by Jamie Knight
She had said she wasn’t interested, I reminded myself, which definitely took some wind out of my sails.
She had said that, I argued back, mentally.
But I don’t believe her.
She was lying.
She is interested, but she’s just trying to force herself not to be.
And I’m going to show her that there’s no use in trying to resist fate.
I’m going to claim her, and she’s going to be mine.
And that’s just the way it will be, as soon as she decides to accept it.
Chapter 7 - Stacy
The whole time I’m pacing around the room trying to prepare for my interview and telling myself to calm down, focus, and relax, I’m still seething inside.
What a pompous asshole that Elias Turner is!
How dare he come to my prepping room and kiss me right when I’m trying to concentrate on something so vital to my career.
Doesn’t he know how much I’ve been wanting him to do that, and telling myself that I don’t really want him to do that?
How did he even know to find me here? I wonder.
Is he some kind of a stalker?
Dark possibilities flood through my mind.
Did he somehow stage the whole incident in the locker room?
Was he my savior, or part of a plot to destroy me?
But to what end?
It would make no sense.
Just so that he could play the role of knight in shining armor, rescuing me from the bad guy?
I tell myself not to think that way. I know he wouldn’t really do that. He has a good reputation on the team, and is one of the few who are scandal-free. He’s just a nice guy who did a nice thing and now he wants to fuck me.
Is that such a bad thing? I ask myself.
I start to realize that maybe my mind has concocted these scenarios just to try to convince itself not to think of him in the way I have been ever since yesterday. The best adjectives I could use to sum up those thoughts are “yummy,” “delicious,” and “scrumptious.”
And now, he just did what I wanted him to do – he kissed me – and I had to go and get all bitchy towards him. All because I’m trying to focus on what I think I should focus on, rather than what I really want to.
I hate how my mom conditioned me to be this way.
But then again, I really should be focused on my job right now, instead of on that sexy, pompous asshole.
“Stacy, darling, how’s it coming along?”
My thoughts are interrupted when Monica pushes open the door and barges right in, in her no-nonsense style. Some people say my boss is a huge bitch, but I usually admire her forthrightness, how she grabs life by the horns and goes after what she wants.
Usually.
Right now, she’s not really the person I wanted to see. I haven’t told her that Elias said he’d answer my question first during the press conference. I wasn’t sure how to break that news to her without divulging how exactly it came to be.
In fact, I didn’t really want anyone to know the origin of how I had met Elias. When Elias had mentioned calling the cops, I hadn’t said no only because I had wanted to protect the Leviathans’ reputation and keep drama away from the team in the weeks leading up to the Superbowl. I had also wanted to protect my own reputation.
I feel naïve to have let what almost happened almost happen, but I also feel as if news of it getting out would make me look like an idiot and hurt my career.
What kind of reporter doesn’t know the team members?
It became quite obvious to me that he hadn’t been in the locker room with the rest of the team members. He had waited until they all left and then he came from somewhere else, only trying to make it look like he was in the locker room, which he couldn’t have been, or else the Leviathans would have recognized him as an intruder.
Unless maybe he had been hiding in a shower or something, I reasoned.
Still, none of it made any sense. He had had a key to the locker room, and a locker. He must be a friend or relative of someone on the team.
But then that would mean someone on the inside helped him get in, I think. And maybe we should tell Coach K so that he’s prepared, in case it happens again…
Stop it, I tell myself. Elias said he’d look into it and you agreed. No point in second guessing yourself now.
I’m still pretty shook up about the whole thing that happened, and I’m hoping that somehow Elias can find out who did it. Still, I don’t really want to announce it to the world.
For some reason, on top of this hang-up I have about feeling like it could ruin my career by exposing me as an idiot who didn’t know the team members I’m supposed to be covering, I feel a bit embarrassed about it. I know it wasn’t my fault, but I feel vulnerable since I was all alone and helpless, and had it not been for Elias…
Gee, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened. I don’t know what exactly that guy was there to do, but he obviously had nefarious purposes in mind.
“It’s coming along pretty well,” I tell Monica, reminding myself to snap back to reality.
“Pretty well” is one way to put it – mostly, a very dishonest way – but I have to seem as if everything is normal.
I always act like I’m going to get to ask a lot of questions, even though I usually don’t. So at least tonight is no different in that respect. In that sense, I’m just faking it ‘till I make it, like usual. There’s nothing to give away the fact that anything will happen out of the ordinary.
“Good, good,” she says, nodding her approval. “Because, you know, Kirsten Donnelly is here, and she’s been going around saying that she’s going to ask the first question that will be answered.”
“Is that so?”
Hmmm.
Kirsten is my archrival, who works at a different news outlet. I would like to be on friendly, professionally terms with her, but the feeling is not mutual.
She makes it quite obvious that she hates my guts. In fact, she would probably like to rip every, little, tiny, last one of them out of me and shred them all to pieces before stomping on them and burning them up.
