Chapter 1
“That had to hurt!”
The other commentator winced. “Looks like a bad one, Randy.” They cut to another slow motion shot of Davis Blake falling, grabbing his knee. He had tried to get up, and fell again. “You can see by how he’s holding it. ACL? PCL? To me, looks like a ligament issue, but I’m no expert. We’re all waiting for word from the doctors and coaches of the Woodsmen and as of yet, the team has kept silent on the fate of the MVP quarterback. Is his season over? His career? Randy, an injury like this—”
I reached up and turned off the ancient TV by smacking the knob.
“Hey!” A chorus of voices sounded in the warehouse.
“I’m not watching that again!” I called. “I’ll turn it back on when they start talking about something else.”
Karl dropped a box in front of my desk. “You think they’re going to talk about something else? That’s not going to happen, not around here. People are going nuts about Blake getting hurt. My daughter asked if they were going to cancel school.”
Our hometown team, the Woodsmen, was not like other teams in the United Football Confederation. They were in cities with millions of potential fans, but when I said “hometown,” I meant it. We were a town: nothing more, nothing less. No other professional sports, no big nightlife scene, no major concert venues, etc., etc.
What that meant was that almost everything in a 100-mile radius revolved around our football team, our Woodsmen. I actually wouldn’t have been surprised if they closed the schools for a day of mourning if our quarterback really was out for the season. Or longer. This was supposed to be our year: we had gotten our highest draft pick in almost a decade in the off-season, a receiver from a big-name school who was finally going to be able to catch the rockets that Davis Blake threw. Plus, we had made three or four good trades that could have made a difference. And now, in first quarter of the first pre-season game…
“What was it like in the stadium when it happened?” Karl asked me.
“Everyone got quiet.” It was one of the eeriest things I had ever experienced. The stadium, filled to capacity with 61,777 fans on our opening day, had gone completely silent. Almost 62,000 people were holding their breaths. From where I had been standing on the sidelines, I could hear Davis Blake swearing and saw his hands yanking at the artificial turf as he writhed in pain. Yeah, it had been a bad one. Terrible to watch.
“You really don’t know anything else, Katie?” Alfonso prompted me. “You were right there when it happened.”
I shook the picture of our injured quarterback out of my mind. “Nope.”
“What good is it, you working there, if we can’t get the inside shit?” He grinned at me as he said it. “You already denied me on hook-ups with the cheerleaders.”
“It will probably surprise you to hear that the Woodsmen cheerleaders are not be interested in a guy who’s already married. Also, the team mascot isn’t in on sensitive personnel matters, so no, I don’t have any inside information for you. Shocker, right?” I grinned back at him, then checked the clock. “You guys are late!” They didn’t move from around my desk. “Look, I’m heading over to the stadium to rehearse after work. I hear anything new, I swear, you guys will be the first to know.” As highly unlikely as it was that I’d hear anything, I felt safe making that promise.
The warehouse emptied of the drivers and I checked my phone. There wasn’t anything new online either about Davis Blake. Just more speculation, endless speculation. I thought of him swearing again, and of the confusion and dejection on the sidelines as they put him on the cart, then the cautious and hesitating applause from the stands as the untried, fourth-round pick came in to play for him. The replacement had immediately thrown an interception and the atmosphere in building felt like a popped balloon. The crowd had filed out at the end of the game with tears running down their faces. I wondered what was going on behind the scenes today. If the early reports on the sports websites were correct, Davis Blake was having his knee evaluated and the coaches were deciding what they were going to do without their star quarterback.
I left the warehouse in the late afternoon. Despite the three fans I had going around my desk, I had cooked in there all day long, and the blacktop of the parking lot didn’t offer any reprieve from the August heat. I made the sign of a cross on the top of my little car before I got in. Keeping it going was really a matter of prayer, now. When it started, I breathed a sigh of relief, but every time it happened I knew I was just holding off the inevitable. I needed a new car. The kitschy hula girl on my dashboard rocked and rolled as the tiny tires navigated the potholes of the parking lot.
