-16-
KAYLA
The first game of the season was a whirlwind. I glanced up at the scoreboard, watching the seconds tick down. Less than two minutes left before halftime, and we were already crushing Maryland by twenty-one points. The crowd before me was buzzing. The only time it ever went silent was for an injury or an interception. And when we scored? The sweet sound was deafening.
“O-H!” I yelled with my cheerleading squad, shaking my red and silver pom-poms up above my head.
“I-O!” the crowd answered in a unified voice.
It thundered through me like a euphoric drug.
At the sound of a whistle, I turned around. I stood on the strip of grass at the edge of the field near the end zone and glanced down to the boys at the other end. Maryland was having a tough time getting the ball out of their own side of the field, which meant I’d have a tough time watching the play.
Without flicking my gaze up to the clock, I knew we’d hit less than a minute left in the game because the band was filing down out of their seats, readying to perform for halftime. I put my fisted pom-poms on my hips, and something bright and shiny caught my eye. I grinned when I saw an enormous bell of silver headed my way.
“Hey! Did you get it?” I asked him before he’d even reached me.
Chuck was all smiles, which only meant one thing. I’d seen him on game days plenty of times before. Sometimes the marching band’s day started before the cheerleaders’ did, and the sousaphone my friend held weighed thirty-five pounds. It could be grueling for him, but today he stood tall in his black uniform and hat.
“Did you get what?” one of the freshman cheerleaders asked, giving Chuck a friendly smile.
“I’m dotting the ‘I’ at the Michigan game,” he said.
She looked at him like he was speaking Latin.
“The marching band does a formation called Script Ohio. A senior sousaphone gets to dot the ‘I.’ It’s a big honor,” I added.
“Oh, cool.” Her smile was genuine. “Congrats!”
“Thanks.” Chuck swiveled back to face me, temporarily blinding me when sunlight glared off the shiny bell of his enormous tuba. When I averted my gaze, it landed on a cute brunette with a bubbly smile standing down by the twenty-yard line. With the formal marching band uniforms and hair tucked into hats, sometimes it was hard to pick out specific people, but I knew it was her. She held a trombone in her hands, and chatted with another girl, so I could see her profile.
“What does Beth think about you getting the spot for The Game?” I said, teasing him.
His gaze went to the trombone girl he’d been pining over. “Haven’t the faintest clue.”
“I don’t get how you can march next to someone all of last year and not utter a single word.”
He gave me a pointed look. “Not everyone’s type A like you. I talked to her once.”
“Yeah? What’d you say?”
Chuck’s gaze dropped abruptly and he fiddled with a valve on his sousaphone. “She asked if she was in the diagonal. I said, yeah.”
I blinked slowly. “Impressive.”
The stadium roared when the clock expired, and teams from both benches moved for the locker rooms. Funny how there was more pep in the OSU players’ step. I grinned. Having a significant lead going into halftime would do that to you.
A voice boomed from the box high over the fifty-yard line. “Some scores from around the Big Ten. Notre Dame, three. Purdue, seven.”
In the stands, people left their seats and climbed the stairs for concessions. They laughed and high-fived, disinterested in the announcement.
“Connecticut, three,” the announcer continued, “Michigan . . . twenty-one.”
A few fans stopped mid-step, turning their gazes up to the box, and an angry hiss came from the stadium, punctuated by boos.
“Sounds like your new friend’s doing good,” Chuck said.
My eyes went so large, I had to blink to keep my eyeballs from falling out. I glanced around, terrified someone had overheard. Most of the cheerleaders were heading toward the coaching staff and getting water bottles. Lisa looked busy adjusting her hair bow and staring off into the crowd. She probably had laser guidance for locating her perfect pre-med boyfriend.
I snapped my focus back to Chuck and gave him the full intensity of my glare. “What the heck?”
He shrank an inch. “Is it a secret?”
