the railing.
“Hey, Amanda!” Billy called out, all grins and pre-game testosterone. “Nice to see you again!”
“You’re looking like you’re doing better!” Nick added, nudging Billy who went off into whoops of laughter.
Amanda colored and waved. “Thanks, guys!” After a moment, she laughed with them. It was either that or cry. Besides, they were good enough boys. There was no harm in their teasing and she could be a good sport about things.
That’s when she felt a vise bruising her arm and realized that George had a death grip on her bicep. “Oh, George, this is Billy and Nick. Guys, this is George.”
“I know. Holy shit! Holy shit…what the hell, Amanda?”
Amanda stared at her cousin for a long moment, waiting for something … anything else, but he seemed to have exhausted his repertoire.
“OK then…” she said, turning back to the players and smiling.
“Hey, enjoy the game!” Billy called as he and Nick ran back to the bench.
Amanda stole a glance at George, who was still waving long after the guys were gone. His eyes had a glassy look that she hadn’t seen since Junior Prom when Mary Beth Walker had asked him to dance. She smirked. “I have to say, George, I’m really impressed. You are a silver-tongued devil!”
“Shut up.”
At least that’s what she thought he’d said. He’d collapsed into his seat as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut. Between the roar of the crowd and the fact that he was holding his face in his hands, it was impossible to tell. She sat back down next to him.
He let out a long groan. “I made an ass of myself!”
Amanda laughed and patted his arm. “Yeah, you did. Have something to drink.” With that she shoved the cup, sorry, COMMEMORATIVE cup, of whatever abomination of cola and fruit into his hands, and watched with a certain amount of glee as he drained it dry without seeming to taste a single drop.
Stifling another laugh, Amanda turned her attention to Nate. He seemed distracted. He’d been sitting on the bench, and was in full uniform as if he expected to play. Yet his focus seemed off, almost uninterested in what was going on as the teams lined up on the field. His whole posture telegraphed an intense longing, and periodically he would jump up and try to talk to one of the coaches. Especially Coach Johnson. Who ignored him completely.
Behind her the stadium erupted into a cacophony of cat calls, booing, and even death threats which all seemed to be part of the enjoyment of the game. Especially the death threats, as they were aimed at the players on both sides, the referees, coaches, and even a cheerleader or two.
Not that it was all negative attention. Periodically some scantily-clad female would scream a marriage proposal across the field to a favorite player. Amanda wondered briefly what would happen if one of the guys out there suddenly turned around and accepted.
Belatedly, Amanda realized that Nate wasn’t looking at the field anymore. He was staring at her. Amanda waved brightly and nudged George. “Wave to Nate, aka T.N.T.,” she said, hoping to restore his damaged pride. George waved, but it was a sad little thing, halfhearted. He would take some time to get over this embarrassment.
Thankfully he loosened up somewhat as the game progressed. Beer helped. By the end of the first quarter George had his shirt off and was twirling it over his head as he cheered, slapping high fives with those seated around them as if they were all part of some huge extended family. Some huge extended and very close family. There were a lot of fist bumps and howls as their team scored. That the guys were rooting against Nate and his buddies didn’t bother Amanda in the least. The whole thing was absolutely outlandish, especially as she had no clue what it meant when the guys ran up and down the field and just where the points were all coming from.
Which didn’t even begin to address her disappointment when she’d initially found out a quarter was all of fifteen minutes. Her vision of the game being over in an hour ground to a halt as the clock did. Honestly, the timer was at a standstill more often than being in motion. At this rate the game would take all day.
Still, there was a certain amount of fun in watching. Somewhere around the second quarter, Amanda finally got George to put his shirt back on and even convinced him that taking the time to explain the game to her might someday result in further tickets to games. So, heads together, he pointed and gestured, his mouth close to her ear so she could hear him over the noise.
She thought she was learning something, until a nudge from the guy seated next to her brought her head up and showed her an entire new aspect to the game of football that she’d never imagined.
Following the pointing hands of the helpful attendees around her, Amanda looked up and saw herself…and her cousin on the huge screen that dominated the skyline. The two of them were framed with a gigantic heart and the words “KISSING CAM” flashed over their faces.
The fans were going crazy, screaming, “KISS HER! KISS HER!” Amanda nudged George, who looked up, leaving his jaw somewhere down around his chest. He looked at her and shrugged, as if asking her what to do next. Amanda shrugged back and kissed his cheek, much to the rather vocal disappointment of the crowd.
She hunkered back down in her seat and looked for Nate. He was gone. She’d missed his exit. For all she knew he was making a run to the bathroom, or more likely off to grab some beer now that the realization that he wasn’t playing after all had sunk in.