When I got to the stadium, it was still strangely subdued. All the people I passed in the hallways kept their heads down, eyes averted. There was clanking and crashing from the weights in the player gym, but I didn’t hear any of the laughing and yelling between the guys that normally went on.
It was always a little odd, and awe-inspiring, to go out onto the field with no one in the stands. It was the biggest empty room on the planet. I worked through the new routine that Trish, the head choreographer, had texted to me, just marking it. It was pretty simple and I had it down after the second run-through. But all the routines got more difficult after I suited up for the games—I meant, Chipmunk-suited up for the games.
And Sam wasn’t there. I checked my watch and saw he was now 40 minutes late. This wasn’t the first time he had pulled this, and every time he did it I got madder. There was only so much that I could practice alone! Without him as Hank the Hunter, my Chipmunk part in the performances didn’t make a lot of sense.
Really, neither of us made a lot of sense on the sidelines of a football field. Way back in the 1920s, when we entered the United Football Confederation, the owners of the new Woodsmen football team thought it would be funny to have an outdoorsman as their mascot and an animal character for him to go after on the sidelines, to provide additional entertainment during halftime and time-outs. The first animal had been a porcupine, then a skunk, but they had settled on the Nutty the Chipmunk by the third season. And now, that was me! Back in the early years, the Hank the Hunter character and the animal just ran around the stadium willy-nilly and the Hunter would “shoot” at it with an oversized fake riffle. The animal died at least once a game. Fake blood was involved. Hilarious, right?
Tastes had changed, and no one was interested in seeing the demise of an animal at football games anymore. Sam and I were more of a comedy and dance duo now. We had at least five choreographed dance routines during each game to the different songs played for the cheerleaders, and we also played pranks on each other. I would steal a big bag of nuts from his back pocket and run away and do cartwheels; he would pretend to set traps or step on my tail to catch me. It was all super corny, but our fans loved it. Our social media pages (in character) had more followers than a lot of the actual football players on the team
Besides dancing next to the cheerleaders, Sam and I also had to interact with them a lot. Sam would act all bashful, and they kissed the plush cheeks of his giant fake head. I rolled around so they would pet me, or I would fall over with happiness when they scratched behind my furry ears. Again, corny, but people absolutely loved it, and it was so fun to see the kids clap and jump around. They lined up to give Nutty hugs when I went up in the stands. Some of them thought I was real, or asked if I could come live with them. They cracked me up.
I did another run-through of the new steps, then did a few of our old routines too. Without Sam, there was only so far I could go with everything. The Hunter and the Chipmunk were really not solo artists. While I waited for the cheerleaders to show up for their on-field rehearsal, I practiced some easy tumbling and did some running. About a minute before the cheerleaders arrived, Sam raced onto the field, looking like a mess.
“Where have you been?” I grumbled, trying to fix his hair. “What’s all over your t-shirt? Please, please don’t tell me it’s puke.”
He took off his shirt and turned it inside out. “Better? God damn it, I’m too old for this shit.” While I was fairly new to the role of Chipmunk, Sam had been the Hank the Hunter for almost 30 years.
We heard the laughter and chatter in the tunnel that presaged the arrival of the cheerleaders. I leaned forward and sniffed Sam. “Sweet Lord! Have you been rolling around in a dumpster? Stay away from Trish at all costs.”
Trish, the choreographer, was talking into her phone when she came out of the tunnel but waved me and Sam over. He stood at a discrete distance. Both of us waited for her to finish her call. “I expect your homework to be done by the time I walk through that door, the dishwasher empty, the dog walked. Do you have it down?” She stared at me. “Well, do you?”
“Me?” I asked, pointing at my chest. “The new routine? Yes.”
“The graphing calculator is not my responsibility, so if you really lost it, you will be paying for a new one yourself,” Trish told me. “Music, now. From the top.”