“Yes.” Oh, God, that sounded awful. “No.” I hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Since our night on the soccer field, Jay and I talked almost every day. It started simple. He texted me pictures of gross food, always commenting that it was a better option than tofurkey. I replied with sports fail memes. The last day of his training camp, he sent a GIF that said, “Everything hurts, and I want to die.”
Before I knew it, we were chatting about all sorts of things. Movies. Music. Even school, as long as it wasn’t about our football programs. I had a Pavlovian response to the chime of an incoming text message, unable to stop the stupid smile from spreading over my face. Chuck had listened to me snicker and snort for two weeks before finally confronting me about it.
I’d only been able to confess who I’d been texting with after I’d had two margaritas, and I didn’t give Chuck the full truth. I told him Jay and I were sort of friends.
Of course, I left out how we were the kind of friends who gave each other orgasms.
Chuck had laughed and acted like me getting friendly with a Michigan player wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t surprising. He’d never cared about the rivalry like my family did.
“Don’t you need to go line up?” I asked him, noticing how the marching band was drifting further away while he stood talking to me. He swiveled once again, pronounced by the large sousaphone wrapped around his body, and a sound of surprise squeezed out of him.
The instrument was heavy, but he moved like it was nothing, darting and weaving down the sideline toward his rank. I smiled.
That boy could move with a quickness. He’d do great dotting the ‘I.’
Dinner with the family at the Buckeye Bar after a game was tradition, win or lose. The place was packed. The Buckeye Bar was like Biff’s, only from a parallel dimension where everything was right and Ohio State themed. Sports memorabilia covered every inch of wall space and decorated the tables. There were even a few pictures of my dad in here.
I didn’t need a picture now. The man himself sat across from Cooper, and my dad leaned over the aisle as OSU’s defensive coordinator walked by. Most of the coaching staff came here postgame, which was how I’d been told our family tradition began.
“Defense looks strong again this year,” Dad said.
“Thanks, Bob.” The coordinator gave Dad an appreciative smile before continuing to join the rest of the coaches in the back.
“Cooper says you met a boy,” my mother said, and I heard the hopeful tone she was probably trying to hide.
I nodded, then dropped my gaze to my Kickin’ Buffalo Chicken wrap. We all ordered the same thing every time, and I’d been starving when we got here. Game days were long. Even after the game ended, we had a postgame show and parade through campus, so we didn’t get back to our equipment room until long after the stadium was empty. And we hardly ate during the day. Lunch was usually apples and protein bars scarfed down at halftime.
But now my appetite was waning. My mother was like me. Tenacious when she wanted something, and information about my new prospect was a top priority for her.
Thanks for that, Coop.
“Oh, yeah?” my dad said. “Let’s hear the guy’s stats.”
I had to give my parents something. “He’s . . . a computer science major, and a senior like me.” I glanced at my brother, who was playing on his phone and oblivious, so he was no help. I had to distract. “Hey, wasn’t that fumble recovery by Tariq Crawford awesome?”
My dad nodded enthusiastically, but my mother’s gaze narrowed with suspicion in the moment before it turned to my younger brother.
“You care to join us?” she asked.
Cooper seemed to sense her annoyed stare, but he didn’t look up from the screen of his phone. “What?”
“Cooper Gregory.”
The sharp “mom tone” did the trick and he looked up. “Sorry. I was just looking at ESPN’s top players for the NCAA.”
He set his phone face-up on the table between us, as if he wanted me to see the leaderboard. I inhaled so sharply, my bite of my wrap nearly went into my lungs.
The sixth spot down on the list was currently occupied by Jay.
As I choked, I held back the urge to look at Cooper. He couldn’t know, could he? He was eighteen. When I’d dropped Jay’s first name to him after the wedding, he’d barely paid attention. And if it wasn’t about sports, cars, or women, he usually had the memory of a goldfish.
“Dad,” my brother said, “you know that tight end, Jay Harris?”
I couldn’t breathe. Someone had sucked all the air out of the Buckeye Bar, and any second I expected oxygen masks to pop out of the lighting fixtures like they did on planes when there was a loss of cabin pressure.
