“Uh, yeah, I guess.”
He sat down, a little closer to me than the long, empty bench required. Before I could say something, our football team stepped out onto the field. Everyone stood, cheers rising from all around us. I stood, too, shaking the cowbell with JT’s number on it—35—pride bringing a smile to my face as he ran through the inflatable jackrabbit with the rest of his teammates. We stayed on our feet as both teams gathered in the center of the field for the playing of the National Anthem. And then we settled in for the beginning of the game.
“People take football pretty serious here, don’t they?”
“Don’t they where you’re from?”
He shrugged. “I suppose. But not quite like this.”
I glanced at him. “Where are you from?”
“Oregon.”
My eyebrows rose. “You’re a long way from home. What brought you out here?”
Mr. James looked out on the field for a long minute. “The job market’s a little tight up there. I saw an opportunity to start fresh here and I took it.”
“I guess I understand that.”
“I hear you used to work in New York City.”
“Yeah. A lifetime ago.”
“Did you like it there?”
I thought about my loft apartment, my close knit group of friends, the man I left behind there and a familiar tightness settled in my chest for a long minute.
“Yeah,” I said. “But that was a different life. I was a different person there.”
“I can imagine.”
I studied the field for a minute, watching as our team made a little progress down field. JT made a dive for a pass, but missed, causing the crowd to groan in one, overwhelming voice. But then he redeemed himself with the next play, catching a wild throw and getting the first down.
“He’s pretty good.”
I glanced at Mr. James. “He works hard at it.”
“Too bad he doesn’t put that much effort into his school work.”
“Do you know many teenage boys who put that much effort into school work?”
He actually cracked a smile. And that smile was breathtaking. I had to force myself to look away before I did or said something that would embarrass us both.
“Despite the impression I might have given you, I was not an angel when I was JT’s age. I was something of a nightmare to my parents.”
“Oh?”
“I’m sure my mother could tell you stories that would make you incredibly grateful that sleeping in class is the worst thing JT has ever done.”
“I can’t imagine you were that bad.”
He laughed, the sound like a fine ganache running down the surface of a cake. I liked the sound, wanted to hear more of it. But then the crowd groaned again—another missed pass—and drowned the sound out.
I caught sight of the infinity symbol on the inside of his wrist and touched it before I could stop myself.
“Is this one of your rebellious acts?”
“It is,” he admitted. “My father was a very religious man. He raised my brother, my sister, and myself to believe that altering the body in any way was an insult to God. So, when I was nineteen, I went to New York City with a group of college friends and one of the first things I did was get this tattoo. And this one.” He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and showed me a simple cross on the inside of his other wrist.
“Do they have special meaning to you? Or were they just random choices?”
“This one,” he said, gesturing with the arm that sported the cross, “was a roundabout insult to my father. Though I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I thought it was more to prove to him that you could believe in God and still do whatever you wanted with your own body. And this one,” he stared down at the infinity symbol, a sort of dreamy look coming to his perfect caramel eyes, “was a request of a young woman I met that summer.”
“Hmm, so it was an attempt to get her into your bed. Were you successful?”
“I was,” he admitted, his eyes moving to the football field just as our defense took over.
It wasn’t hard to imagine him romancing some young woman when he was a young man himself. Hell, it wasn’t hard to imagine him doing it now. He seemed like a very charming man who often got what he wanted. And, as stupid as it might sound, I was a little jealous of that young woman who got him to permanently disfigure his body for her. She must have meant a lot to him.
I don’t think I’ve ever mattered that much to a man before. There were men in my life. Boys, really. I dated in high school, but never anything serious, and most of those guys were married with small children now. And college. There’d been one guy in college I would have done almost anything for. But he was so focused on his studies that I’m not sure he ever realized just how deep my feelings for him went. And the man in New York. But I hadn’t heard from him in more than a year. He’d clearly moved on. And I…I suppose I was just a memory to him now.
At least, I hope I was.
“Do you have others?”
Mr. James looked at me as though he’d forgotten I was there.
“Others?”