I realized she also had a walkie-talkie in her other hand, connecting her to the people in the booth. The woman was a master of multitasking. The first notes came through the giant sound system and Sam and I ran to get into position.
It took about a second before Trish called a halt to our disgrace of a performance.
“That was a disgrace of a performance,” she yelled. “I thought you said you had it down. One thing I don’t like is lying.”
The cheerleaders tittered from the ground where they had been stretching. “I did have it down,” I mumbled. It was really hard to do my part while trying to lead Sam through his. He obviously had no idea what the hell was going on.
Trish turned in fury on the cheerleaders. “If you’re laughing, you must know your own dances perfectly. Let’s see it, then. Line up!”
She started to put them through a serious workout and I glared at Sam as we walked together over to the endzone. “Thanks!”
“Trish don’t matter. Screw her.” He glowered meanly.
“She doesn’t matter to you, because you’re a permanent fixture here. Chipmunks come and go!” My job was in no way as secure as his was, a fact Sam never seemed to comprehend. But by the end of the rehearsal, we were both laughing, back on good terms. It wasn’t a good idea to be a quarrelling comedy duo. We usually worked well together, when he wasn’t late and smelling like the bottom of my shoe. What I assumed bottom of my shoe smelled like. I didn’t really test it.
The cheerleaders were all bent over, leaning on their knees when I walked out. Trish was a serious coach and these ladies were serious athletes and dancers. They still had another hour of practice to go before they were finished for the evening. I said goodnight to Sam and walked out to the parking lot. I had gotten a great spot, right in fr—
I stopped dead. A humongous monster truck was parked on top of my car. Not next to, not near, not bumper to bumper with. It was on top of my car. My car was now the cracker underneath a giant wedge of cheese, if I wanted to use a snack food metaphor.
I blinked my eyes rapidly as if that would make the horrific image go away. No, my car was still there. The back end was under the oversized tires of the shiny black truck. Flattened. The front end was tilted up from the weight in the back. It was like something out of a horror movie where cars attacked other cars. Other smaller, defenseless cars. What had my grandpa’s tiny hatchback ever done to deserve this?
While I stood there with my mouth gaping, the door to the stadium opened and closed behind me. A huge man on crutches, mirrored aviator sunglasses over his eyes in the waning August sunlight, slowly limped up to me.
“Is that yours?” He pointed at the car pile with one of his crutches.
“Yes! Someone killed my car!”
“That’s my truck. I tapped yours when I came in,” he mentioned.
“You tapped it?” I turned to stare at him, and suddenly it dawned on me that this was Davis Blake. The one, the only Davis Blake. The winningest quarterback in the history of our team, who broke the United Football Conference passing yards record the year before. Davis Blake. Sweet Jesus.
Davis Blake had murdered my car.
“You tapped it?” I repeated.
He was already slowly moving over towards his truck and beeping it to unlock the door. I immediately saw the issue.
“Hang on,” I called, jogging up to him. “How are you driving with your right leg injured?”
He turned to stare at me. At least, I thought he was staring at me. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses.
“I’m using my left leg,” he said finally.
“I don’t think that’s working for you,” I said helplessly. Closer up, I could see the extent of the damage. No way was my car drivable. I didn’t know if it was even fixable. “Did you hit the gas instead of the brake?”
He just looked at me. Or maybe he had fallen asleep behind the sunglasses, I couldn’t tell.
“How am I supposed to get home?” He didn’t answer. “My car is like a fly that got swatted! Like an old tube of toothpaste! I have the panini of hatchbacks!” I realized that I was waving my arms around over my head and my voice had increased dramatically in volume.
“You shouldn’t have parked in this lot, anyway. It’s only for players.”
“And for on-field employees on rehearsal days, like today,” I defended myself. “It’s in the Woodsmen Family Handbook.”
“You read all that? Huh.” That seemed to be my dismissal, because he turned and limped the few steps to his truck.
