She tilts her head to the side. I can see she's considering whether I deserve another answer or whether she’s done with me. Short of clamping my big hand down on her leg, I have nothing.
Something flickers in her eyes that I can’t read, but when she opens her mouth instead of getting up and leaving, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I held. “I'm new. A transfer.”
That fits. She looks older than a freshman and she lacks that that dazed, confused, overly eager expression that most of incoming class wears for the first few weeks.
“I'm a junior. This may be my last year,” I find myself telling her.
Her eyes shoot up. “You...dropping out?”
The surprise in her eyes and the way she said the words dropping out makes me think that she does know who I am, but she seems willing to go along with the fiction of pretending I’m a nobody. I appreciate that a hell of a lot.
There’s an ease between the two of us. She speaks about this place with the same language and words that I understand—a cross between reverence and frustration. Only someone who loves this game talks like that.
“What do you think?” I don't know why I ask, but her answer seems important to me.
She doesn't blurt out an immediate response, but asks me a question instead. “Why are you thinking of moving forward?”
Moving forward. Isn’t that the fucking most perfect way to frame it? “The things I’m doing here at Western are things I want to be doing at the next level, and I think I’ll be ready at the end of this year.”
“You think?” Her eyebrow arches up again.
I grin. “I know.”
“Then it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. If you believe you’re ready, then you’re ready. Isn’t it so much what goes on up here?” She taps her temple with her index finger. “And here.” She pats the top of her left breast, a breast that looks delicious even smashed under her sports bra.
I tear my eyes away from her pretty tits. “Yes, you get it exactly.” My words are hardly more than a whisper, but out of the corner of my eye, I see her nod in perfect comprehension.
“Thunderstruck” is the song that plays before the Florida Gators and the Alabama Crimson Tide take the field. When future hall of fame John Smoltz walked out of the bullpen to close out a game for the Braves, the distinctive licks hailed down from the sound system and the crowd screamed thunder in unison.
It’s the soundtrack of the beat down the assholes in Varsity Blues receive after their trip to the strip club on Friday night, like none of them had ever seen tits or ass before. Shit, even the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders run out to the fucking song. I’ve kind of hated it, mostly because we don’t play the sick grind when we run onto the field.
Right now, as the sun peeks over the top of the stands and lays a solid ray of love on the field of my greatest accomplishments to date, and the girl sitting by me waxes poetic about the greatest game in the world, I get it.
Her.
This one.
The universe is talking to me. I don’t need lightning or a tornado throwing a car at my head. I don’t need a running back barreling through the line at top speed to drive home the message. It’s in the curve of her cheek, the delicate arch of her neck. It’s in her sweet legs and the longing in her face. She loves this place as I love it. She understands that winning at this game is about the head and the heart, not just the body.
I’d like to press her down on the concrete risers and show her exactly how well my head, heart and body work in unison. I breathe deep and try to get a grip on my rampaging emotions.
“And what about you? What are your plans?”
“I want to get a job. Not have to rely on my parents. Their...financial support is like a choker rather than a buoy.” She scrapes a hand over her head and down her ponytail. “God, I don't know why I'm telling you this.”
Because you know it’s me. That I’m the one for you, just as you’re the one for me. Like recognizes like. However, she’s not seeing it as clearly. Already I can see her withdrawing, a little embarrassed by what she found herself sharing.
“It's the seats. The air is too thin up here.” I squint down toward the field. “The reason that you like these seats up here is because you’re lightheaded and possibly unconscious during most of the game, making all the shitty plays seem like a bad dream.” I stretch out my legs. “Worse there’s no leg room.”
“You’re supposed to stand,” she chides with gentle mocking. “You can’t sit while the mighty Warriors take the field of battle.”
I laugh. When she grins back at me in return I feel winded, and not from any exercise I’ve done this morning.
“I think it’s okay to sit during timeouts,” I manage to joke. I’m glad I’m sitting down, because if I’d been standing when she threw me that smile, I’d have fallen over.
“I can’t see you resting much.”