Page 12 of French Kiss

5

That Toned Ass

Year Three - February

Crissy Field, San Francisco

Josh’sgood feeling turned out to be fleeting. Fifteen minutes into the game, we were down by four points, and the other team had just intercepted our team’s toss. Again.

The Frisbee flew cleanly across the flat stretch of grass in Crissy Field, just above Maddox’s blond-streaked hair, but that didn’t stop him from making a run for it and reaching out his long, muscled arm as it sailed toward the ground.

He grabbed it just as it was zipping across the goal line and managed to correct his dive into a coordinated jog with the Frisbee grasped tightly in his hand. “Five-nil,” he called out, as though we needed reminding that we were getting trounced and had yet to score a single point.

“Scoff not, hotshot. We’re lulling you into a false sense of security,” Josh muttered from the bench behind me. His insults were limited to deadpan asides the other team didn’t actually hear.

He almost had it right. We did manage to catch them off guard and score a few points in the first half, but there was never any real contest. That was by design. When we’d started playing these friendly games on Fridays after our shifts ended, Maddox gamely offered to make up the teams.

He swore he picked names randomly, but his team just happened to have a former college rower, a guy who regularly won for his age group in sprint triathlons, and two second-year residents who clearly spent their free time at the gym. Our team was mostly made up of people like Heidi, Josh and me, who spent our free time sleeping or watching Netflix.

Part of the fun was the ever-hopeful way our team approached each game, like maybe this would be the one where we’d unleash something the others never saw coming. Maybe the underdogs would prevail. Occasionally, we managed to tie up the score for a brief moment. Sometimes the late-afternoon sun would prevent someone in the other team from completing a catch, and we’d get a lucky break.

But we never hung on for long.

Even the Frisbee seemed to prefer resting in Maddox’s strong hands, as it sailed gently toward him and allowed him to score yet another point.

“Thank God, it’s halftime and we can stop the fucking massacre,” Heidi said, dropping to her knees on the grass.

“I’m still waiting for the magic of your good feeling to kick in,” I said, joining Josh on our bench.

“Fuck it. Feeling’s gone. Especially in my legs. I think I sprinted eleven miles out there.”

I saw Maddox walking toward us with a cooler of wet towels he’d somehow produced from nowhere. Josh was splayed out on his back, pouring water on his head and our other teammates were stretching sore muscles and looking beaten up. Maddox had a mile-wide grin, looking as fresh and tidy as if he’d been attended to by a hair and makeup crew.

With the sun pitching down in the sky behind him, he actually glowed.

“Hey, guys, I can take your money now, no problem. Spare you the humiliation of the second half,” Maddox said, throwing the Frisbee with a backspin that allowed it to fly away and come back to him like a boomerang.

“Why would we do that, when we’re about to unleash on you?” Josh asked, trying to hide how much energy it took to sit up.

“Look who’s flexing,” Maddox said. “I like a man who stands behind a losing bet.”

“I might even go double or nothing,” Josh said, still panting a little bit, even though we’d had a few minutes to rest.

I looked at him. “Really?” I said quietly. “It’s not going so well for us. You sure about that?”

“He won't take the bet. Watch.”

Maddox threw the Frisbee to himself again, but he miscalculated and it went a few yards away, landing on the grass. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” Maddox said, jogging after it.

Maddox’s taunts annoyed me because he was so smug and he was so right. We had little chance of winning. “This is one area of my life where I am absolutely not competitive,” I told Josh, fully lying in an attempt to save face. It hurt me a little to say the words, even as I wished they were true.

“Agreed. I’m not about to get worked up about trying to beat Maddox at a game he designed in his own favor. What would be the point?”

“We’re just here to have fun, right?” I asked, needing to make sure of our shared fake objective so I could be free to flail around on the field, as I often did, when the Frisbee came near me. It made me feel better to overtly pretend none of it mattered.

“If we’re not having fun, we’re doing something wrong. But I’d also really like to beat his ass.”

Yes, and just look at that toned ass, I thought, admiring Maddox from behind as he bent to pick up the Frisbee. Just watching him move did things to my heart that I wished it didn’t.

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