She laughs, leaning her head back to look up at the sky. Through the lights burning down on us you can’t see much. Black sky, expansive and humbling.
Kat dances at my feet. She’s seen the field and she’s eager to run it, but she’s like me. She wants a ball to chase. I pull a yellow tennis ball out of the pocket of my pants. Kat absolutely loses her mind when she sees it.
“Too bad you don’t have one of those chucking things,” Lilly comments, pantomiming ‘chucking’ I guess. “The ones that help you throw the ball really far.”
I pause, my arm cocked back, my eyebrows cocked high. “Seriously?”
She laughs at herself. “Right. Football player. I forgot.”
“How?”
“I really don’t know. My brain is kind of fried right now. This is really kind of surreal.”
I toss the ball with a grunt. It flies far downfield, no chucker needed. Kat digs in deep to go after it at a dead sprint.
“Do you watch a lot of football?” I ask Lilly.
She shakes her head ardently. “No. Only with my dad on Sundays. He’s a huge fan.”
“Kodiaks fan or football fan?”
“Both. Die hard Kodiaks fan, though. He even stuck with you guys when you had that one-win season, what? Ten years ago?”
“Seven. That was before my time.” I cast her a cocky grin. The one she loves to hate. “I would never have let that happen.”
She snorts. “What in the world did they do before you?”
“Lost, mostly. Are you and your dad close?”
“Yeah, we’re—“ she hesitates, her eyes narrowing like she’s trying to see something clearer. Something distant and downfield. When she speaks her voice is lower, her tone heavier. “You know what? No. We’re not. We used to be. But then… I guess things change. We stopped connecting. We don’t recognize each other anymore.”
My shoulders droop under the weight of her honesty. I’m taken aback by it. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath, holding it in, trying to buoy herself back up. “What about you? How are you and your dad?”
I tuck my hands into my pockets, my chin into my chest. I decide to give her an eye for an eye. Truth for truth. “We’re strangers. I never got to know him. My mom raised me alone until I was ten, then she got married to Charlie. He’s cool. He’s good to her. He came with a daughter, Mackenzie. She’s nineteen now.”
“Do the two of you get along?”
“Charlie and I, yeah. Absolutely. Mackenzie and I, pretty much only when we have to. Do you have any siblings?”
“A brother. Michael. He sucks. He refused to beat you up for me.”
“What?” I laugh. “What’d I do to deserve a beating?”
She grins, her cheeks blossoming rosy from the cold. Or maybe it’s embarrassment? Either way, it’s beautiful.
“You were nice to me,” she accuses. “Multiple times.”
“Oh shit, I earned a beating for that? What happens after tonight? I lose a knee cap?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
“I’ll try to be a dick. Save myself on hospital bills.”
Lilly chuckles softly. I could listen to that sound all day; her throaty timbre works its way into my mind, into my blood, until I’m humming with it. With her. With the magnetic pulse that is Lilly, a feeling under my skin that I couldn’t ignore tonight. I had to see her again and now that she’s here I’m running at a lower RPM than I ever have before. I’m idling steady and slow. Happy.
She looks downfield, her eyes scanning the stadium. She’s probably trying to picture it. To imagine what it’s like on a Sunday night when the world is watching. I can’t even start to tell her how exciting it is. It’s a high like nothing else in the world. Nothing you can understand until you’ve lived it and you love it the way I do. I’m always itching for game day, even in the middle of the night on a Sunday with the hurt from a game only hours before still aching in my bones. I want it again. I want another shot at making the magic happen. I want another hour in the spotlight making the fans scream my name.
But not tonight. Tonight I like the quiet and the cold and the company.
“How much time do you spend here?” Lilly asks curiously.
I groan thoughtfully, leaning back to stretch my arms up over my head. My back is tight from today’s practice. I can feel it every time I throw the ball. I’m just glad it’s not my knee. “A few hours a day for practices. Sometimes we have two of them. That’s five days a week. On game days we eat breakfast as a team at least five hours before the game. Then we’re here doing whatever we feel like doing to get ready.”
“What do you do?”
“I warm up with Tyus. We’re tight. We came onto the team at the same time, right out of the Draft. I’m the only person he’ll talk to before a game.” I drop my arms, gesturing to the field. “I run sprints with him, trying to keep up. I’m fast but he’s faster. Even on a Sugar Rush.”