Dad’s eyes clouded. He recognized the name and which school was attached to it. “Yeah, why?”
He looked like he was wondering where Cooper was going with this, but he needed to get in line behind me. How the hell had Cooper figured this out? If he outed me right now, my parents were going to be wishing for oxygen masks too.
My brother shrugged. “Looks like he had a helluva day today.”
Mom crossed her arms over her scarlet Ohio State t-shirt as she uttered her favorite phrase for Michigan players. “No one at this table cares what the convicts up North are doing.”
I chose the worst possible moment to make eye contact with Cooper. Oh, he definitely knew, and his expression said he owned me.
“Enough of that garbage,” my mom continued. “Kayla, can you please tell us something about this guy you’re seeing? Like, his name?”
In my panic, my mind was blank. “Jay . . . son. Jason. And we’re just friends.” Although my tone was anything but convincing. I wanted to sink beneath the table and disappear, or choke myself with the ribbon attached to my hair bow.
My father brightened at my answer. “Does Jason like football?”
Cooper giggled like a little girl. Visions of throat-punching him flashed in my head. I didn’t get to linger on it too long, because the defensive coordinator materialized at the side of our table.
“Bob, you got a second?”
My dad nodded and rose from his chair, then followed behind as he was led to the coaches’ table.
“I hope he’s telling him they need to blitz more,” my mom said when he was gone. Her gaze turned back to me, and I knew more questions about Jay were imminent.
“Hey, you’ve got something in your teeth.” I gestured to a spot on my teeth, and my mom followed suit. “Yeah, right there. You should go to the bathroom and check it out. It’s in there good, you might not see it at first.”
It was another lie, but who was counting? Desperate times and all. I needed to put the fear of God into my brother before he blurted out the truth. Our mother excused herself, and as soon as she was out of earshot, I turned to unload.
“How the hell do you know?” I hissed.
“One of my friends has an older sister who was at Marcy’s wedding. She posted a pic of him on Facebook. Please tell me you’re dating a guy who plays for Michigan.” Cooper’s expression was pure joy. “Shit, Kayla, this is gonna make me look so good.”
I shot him a death glare. “You need to shut your face.”
“C’mon, I’m just playing. They’re not going to disown you.” He picked up his phone and went back to scrolling. “Well, probably not.”
“You can’t tell them.” Panic filled my voice. “Swear to me.”
He looked up from the phone, and his serious expression made my blood turn to slush. “No way, this is too good.”
“Coop, come on.” My plea had no effect. “Do your favorite sister a solid.”
He gave me a plain look. “You’re my only sister, and no. Mom and Dad are breathing down my neck because this is their last year. Mom’s not ready to have an empty nest.” His attention returned to his phone screen. “You dating a Wolverine? They’re going to lose their shit, and that buys me at least a month of being the better child. A month of total freedom.”
I loved my brother, but he was being an asshole. I wanted to argue I wasn’t dating Jay, but given what we’d done— My phone chimed.
Jay: Current mood.
It was followed by a GIF of Carlton from the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” dancing. I smiled, and then immediately had to cut it out.
“I didn’t want to have to do this,” I said to Cooper, “but remember that time I came downstairs and said I didn’t see anything?”
He sobered and the smile faded from his face.
Good. He knew exactly what I was talking about. “I lied,” I announced. “I. Saw. Everything.”
Cooper’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. Color drained from his skin, and the phone in his hand was ignored.
Dad returned, dropped down into his seat, and seemed to sense the strange tension between us in an instant. “What’s going on with you two?”
“Nothing.” My tone was overly-chipper.
My brother looked shell-shocked. “How about that fumble recovery by Tariq Crawford?” he sputtered out. “Wasn’t it great?”
My father’s shoulders pulled back, and he looked at Cooper with an expression that said what the heck? There was no response, so Dad’s gaze shifted to me.
I shrugged, but inside I gave a sigh of relief.