“Hang on. Hang on! You can’t drive, you’re going to make this worse.” I hopped ahead of him, putting myself between him and the vehicles. “Let me back the truck off. Down.” I winced.
Davis Blake just stared at me. Maybe he was staring at me. His face was pointed toward me.
“Fine.” He held out the keys and I put out my hand as he dropped them. “Be careful with it.”
“You have a well-developed sense of irony,” I muttered. I could barely reach the door handle. There was a bar you could step on to get in, but it was a lucky thing I was so limber, or I wouldn’t have gotten my butt up in the truck.
I started the engine and it roared and rumbled like a herd of elephants ran past. Music blasted out of the oversized speakers on the doors and base boomed up from the back. I covered one ear and flailed with my other hand at the buttons on the dashboard until it stopped. Then I carefully moved the seat forward so that I could drive this behemoth.
The view was actually nice from so high. It would be easy to get through traffic. And if someone was in your way, you could just drive right over their car! Sweet Jesus. I put the truck into reverse and carefully eased back it off mine, flinching at the creaking and breaking noises I could hear over the deafening thunder of the engine. I threw it in park, turned it off, and leaped down to assess the damage.
“Oh. My. Lord.”
Davis Blake pursed his lips. “Let me know how much it costs to get it touched up, and I’ll pay you.”
“Touched up? Touched up?” I was close to yelling again. “Touched up. My car is…” There were no words. “I can’t drive this, and I obviously can’t let you drive yours.”
His mouth tightened. “I told you that I will pay for your repairs. What do you suggest we do now?”
There were two of us, one car between us, and only one of us was fit to drive it. The answer seemed clear to me.
Really, I didn’t know how he’d managed to get into the truck to drive himself over to the stadium. Even as big and strong as he was, he was barely able to get up into the passenger side with his hurt leg, and I found myself pushing on his butt to help him. I was pushing Davis Blake’s…no one would ever believe me. It felt like two very unripe, hard melons. Not that I was squeezing, I was only doing it to help him. Totally not perverted, at all.
When I had hauled myself back into the driver’s seat, he was already on his phone. “I’m getting your car towed. They’ll meet you at my house with a loaner,” he said when he hung up, his words flat and expressionless. The last time I’d heard his voice was when he had been hurt on the field, but I’d listened to his interviews plenty of times. He didn’t usually sound so…empty.
I took a breath, feeling better. Davis Blake would get my car fixed, and Lord knew it needed it even before it was pancaked. “Thank you,” I said. “Well? Are you going to say it?”
“Why aren’t you driving?”
I waited. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“Am I supposed to be saying something?” he asked, exasperated.
“How about apologizing for wrecking my car?” I said helpfully. “And also, thanking me for not killing you.”
“I’m sorry about your car,” he said slowly and carefully, like each word was painfully tugged out of him. “Thank you for not killing me.”
He hit a button on his navigation system and it started directing us to his house, and we drove in silence for a few miles. Despite the fact that it had just decimated my own car, I was enjoying driving the truck. It made me feel big and powerful, like a goddess of the highway or something. I waved at a dog sticking its head out of a car window far below us. Davis Blake would get my car fixed, and this would all work out.
“What do you do on the field so that you get to park in the players’ lot?” he asked me finally.
“I’m Nutty.”
“What is that supposed to mean? You’re crazy?”
“No, I’m Nutty. Nutty the Chipmunk. You know, Nutty and Hank the Hunter?”
“You’re that stupid animal that runs around? We all keep hoping that the hunter really shoots you.”
I stiffened. “Lots of people like Nutty.”
“Lots of people are idiots.”
Well, he was sure pleasant. But I thought I understood. “Did you get bad news about your knee or something? It that what’s the matter?” I asked sympathetically.
At first he didn’t answer. Then his voice came out angry and mean. “Are you looking to sell some information? A first-person account? I’ll give you a tip. They’ll pay more if you get a video of me limping to go along with it.”
