by R.S. Grey
“I’ve just left a message for the school to get a sub for tomorrow. I’m disappointed because I hoped I’d get the chance to go talk to my headmistress about…well…you.”
I look up to see him frown like he’s as disappointed as I am by the turn of events. “You think you’ll still be sick in the morning?”
I peer up at him as he strolls closer.
“Who knows, but even if I’m not, I’ll be dead knackered. No way I’ll be chasing after toddlers in this state.”
“Right. Here, lie back.”
I do as he says as I’m in no position to put up a fight. He tugs back my covers, and I lay my head on my pillow. He lifts the duvet up and over me and then he stands. My hand shoots out to grab his wrist, to keep him near me.
“You aren’t going to rush off, are you?”
He rubs the back of his neck then pulls out his mobile and shakes his head. “I can stay for a little while.”
“Maybe just until I nod off? I haven’t had a proper tending-to like this in ages. It’s quite nice, you know?”
He smiles and sets his mobile down on my nightstand then puts his wallet down beside it. After, he sits down on the edge of my bed and turns to look at me.
We don’t say anything for a little while. There’s a silence that feels heavy and powerful, and I’m scared if I pop it with a needle by opening my mouth, everything I think about him will tumble right out into the open.
His mobile buzzes on the nightstand, but he ignores it. I smile and prod his thigh with the tip of my finger.
“All right, Nurse Matthews, tell me something about yourself.”
His brows furrow in confusion. “What do you want to know?”
“What are your parents like? Your mum? Is she really pretty? Must be to have made a lad like you.”
I swear he sort of goes rosy on his cheeks as he looks away.
“There’s not much to say. I grew up in Florida. My dad has an orange orchard, and my mom teaches.”
“She’s a teacher as well? Like me?”
“Yeah. She teaches physics, up at the high school. She studied aerospace engineering in school though.”
“Bloody hell. She sounds brilliant. I haven’t got the head for maths or science. It’s why I stick with the youngsters. Best to let them think I’m smarter than them, though I swear there are a few who could outpace me in a round of Jeopardy.”
He laughs like he doesn’t quite believe me (he should), and then I continue on, “How’d your mum end up teaching then?”
He shrugs. “She just sort of fell into it. She had a job working for NASA. She wanted to go to space and was even accepted into their astronaut training program and everything, but then one of her friends introduced her to my dad.”
“She gave it all up for him?”
He aims a lopsided grin at me. “Well, it’s not like she was about to leave for Mars the very next day or anything, but yeah, they dated for three weeks then he proposed. Said he wouldn’t be able to live without her if she went up into space.”
“I think I’m crying.”
I sniff to prove it.
He laughs and shakes his head. “They’ve been married twenty-six years.”
“What a story. Sheesh. My parents met at a bar then a few months later, my mum got knocked up with me and they sort of both agreed, Well, we might as well give it a go, right? Never had a proper wedding or anything, just exchanged rings and went round to my gran’s for some tea and cakes afterward.”
“Do you think they regret it? Getting married just because your mom was pregnant with you?”
I think of the way my mum dotes on my dad, the way he’s always teasing her and making her groan in annoyance and swear she’s had it up to here with him, though we all know she secretly loves it.
I can’t help but smile. “No, I don’t think so. They’re happy in their own way, even if it’s not quite in the perfect fairytale sense, you know?”
He nods. “Do you have any siblings?”
“Just me. The parents love to joke that I was all they could put up with. Very wild child, so to say. I argue that they’re just laying it on, but I’ve seen photos and I do look rather untamed most of the time. Sort of big-eyed and round-cheeked and quite rambunctious. What about you?”
“Just a sister. You know, Briggs’ mom. She lives in the city too.”
I smack my forehead. “Duh. Of course you’ve got a sister. Stella, right? That’s Briggs’ mom? I think I’ve only met her the one time right after winter break.”
“Yeah, I don’t see her much either. She and Bobby, her husband…they’re…well, we don’t really speak a lot.”
“Did you have a falling out?”
“No. They’re just busy with work, and I’m busy too, I guess. I don’t know. I think they could probably pay more attention to Briggs, but maybe that’s just me being judgmental. I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent.”
No, he’s spot on. Briggs is such a tender child, and I know how little time he gets with his parents. I’m glad Logan sees that too.
He shrugs and pushes up off my bed then.
“I’m going to go pour you some of that broth if you can stand it. It’ll make you feel a lot better if you can keep it down.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll try to stomach it for you.”
The moment he walks out of the room, my body seems to remember how crappy it feels. With him in here, distracting me, it’s like my food poisoning took the back seat. Now my stomach rolls and reminds me how awful I feel. I turn on my side as his mobile buzzes again.
The screen illuminates, and I’m more than a little curious to see who’s bothering him so late on a Sunday evening. I know it’s wrong to go around poking into people’s private lives, but well, I’m already facing that way and it would be more inconvenient for me not to look. I see the preview of an incoming email pop up, along with all the notifications he’s missed sitting right underneath it.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Charity Golf Game - THEY WANT YOU!
