Crash

Jude caught it easily and, instead of throwing it a respectable twenty-five yards to get us a first down, he cradled that football into his side and ran. In fact, he sprinted, sprinted like he was running from the cops. I grinned, realizing his speed work likely had something to do with evading the cops.

It was a long shot, hoping to run the football into the end zone when we were eighty yards back, but the only person who didn’t seem concerned with that was Jude. He ran like he couldn’t not finish in the end zone. He ran like no one could stop him.

And no one could.

Player after player from Cascade High tried to block him or tackle him, a few even tried to trip him or take him down by grabbing his face mask. None of them were successful. The ones who missed Jude’s stiff arm were just swatted off like they weren’t varsity grade high school football players.

At the fifty, the crowd busted into a roar. Everyone was hooting and hollering and swinging their arms in the direction of the end zone. Beyond every law of physics, Jude’s pace picked up.

By the time he hit the twenty, there were no more Cascade High players to stop him. They all decorated the astroturf like a box of fallen toothpicks. Jude danced the last few yards into the end zone, shaking and shimmying in those gold spandex pants, eliciting an uptick in the female hollering.

Once in the end zone, he spiked the ball and then turned to face the crowd. Everyone was going crazy, like they’d just witnessed the birth of Jesus and the invention of electricity at the same time. Jude was a rock star, their savior, and they were paying him homage.

Not taking a few moments to bask in the glory of the eighty yard run and one thousand people chanting his name, he loped over to the sidelines. Past Coach A, who was still frozen in place, past his players on the sidelines holding up their hands, and then over the cyclone fence in one seamless move.

He didn’t stop until he was sweating and smiling in front of me. “Hey,” he breathed, sliding his helmet off his head. The rain coming in contact with his sweaty forehead was steaming up the air.

“Hey,” I replied, pretending we weren’t the center of everyone’s attention.

“Did you like that little run out there?”

I smiled as he slid his beanie around until it was in just the right spot. It was like some damn security blanket. “It was all right,” I understated, lifting a shoulder.

“All right, huh?” he said, moving closer. In fact, so close our bodies couldn’t have been closer unless we were buck naked. “That was a pretty clever move there, Luce. Volunteering me for the jerk-off team to get back at me for getting you voted an official Southpointe princess,” he said, flicking my crown.

“It was clever, wasn’t it?”

“It was a good one, I’ll give you that,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But the hell of it is, Luce, that I never, ever let someone else get the last word in.”

“Please,” I said, making a face. “What are you going to do? Have me suit up and be a back-up kicker?”

“No,” he said, lowering his hands to my hips. My throat ran dry. “I’m going to do something much better than that.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said, watching his eyes swirl silver. “What’s that?”

Lifting me above him, he winked. “This,” he said, lowering me so my lips landed right on his. And whether it was his or mine that started to move first didn’t matter because it was apparent neither were going to finish soon.

Rain. Jude. Me. Kissing.

Stick a fork in me because I was done.

“Mr. Ryder,” a dulled voice cut through the din of noise exploding around us. “Mr. Ryder!”

Jude groaned against my lips, not letting me go when he turned to Coach A.

“Think you’re about done here?” Coach A asked, smirking. “We’ve got a game to win.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be done here, Coach,” he called back, earning a few laughs from the bleachers and making me flush down to my toes.

“In that case, wrap it up and get your ass back out here,” he hollered. “Starting quarterbacks don’t make out with their girlfriends when they’ve got forty points to make up.”

“This one does,” Jude whispered, lifting me up onto my tiptoes and kissing me again. “Wait for me after the game. I’ve got some unfinished business with you.” Setting me down, he pulled the blanket tight around me again before leaping over the fence and jogging back onto the field.

I don’t know how he was able to bound and sprint like that because I couldn’t move. What the hell had just happened? Whatever it was, I wanted to rinse and repeat until I took my dying breath.

“What. The. Hell.”

My sentiments exactly.

Taylor marched up to me, arms crossed, and stare pointed. “Friends, eh?”

“Friendship is a pivotal element of our relationship.” I was still breathless, but at least I could form words like pivotal.

“Yeah, but not the defining element. Obviously.” For whatever reason, Taylor seemed pissed. I guess she was going to revoke my pom-pom privileges.

“Oh?” I was back to one syllable responses.

“Jude Ryder just kissed you in front of a gazillion people and he didn’t dispute it when Couch Arcadia called you his girlfriend.”

Now that the aftereffects of the kiss were wearing off, I could form and think a logical string of thoughts, and what Taylor was saying was true. Jude might as well have posted our make out moment to the internet for the number of people that had and would see it, and he’d barely flinched when Coach A used the “G” word.