“No. I’m not going to sell information about you. I was just trying to be friendly.” First he wrecked my car, then he was a total pill. I closed my lips firmly.
I took a corner a little too sharply—this truck handled a bit differently from mine, which could have fit in the back seat and ridden along with us. He made a little sound. A groan or a moan.
“I’m sorry!” I said. “I didn’t mean to make your knee hurt. I’ll slow down and be more careful.”
“I’m fine.” But his skin looked pale to me. He clearly wasn’t.
“I tore my ACL,” I told him. “In high school. It got better. I mean, it was no picnic, but it did heal.” Eventually and not completely. I thought I’d leave that part out.
Davis Blake looked out the window. “This is the second time. In the same knee.” He quickly swung his head to look at me. “The news is going to get out anyway. The team is making an announcement tonight, so you can’t use that.”
That hurt my feelings. “I already told you, I’m not trying to get information from you. I was trying to be nice.”
“Sure you are.”
“Look, you’re the one who ruined my car, not the other way around. And I’m sorry you hurt your knee, but there’s no reason to take it out on a perfect stranger who’s helping you.”
“Helping me?”
I gestured around the cab of the truck. “I’m driving you home, aren’t I?”
“I’m renting you a car, aren’t I?” he countered.
“Because you demolished mine! Sweet Jesus, what is the matter with you?” I turned to look at him and then had to brake hard for a light. Our weight swung forward and he made another little noise. “Sorry. Sorry! That really wasn’t on purpose.”
Davis Blake stared out of the window the rest of the way to his house and I focused on driving carefully so I wouldn’t hurt his knee again. And wow, his house! If his car could have given mine a ride, his house could have invited my house over to stay. In fact, his house could have hosted mine and four or five of my neighbors’ houses as well. It was right on the lake, too, and I caught a glimpse of the wide beach in the back. Probably he had a boat.
When I turned off the car we sat in the driveway for a moment and he didn’t move. “Here we are,” I prompted him. I looked closely. His face was all tense, as if he was in pain. “Hey, are you on anything? I remember that my knee really, really hurt.”
“No. I’m not on drugs.”
I sighed. “I don’t mean that you’re on drugs, just something to help with the pain! And I’m not going to try to spread rumors that you’re an addict, if that’s where you were going next.” He didn’t answer and I sighed again. “Ok, never mind.” I opened the door and leaped down, then went around to his side. He was staring in the direction of the driveway below him, probably contemplating making his descent.
“Here,” I said, patting my shoulder. “Lean on me and slide down.”
“No.”
“I’m really strong,” I told him, and braced my legs. He directed his mirrored lenses toward me for a moment. Then he eased down until he could reach my shoulder. He weighed a lot, but I held steady. Sometimes I carried Sam around the field in his costume.
He took a few deep breaths once he was standing on the driveway. “I thought you’d fall,” he said after a moment.
“You thought I’d fall, and you leaned on me anyway?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he got his crutches out of the truck and started toward the house. I followed him to the front door, and he turned back toward me.
“I guess I’ll wait here for the loaner car to come,” I said. “You really did call about that, right? You weren’t kidding or something?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you got me a car, or yes, you were kidding?”
Davis Blake turned back to the door and unlocked it. “There’s a car coming.”
He shut the door.
Well. Well, well, well. I stared, open-mouthed, at the door and heard several locks click shut. Well!
I had met plenty of the players on the Woodsmen squad. Some had been nice, some not as nice. Most of the single ones (and some of the not-single ones) had asked me out. I had never even been close to Davis Blake before, and certainly hadn’t spoken to him. He had seemed to be almost in another orbit from where I was whirling around.