After a half hour, she decided he wasn’t returning.
She swore under her breath. Her charge ran off and had a good thirty-minute head-start on her while she’d waffled back and forth over whether she should have gone looking for him or not. She jumped up and ran to the rail and yelled “BILLY! NICK!” Her voice was one of many screaming out players’ names. A security guard spotted her and began to thread his way through the crowd to her.
She jumped and waved her arms. When the big screen caught her again, it wasn’t a Kissing Cam. This time it was showing a rather exuberant fan—a young g
irl bouncing up and down… all over. She squealed and covered herself. But at least Billy saw the screen from where he was standing on the sidelines, shaking off the effects of a particularly nasty tackle.
“Hey, Amanda, what’s wrong?” he yelled as he trotted up to her.
“Where’s Nate?”
Billy shrugged and waved off the guard. “She’s with me!” Suddenly the large monitor was on her again. The guard hesitated and slowly withdrew, looking like he was ready to rush Amanda if the 110-lb. girl decided to injure the 350-lb. football player.
Billy turned and caught Nick’s eye. He pointed to Amanda and then to the bench. Nick rubbed his armpits and made a walking motion with his fingers.
“He hit the showers and left,” Billy translated.
Amanda smacked the railing and kicked the post holding it up, though it mashed her toes in the pretty, decorative boots she was wearing. Billy shrugged, smiled, and trotted back to the bench. She scurried back to her seat, groping underneath, trying to find her purse. “George! I’m sorry, can you find your own way home? I have to go… work.”
George looked at her for a long moment. “I drove.”
“I know….” She pursed her lips, realizing that this conversation would have gone a whole lot better a couple of beers ago. “Can I borrow your car?”
“What?” George blinked a few times. “Wait… what?” He was obviously still trying to catch up.
“Here,” Amanda reached into her purse and pulled out a plastic badge Coach Johnson—what the hell was his first name?!—gave her. “You can use this to get into the locker room, or so I’m told.”
Somehow this penetrated the alcohol-induced fog. George took the badge reverently, looking at it the way Harrison Ford looked at the idol in the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. He reached into his pocket and fished out the keys without looking. “Keep the car,” he said, his voice sounding a little strangled. “I don’t need it.”
Amanda didn’t give him time to re-think it. She ran up the steps and out the exit. She was pleased with herself that she only got lost once, but it took asking three people for directions before she found one who spoke English. By the time she got to George’s car, Nate had at least a forty-five-minute head-start.
She finally managed to thread her way through the parking lot and paused at the road. It occurred to her then that she had no idea which way she ought to be going. Los Angeles was beyond huge. Did he even have usual haunts out here? She thought to call the coach, but it was obvious even to her that he was busy.
Amanda pulled the car over to the side of the road, leaving it idling while she thought this through. Terrific. Nate could be anywhere right now, and she was probably unemployed and didn’t even know it. Tomorrow she could read all about where Nate was, as it would be in all the papers. All she needed was a time machine…
She caught herself. Maybe it didn’t need to be that complicated.
A quick search on her phone brought up a recent article on the best sports bars in the city. Thankfully it came with a description of each of the places. Most were too cutesy for what she was looking for, but a handful came up with the words that would appeal to a football superstar who fed off adulation and free beer.
“Party” and “Excitement” for example. Mentions of wings were a bonus.
Armed with information and not much time, Amanda got a crash course in driving in L.A. while thanking all the gods at whichever computer company had created the GPS app on her phone.
It took nearly an hour and three bars before she found his rental car in a parking lot. Thankfully she’d been around to hear the argument he’d had with coach when he’d informed everyone that he’d rented the thing and wouldn’t be needing a ride to the stadium on the team bus. It helped that he’d been bragging about being able to score that particular model of sports car at the time.
The ‘bar’ in question had turned out to be more of a dive than the article had led on, complete with neon women posing over beer bottles and the rusty twang of country music blaring loud enough to be heard from the sidewalk.
Nate was at a table in the corner with a tall glass, staring at his reflection in the surface of the table. Surprisingly, though the bar was crowded, everyone was leaving him alone.
“There you are!” Amanda slid into the seat opposite him, earning more than one sympathetic look from the nearby patrons, which kind of made her wonder what had been happening in the last couple of hours since he’d escaped. Other than the end of the game. The screens every few feet along the walls were playing a highlight reel, which seemed to include an awful lot of footage of her…bouncing up and down.
Nate looked up, swore, and rolled his eyes so far back he could have seen the back of his head.
