Page 18 of Second Down Fake

She shrugged, taking the disc with a smile. “Beer?”

I grabbed a distance driver and stood on the tee pad, surveying the course.

Empty. Well, mostly.

On the eighth hole, a group of three kids in their late teens stood on the tee chatting. Their loud guffaws carried on the breeze, but they were far enough ahead not to bother us. Or recognize me.

The social media fervor seemed to have died down over the weekend, thanks in part to an A-list musician losing his shit on a first-class flight to Tahiti, but it hadn’t stopped.

Then, Zoey walked a red carpet, pointedly avoiding questions about our breakup with a pat, “no comment,” which renewed interest with a new angle. Now, she was framed as “rising above” my pettiness.

Not great. But, better than last week.

Still, I’d been careful to keep a low profile. I’d hung out at friends’ houses, tapped my assistant to run my errands, and mostly stayed at my house or the stadium.

“You okay?” Cassandra asked, resting her hand on my arm. “Do you know them?” She nodded toward the kids.

I shook my head. “No. Sorry. Getting in the zone.”

“Okay. Well, once you’re in the zone, we need to place some stakes on the game.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Stakes?”

“Yeah, just to keep it interesting. I don’t want to get bored beating you.”

I swallowed a belly laugh. “I play pretty much every day I can, and this is my home course. You really think you’re going to beat me?”

“Not outright, but if you give me a fair handicap, we can still make this fun. Or was that your game? You lure me out to your disc golf course and decimate me? That doesn’t sound very fair.”

“I wasn’t going to ‘decimate’ you. I was planning on impressing you with my amazing disc golf skills, so you’d say, ‘Oh Diego, teach me more disc golf so I can get as good as you someday.’” I pitched my voice into a false falsetto that made her laugh.

I liked that. I liked watching her cheeks grow red and her eyes sparkle. I liked the way they turned from a mossy green to almost emerald in the sunlight. And better than that, I liked the way her laugh made me feel. Like I’d actually done something besides poorly imitate her.

SEVEN

CASSANDRA

“Alright, handicap…” Diego narrowed his eyes at the wide expanse of green in front of us.

A Norwalk Breakers hat shaded his face, but he tilted his head up to the afternoon sun, pouring light on his profile, long lashes over rich brown eyes and a chiseled jaw with a faint indent on one side. Painfully handsome and he knew it. “How about I give you three extra strokes on every hole?”

I crinkled my nose. “That doesn’t sound like enough.”

“That’s plenty.”

“You said you were really good at disc golf, and I’ve never played. Seems like I should get five points a hole, easy.”

Teasing Diego came easily to me. Well, actually, teasing in general came easy to me, an annoying little sister trait I’d never quite outgrown. As I grew up, I weaponized it, unnerving and disarming people who took me for a spacey young woman, which I also could be. But unlike my sister or my best friend, teasing Diego felt charged somehow. It made me feel powerful. He was poised and calm, and pushing him just off balance made me unnaturally happy.

“Four,” he ground out, jaw tight.

I held back a smile. He caved awfully quickly. “Fine, four. But I need an apology when you trounce me and I get pouty about it.”

“Pouty? I look forward to seeing that. Now, let me show you how it’s done.”

Diego strode onto the green mat and held up his disc to the sky. He shifted his feet, aiming slightly to the left of the metal basket in the distance that he’d pointed out as being the hole. His shoulders strained against his t-shirt and his biceps bulged as he practiced his throw.

Goosebumps raced down my arms as I paid more attention to his back than his technique. I’d given myself enough points to win, and I didn’t want to lose because I couldn’t keep it in my pants.

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