Now I was glad I hadn’t talked to him. Sweet Lord, he was a pill! He destroyed my car then made me wait outside. Fine, he was in pain, but…I thought about it. Maybe the news he had gotten from the doctors today was really, really bad. Maybe he wasn’t going to be able to play again, ever. That meant not only his job and his livelihood would be gone, but all his dreams were crushed too. Probably he had wanted to be a football player from when he was a little boy. The poor guy. Oh, now I was feeling sorry for him. And the hit that took him out and caused the injury was totally illegal, and came after the ball had been called down. The futility of it must have even made the whole situation feel worse.
I settled down on the front step to wait for my car to arrive.
Click. Click. Click. The locks opened, and the front door swung in. “Why are you still here?”
I stood up from my perch on the step. My butt was asleep. “The car didn’t come yet.”
“And you were going to wait all night?”
I checked my phone. “It’s only been an hour.”
Davis Blake sighed loudly. “Come inside.” He left the door open behind him as he swung on his crutches back through the dark entryway.
I followed him, unsure if I should do all the locks. I fastened one, just to play it safe, then hurried after him into a huge kitchen. “Your house is fancy,” I commented. Dusty and messy and dark, but fancy.
He didn’t answer. “Sit there.” He signaled at a bar stool, but my butt was still asleep. I walked instead over to the stove where something brownish was in a pot.
“What is this?” I sniffed at it, and it was almost as bad as Sam had smelled earlier. “Ew, yuck! Is this food?”
The sunglasses were gone, so now I could see his blue eyes glaring right at me. “I’m cooking dinner.”
“Do you really want to eat that?” I shook my head. “No, you couldn’t. Let’s see what else you have.” I opened his restaurant-sized refrigerator, but it was mostly empty of food inside. There was no shortage of beer, however. “Hmm…you have eggs that are about to expire.” I pulled open a drawer or two. “How about a Denver omelet? That will be pretty quick if you’re hungry.” I took out ham and a bell pepper that had seen better days.
“What are you doing?”
I froze as I looked through a cabinet drawer. “I was getting a knife. Do you want an omelet? I was just thinking that it would be hard for you to stand for a long time and make dinner for yourself. And eggs have a lot of good protein to help you heal. If that’s true. I’m not really sure if it is.”
“Ok.”
I took that as assent to the omelet. “You don’t have a lot of kitchen stuff,” I commented as I finally found a knife. Most of the numerous drawers I had opened had been empty.
“I don’t cook.”
“What do you eat, then? Do you mostly go out? Or get deliveries?”
He was staring at me again. “You talk a lot.”
“No more than any normal person.” I emphasized the word normal. “If you don’t want to take any prescription pain medication, what about some aspirin or something? Your knee has to hurt.”
Davis Blake slowly lowered himself onto a stool. “In the cupboard next to the stove.”
I got the bottle, found where he had his supply of four glasses, and filled one with water. I held out the aspirin, eyebrows raised.
“What?” he asked me, taking the medicine.
“Thank you?” I prodded.
“Thank you.”
By the time we were done eating, the loaner car had arrived, and peeking through the window, I saw it was way, way nicer than the one that had gotten smushed. Davis Blake hadn’t spoken more than five words to me the entire time I cooked, and while he was eating. But he had said thank you again when I put down the plate in front of him. I had made enough for two, so I ate quietly alongside him.
I hopped up when the doorbell rang. “Bye.”
“What’s your name?”
I stopped, halfway out the kitchen door. “Oh! That’s ridiculous that you don’t know it. We just ate dinner together and you flattened my car!”
He waited.
“Katie. Katie Bell, Katriona Bell.”
That was it. He didn’t say anything else, so I just waved, and walked out into entryway and then into the driveway.
The guy who had driven the loaner car over was staring up at the big house in the darkness. “Is this Davis Blake’s house? Were you just in there with him?” he demanded.
I shrugged. “Nope.”
He looked at me suspiciously. “I heard this is where he lives.”
“Nope,” I said again. “Do I just take the keys from you and go, or do I have to sign something?”
When I looked up, I saw the front door was partially open, and I saw a faint gleam of a metal crutch just behind it.