You might think I’m being over-dramatic.
But that just shows that you haven’t met Kirsten.
“Well, we’ll see about that,” I tell Monica. “Because I have a feeling that that honor is going to belong to me.”
I know I sound just like her right now. Or at least I hope to, because her confident nature is one I try to project at all times. I grew up in a culture of shame and blame, so I didn’t learn much about self-esteem or how to assert myself.
In fact, pretty much everything I’ve learned has come from watching and imitating Monica. I just wish I could really feel the way I try to be.
I guess it’s something that just comes with time, little by little, because I do feel myself getting stronger for real, not just fake. But at other times, kind of like now, I have no other choice than to go with what I feel, which is a mixture of winging it and believing in it.
She arches her highbrows at me, in what I assume is a mixture of respect and doubt.
“You aim high, Stacy,” she says, with that note of approval in her voice that I’ve come to crave. “I like your goals.”
“Thanks, Monica,” I tell her, taking a deep breath.
Then, I know it’s time to face my fate.
“I think I’m ready to go out there now and show the world that I’m the sports reporter they never thought I could be.”
“Who never thought you could be that?” Monica asks, sounding genuinely confused.
Oops. Good point.
I guess, when I really think about it, it’s only been me who has thought that. Sure, my mother always said not to trust men but just to marry rich so that I could be a stay at home mom to kids, which, as she always liked to remind me, are the purpose of life. She probably didn’t aspire for me to be single at this age, let alone a sports reporter.
But I’ve always tol
d myself not to listen to her, because her worldview is just kind of bonkers, if you ask me. It’s why I went to school to become a reporter and why I always tell myself to believe that I can do it. Yet here I am doubting myself, all this time later.
“Kirsten,” I quickly tell Monica, since I obviously don’t want to go into some poor-me diatribe about how hard it was to grow up privileged with helicopter parents who didn’t let me experience the real world. “Kirsten doesn’t think I can be a better reporter than she can. Or any kind of good reporter at all, I don’t think.”
“Well, you go out there and prove her wrong,” she says, smiling happily at me. “And do our news outlet proud.”
“I’ll do that, Monica,” I tell her, trying to swallow down the lump of nervousness that has appeared, to my annoyance, right in the middle of my throat, at the worst time possible.
If you only knew how well I’m about to do that. Or, at least that I hope I can do that.
Chapter 8 - Stacy
It’s time.
The press conference has started and now’s my moment.
Elias is up on the platform and cameras are flashing everywhere. People are all around – including Kirsten, who is right beside me, shouting out questions and flailing her arms all about so much that they’re hitting me in the face, no doubt on purpose – but I’m keeping my cool, and Elias is looking right at me from where he’s standing on the podium.
“Elias! Elias!” Kirsten is screeching.
She’s looking over at Monica, who is standing on the other side of me, and smiling smugly, as if she’s got this in the bag and she wants Monica to know it. She’s always been trying to compete with me and take my job away; she wants to work for Monica instead of at her low-level sports rag.
She’s an attractive woman and her boobs are bouncing around as she jumps up and down and I can tell she thinks she’s going to get Elias’ attention that way, and be the first to ask a question.
“You. Yes, you, right there,” Elias says, pointing in our direction.
“Me?” Kirsten nearly yells, batting her eyelashes and putting her hand on her chest as if she’s so surprised and flattered, even though it’s so obvious it’s all fake, since she clearly thought she was going to be chosen all along.
“No,” Elias answers, looking annoyed. “You.”
He’s pointing right at me.
Me.
I knew it was going to happen, but I still feel shocked. Monica grabs my lower arm and squeezes it. It’s the most physical gesture I’ve ever received from her; she is not the hugging or touchy feely type.
I think it was based on pure instinct and shock, because she quickly retracts her hand and stands up straight beside me, looking ahead at Elias instead of how she had been, which was a bit slack-jawed while she stared at me in amazement and happiness, as if she hadn’t just touched me, or as if I’m supposed to forget that she had.
That will be easy to do, since my focus lies entirely on Elias.
“Ms. Allen, I believe your name is?”
He says it questionably, but with almost a half-wink, and I’m afraid our entire short but crazy history is going to be revealed by that one small gesture. But I know I’m just being paranoid.
“Yes, Mr. Turner,” I tell him, wanting to clear my throat but thinking that now is not the time. “I do have a question for you.”
I have just momentarily forgotten it because it feels like everyone in the entire world is looking at me, including you, with your enchanting eyes that are connected to your amazingly hot body I just want to rub myself all over.
Fuck.
Why do I have to go getting horny at times like these? For Elias, of all people.
This is why I always think I should lose my virginity. It has become a real distraction – wanting to have sex and always having to repress it. I wish my parents hadn’t been so strict and then I’d have this out of my system by now.
Focus, I remind myself. Focus.
Suddenly, an idea comes to me. A way to find out whether anyone has information about the guy who attacked me, without coming out and saying what happened.