Logan, I’ve attached the invitation from Tiger’s team. They’re desperate to have you. Let me know how we can—
And then it cuts off.
Below it, another email.
From: [email protected]
Subject: SI Interview Request
Jeff is requesting a follow-up interview for the feature we did before the Super Bowl. They’re suggesting—
Then below that, a text.
DARIUS: Training bumped to 6:30 AM tomorrow. Did you see the email Coach sent? I’ll swing by and pick you up on the way.
Next, there’s a final email header.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Jimmy Fallon
I can’t see a preview of that email because it’s fallen off the screen, and it’s not like I can reach out and scroll to read it. It’s one thing to look and another to actively snoop.
My stomach hurts twice as much as it did before I looked at his mobile. It’s not like I just read a bunch of texts from ladies begging for a lay or anything like that, but sometimes it’s easy for me to forget who Logan is. I met him at preschool pick-up. To me, he’s just a normal bloke with an exceptionally defined rear end. But that’s not really the truth, is it? Logan’s a proper celebrity with a schedule that reflects it. I don’t think I can quite imagine just how busy he is on any given day, and not just in the way I am, flitting from one job to the next, meeting my flatmates for a drink.
Logan is managing a successful career, and on top of all that, he’s in my flat right now heating me up some broth out of the kindness of his heart.
Suddenly, I feel terrible for adding to his stress, for being one more thing he has to manage in a day. I immediately sit up on my bed, ignoring the wave of nausea that threatens to overtake me, and put on a real cheesy grin when Logan walks back into my room carrying a small mug of broth.
“You know what? It’s kind of a miracle—I feel loads better.”
/> He tilts his head in confusion. “Are you sure? You don’t look better.”
“Oh, ha.” I force a laugh. “Thanks for the compliment. It’s my English skin—always a bit flushed.” I reach out for the broth, set it on my nightstand, and then take his wallet and mobile in hand so I can pass them back to him. “But really, you don’t have to do all this, the broth and the drinks and the putting up with my flatmates. I bet Kat really took advantage of you when you put her up on the sofa.”
He takes his things and puts them in the back pocket of his jeans. “Well, she did try to grab my butt when I gave her a blanket.”
I groan and cover my eyes with my hand. “See? Can’t take us lot anywhere. We’re positively feral.”
“It’s really not that big of a deal. I’m happy to help.”
I split my fingers in front of my eyes and look up at him. My heart lurches in my chest and I feel a foreign, yet somehow familiar feeling creeping in like a vine. It’s the predecessor to the four-letter word every poet knows by heart. It’s not love, per se, because that’s mad, but I definitely like Logan more than I should. The man standing in my room with his heavenly hair and to-die-for face and, most of all, his golden heart—he’d so easily do me in. No one need bother trying to fill the gap after he’s gone. There’d be no point. I’ll just turn into an old maid, adopt a few cats, and develop an addiction to the Home Shopping Network, just like Mum. How depressing.
But who cares? Who cares about the after because I so desperately want the now—badly enough that I’ll march into the headmistress’s office first thing on Tuesday morning and lay all the facts out there. Hell, I might even camp out there Monday night, right in front of her door so she’ll have to shove me aside if she wants to get in, all to ensure I get to talk to her as soon as humanly possible.
“Okay, well if you need anything, just call me,” Logan says, stepping closer.
“Sure thing. Thank you for coming round. You were brilliant.” I drop my hands to my duvet cover, letting my gaze follow.
He hovers near me for a moment, and I don’t dare look up at him. I see his solid shadow cast across my bed, and it moves an inch toward me. I think he might bend down to touch me, maybe drop a kiss to my hair or something equally as divine, but then he tips back on his heels and turns to leave.
My bedroom door shuts behind him.
Kat shouts farewell to him, and then the apartment door opens and closes.
Logan is gone.
And he’s damn well taken my heart with him. How rude.
Then I glance over at my bedside table again, noticing for the first time a small folded piece of paper. I reach out for it and laugh once I see it’s a check written out to me from Logan to cover the cost of my couture dress. I study his handwriting, smiling at his aggressive penmanship.
Then I tuck the check against my chest like it’s a love letter and fall asleep that way.
What an utter dweeb, I know.
Chapter Nine
Logan
I’m dragging by the end of training on Monday morning. Every muscle inside me aches, and I know from a quick glance around the field that my teammates all feel the same. A few of them are splayed out on the turf, too exhausted to move. I make it to the bench on the sidelines and sit down with a heavy groan, prompting a few athletic trainers to rush over to tend to me. I accept a water bottle filled with Gatorade and offer a quick thanks when one of them drops a cold towel around my neck.
Even though the NFL season only spans a few months out of the year, this is a full-time job. During the season, I’m dealing with muscle strain, long travel days, and injuries. The off-season comes with its own set of obstacles too, namely longer practices and harder drills. Our coaches know we can take the beating because we don’t have to perform in an actual game. This is the time to get in shape, and every one of our coaching staff agrees we should be working our asses off. It doesn’t matter that we won the Super Bowl earlier this year. We’ll have a target on our backs come fall, thirty-one teams who want to strip us of our #1 title. But for me, that’s not all. I also have to contend with a roster full of backup quarterbacks on my own team eager to take my place if I so much as flinch.