Seriously? He was going to become a petulant toddler now? She slammed her hands down on the table between them, hard enough to make several bottles rattle. The hot sauce tipped over. “Do you not want to play anymore? Are you looking to stay on the bench?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Nate looked up at her, frowning with what she would swear looked an awful lot like genuine confusion.
“THAT!” She pointed at the glass on the table.
“Ginger ale?”
Amanda stared at the glass, looked back up him, then back to the glass again. Finally she reached over and picked it up gingerly, taking a cautious sip.
Ginger ale.
“Uh….”
Nate stood but made no move to leave the table, instead towering over her. “You are wound up tighter than my grandfather’s watch,” he growled. “I’m sorry if I dragged you away from the game, but we’re supposed to be carrying on some damn illusion here and I’m keeping up my part of the bargain.”
“What?”
“We’re not supposed to be seeing others, remember?”
“Wait. What? Oh, shit. That’s my—”
“And here you are on the Kissing Cam? Any idea how that makes me look? Not only am I benched, but the girl I’m supposed to be dating is on the kissing cam with some scarecrow-looking guy…”
It was Amanda’s turn to stand up. It would have been a lot more impressive if she were taller. “Hold on a min—”
“And then you bust in here like you’re pulling a kid out of a forest fire?! Lady, I might be a screw-up, but I’m still a man!”
“You’re—”
“You know what?” Nate said and took Amanda’s arm. “You’re coming with me; it’s time you shoved a crowbar into that tight little crevice where you keep your soul and let some light in.”
“Would you please—”
Nate was already out the door and Amanda was pulled along in his wake. She saw the bartender shake his head sadly as the door slammed shut behind them. Across the street was a small car, the driver of which was taking pictures.
Oh, that can’t be good.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked Nate, a hint of panic in her voice as she planted her heels in the sidewalk and refused to be moved.
Not that it mattered.
“I’m retiring.” He hauled her across the parking lot and opened a car door. Not to her car, to his. The Ferrari. “And I’m going out in style.”
Amanda sat heavily and barely noticed when he lifted her legs to wedge her into the car and closed the door.
“Oh, I am so gonna get fired,” she said to the car, since no one else seemed to be listening.
Chapter 9
Amanda couldn’t help but be astounded.
Nate was a thousand miles from home, in the afternoon, his entire team was probably just leaving the field, and yet he drove unerringly to a wild party. Beach house, surf, noise, private gate—a whole stereotypical L.A. blowout.
“How the hell did you know about this place?” she asked as he slipped through the gate. He’d given his name and the gate spread open for him like… well, Amanda didn’t want to continue with that particular analogy. Jennifer had been a friend once.
“I get out an
d meet people!” Nate shouted over the rap he’d been playing since they’d left the bar. “You should try it!” He grinned like a kid at Christmas, and pulled up the long drive to a mansion that squatted like an anti-lighthouse. Instead of keeping ships safe from rocks, it lured football players to their doom. And to the end of their careers.
“You can’t just… quit,” Amanda said for the umpteenth time since they’d gotten in the car. Only, this time he answered. It was an interesting novelty.
“Actually, I can,” Nate said as he pulled up between an Audi and a Toyota. Amanda ignored that for the moment. “I took Coach’s advice, and read my contract.” He got out of the car and waited while she extracted herself from the undersized car. She thought that, from his perspective, it must have been like watching a birthing video. “It says that I can ‘retire’ anytime I want to, so long as I don’t play for anyone else and that I return a couple of million. I don’t even care anymore.” He tossed something to her in a long arc that ended in her palm. All she had to do was close her hand. She still managed to drop it.
“You’re giving me your car?” she asked, looking at the keys at her feet.
“Don’t be an idiot.” He laughed, and ruffled her hair like she was a little kid. “I’m designating you. I’m getting drunk.” He turned and shouted something like “LEON” in the general direction of the house, but it was so guttural she couldn’t be sure. An answering cry from the front porch did at least confirm that the frat boy was in season again. She had to jog to catch up to him.
She’d left the hotel expecting to hook up with a long-lost cousin, watch a football game, and regain some of the dignity that she’d lost getting on the plane. Going to a party had not been on the agenda. Looking at the other guests, the outfit she’d worn to the airport would have been much more appropriate than the shorts and team t-shirt she wore right now. She felt positively dowdy.
She opened the door to the house and was almost blasted back off the porch. The music was so blaring that the beat of the drums pressed against her chest and slammed into her sinus cavity. Amanda’s entire body vibrated to the thrumming. From where she stood, she could see a large table in the middle of the room that sagged under the weight of the food and booze piled haphazardly on it. Paper plates cozied up to cut glass and what looked to be an actual Rembrandt sketch. Most of the partiers wore swimwear, or dental floss pretending to be swimwear. The women wore even less.