It’s not at all what I was going to ask, which was about the starting lineup and whether Elias was going to be part of it, but it’s similarly related, and it might help me kill two birds with one stone. No one thinks that Elias is going to tell me who will be in the starting lineup – the Leviathans keep that information close to their chest.
But it’s the question reporters always have to ask anyway, and perhaps phrasing it this way I’ve just thought of will bring me more luck in getting an answer than just straight up asking it.
“Mr. Turner, my question is whether there have been any changes to the Leviathan’s roster,” I tell him, looking him straight in the eyes, “whether that would relate to you not being able to be in the starting line-up, or whether it would affect the line-up for other players we’re all expecting to be there?”
“Of course I’m going to be there in the starting line-up,” Elias says, his chest jutting out in that famous swagger he and other players on the Leviathans are known for. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
The crowd audibly gasps.
I did it.
I got him to admit he’d be there.
And now to push the even more important part of my question.
“I just wondered whether there might have been any last-minute additions, changes, or perhaps a new face around the field or the locker room?”
He is looking offended now, as if he can’t believe I’m tricking him like this.
I really didn’t mean to. I just thought of it right now, a few seconds before the words came tumbling out of my mouth. But the thought was golden. And I have to act on it. It’s my job.
It’s not like I could have just taken out my notebook and scribbled down my thoughts until I had a change to ask them later. I’m sick of doing that – being the mousy girl in the corner, observing and getting good stories by my power of deduction but not actually being the one in the spotlight, asking the hard questions.
Now is my moment.
And I am going to shine.
Chapter 9 - Stacy
I’ll just go ahead and admit it.
This whole entire moment, this whole “it being my chance to shine” thing, is mostly all thanks to Elias.
I’m not so oblivious to obvious reason staring me in the face, even though my ego reminds me not to discount all the hard work and hustle I put in to get to where I am, so that I could even have this opportunity land in my lap – or more like, land like a kiss from Elias’ very skilled tongue in my mouth – that I can’t confess that right up front.
Just because he handed me the ability to ask him a question doesn’t mean I have to treat him with kid gloves, though. I realize, now, that in my planning of my questioning of him, I was doing that, without even knowing I was.
Because I want him.
Badly.
But although I loved the way he kissed me and I wanted to keep doing it – and a lot more – with him, the biggest reason I stopped it was because I knew I had to play hard ball with him out here for the press conference, and who knows when else during the rest of this season or afterwards.
It’s not like either of us are going to stop doing our jobs.
So, we’d always have that tension between us, and it’s not good to hook up with someone like that.
Plus, he has a big head. He obviously thinks he can just walk right in and kiss me, and that I’ll be just another notch on his belt.
Don’t trust him, I hear my mother’s voice whispering to me. Don’t trust anyone, and especially not any man. They’re just scum who will let you down.
(“What about Dad?” I used to ask her. Her answer was always that my dad helped create me and that’s what men are good for. And also that the Bible tells women to honor their husband, so now that she’s married to him, she isn’t going to trash talk him.
She’d always say that part like it was like some speci
al exemption she was bestowing upon him. But then she’d stress that all men, until you find the right one that God wants you to marry, are evil and want to do evil things.
Evil, dirty, naughty things.
Maybe, for instance, Elias wants to pull down my panties and feel how wet he makes me. Perhaps he wants to feel it with his fingers first, and then with his tongue.
But I shouldn’t be thinking about this right now, not because it’s forbidden, like my mother thinks, but because I’m in the middle of some earth-shattering business that will help my career, if I can only keep my mind out of the gutter long enough to make sure I do it.)
“I… am not sure I know of any official word on that front,” Elias finally answers.
During the long pause while all these thoughts and doubts flooded my mind, it was as if he was deciding what to say. I know he didn’t want to deny what he saw but he also didn’t want to confess to it right now, and I didn’t blame him.
That wasn’t the point of my question.
The point was to plant the idea in peoples’ heads.
Everyone is here, paying a lot of attention, so why not alert them to the fact that there might be a stranger lurking around the field or locker rooms?
I had been wondering how I could even go back there, after what happened, and wondering if it might happen again.
What if this sick creep came back for me?
So, this is my attempt to minimize that possibility as much as possible.
If said stranger knows that everyone is on the lookout for him, he’ll be a lot less likely to come back again and start trouble.
“They don’t always fill me in on everything that happens,” he says, with a staccato laugh to punctuate the further silence.
Then as he’s looking at me, it’s almost as if something dawns on him: the purpose behind this question.
See, my inner voice – the one that likes to fight against my mom’s voice – tells me. He gets what you’re doing now. He sees the path you’re on and he’s willing to go down it with you. You can trust him.
“You know, I think there might be some rumors about something like that,” he says. “I can’t fill you in on any more details about who will or won’t be on the field, but I can safely confirm that it won’t be any kind of interloper or intruder. I would just hate for anything to hurt our chances on the big day.”