I shoot more Gatorade into my mouth then use the cold towel to wipe sweat from my brow.
Just because our morning training session is over doesn’t mean I have the rest of the day to myself. I’ve got a meeting with the quarterback coach after lunch to go over game footage from last season, and then I have a few press interviews. The reporters and photographers are across the field now, relegated to a press box, but I see their pens wagging and their shutters snapping away. They’re hoping to grab a photo of me where I look especially tired so they can morph it into a story about how I’m losing my edge. I twisted my ankle earlier today, and instead of giving in to the urge to limp off the field, I had to grin and bear it, knowing they’d play up the injury as something more serious than it is.
I hate press, but it’s a necessary evil in this sport.
I have sponsorships and endorsement deals that are based around my public image. Acting like a dick to reporters might feel good in the moment, but it wouldn’t be worth it in the long run.
Doc, our head trainer—an orthopedist with thirty years of experience in sports medicine—kneels down in front of me and asks to examine my ankle.
“I don’t think it’s bad,” I tell him as he unties my cleat, tugs off my sock, and starts to work through a few mobility exercises. He dorsiflexes and plantarflexes my foot, rotating it and asking me when and if I experience any pain in my ankle. I have a pretty high threshold for pain. In this sport, you have to. There’s no other way to survive a three-hundred-pound lineman pounding me into the turf if one of my guards fails to defend me in the pocket. Fortunately, though, that doesn’t happen all that often.
Doc rotates my ankle again and it tweaks a bit, but nothing like I’ve experienced in the past with broken bones. Nothing, and I mean nothing can compare to when I broke my clavicle during a game back in high school.
“It’s fine,” I assure him. “I’ll sit in the ice bath after this. It should be good to go for tomorrow.”
He nods and stands, relaying notes to the assistant standing beside him and carrying a small laptop. They keep careful track of all my injuries, and I get it. I’m a commodity, something they’ve paid top dollar to acquire and something they’d like to ensure stays fit for the next decade. Sure, they might care about me as a person somewhat, but more than anything, they care about my body and the way it will perform on the field come next season.
Darius finds me on the bench after Doc leaves to assess another player.
“Guess we’ll have to take you behind the barn and shoot you,” he jokes, nodding at my foot.
“It’s nothing. They’re just being overly cautious.”
He laughs and glares over at the reporters. “I bet the top story on SportsCenter later is about your damn ankle.”
I laugh and shake it off. I don’t watch that crap, so I don’t really care.
“Anyway, what happened Saturday? It looked like you and Candace were getting pretty cozy in the pool.”
I half-laugh, half-grunt in response.
“What? She rejected you?” He grins as he shakes his head in disbelief. “Damn, you win the Super Bowl and you could get any girl you want, and you happen to go for the only one in Manhattan who turns you down? That’s some shit luck.”
The idea of her turning me down chafes my ego. “She didn’t turn me down. She told me we can’t be together because it’s against the rules. I guess since she’s my nephew’s teacher, we can’t date or she’ll be fired.”
Darius makes a face like that’s the most fucked-up thing he’s ever heard.
“These damn private schools…I swear, man.”
I look away, thinking back on last night. Showing up to Candace’s apartment was like a scene out of a comedy movie: her lying on the floor in her bathroom, blonde hair spilling out around he
r head, her baby hairs stuck to her temple with sweat. She looked so sick and yet somehow still so goddamn beautiful. It’s the smile; she’s always smiling.
I inwardly groan as I dig the palm of my right hand into my eye. Do I seriously have it this bad for the girl already?
“So what are you going to do? Leave it? Find someone else? You know we have that Feeding America gala this weekend. I’m taking Liz, and I know Melody’s planning on going too. We could just all go together.”
Fuck no.
“I’d rather not. Melody and I aren’t going to happen.”
“Suit yourself.” He shrugs. “Would have been nice, dating friends. And you can’t tell me you don’t think she’s hot.”
Yeah, sure, on paper—but what does that matter when I can’t seem to get a tiny British girl out of my head?
“I’ll ask Candace to go with me,” I say, standing up so I can head inside to take an ice bath.
“I thought you said she was off limits. Are you going to get the girl fired?”
Maybe.
If it comes to that…
Chapter Ten
Candace
After spending the entirety of Monday in a vegetative state on my couch, I feel much better on Tuesday, keen to head into work. I get up early and dress in clothes slightly nicer than what I usually wear to teach toddlers: smart black jacket, sleek ponytail, a swipe of lipstick. I call out farewells to Yasmine and Kat then set off to grab another round of coffee to bribe Mrs. Halliday and Laura. I can’t keep doing this. My bank account is screaming at me, but I can’t just walk in there empty-handed, asking for favors.
I’m too busy thinking over whether or not to bring them scones as well and nearly crash right into a man with a huge camera hanging down round his neck in front of my building.