Page 99 of The Shake Off

“Shit. Do you think he knows how we’ve improved… and why?” asked Tanner.

Lux shook his head. “I don’t think he’d care if we’d improved from milking goats. All he cares about is improvement.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Nice to see our hard work is appreciated though.”

“Hard work?” Lux mumbled, throwing a handful of nuts into his mouth.

Tanner’s face widened with a grin. “My dick’s been hard.”

I chuckled, picking my phone back up because now I had an idea.

Ace:Hey, Babycakes, what do you say about coming to the game Saturday? See your hard work in action.

I’d expected her to have fallen asleep, but as I put my phone back down, the screen lit up.

I couldn’t have snatched it quicker if I’d tried.

Payton:Maybe, if you’re lucky, Lucky Aces.

I might have been grinning so hard it was making my ears ring, but it didn’t block out Tanner next to me.

“Yep. Definitely a sledgehammer.”

NINETEEN

PAYTON

Game day at Lions Stadium is not for the faint-hearted.

It’s way worse when you’re already flustered from all the traffic you got stuck in, and your friend has to meet you at the executive entrance.

“Hey, buddy, watch where you’re going!” I snapped at the guy who’d shoulder-barged me, following it up with an apologetic smile to the woman walking behind with her two little boys, whom I’d almost fallen into.

It wasn’t usually this chaotic. Usually we took the more civilized, not to mention quieter, route to Penn’s box. Except, as I kept walking, I realized we were heading in the opposite direction.

“Where are we going?

“Penn’s seats behind the dugout. I thought it would be more fun,” replied Lowe, marching ahead so quickly I was jogging to keep up with her, but the swarms of people lining up for beers and hot dogs made it harder to contend with.

This time I saw it coming, and dodged out of the way of a guy who thought he could carry four beers at once. Lowe was still talking as I fell back into stride with her, and we turned the corner at the top of the steps, past the pillar which had been hiding the view.

“…plus, Marnie likes to sit down there with her laptop so she can monitor what’s going on with each guy, and we’re keeping her company.”

I stopped dead.

I hadn’t been to the stadium this season, not inside to watch a game anyway, and not since the day I’d waited outside for Ace. I always forgot how huge the field was. It seemed way bigger up close with its thick, bright green stripes and terracotta diamond spread out in front of us. Groundskeepers were hosing down the dirt and wiping the bases, which were so white they look liked they’d been put in a hot wash with Clorox.

Knowing Penn, they probably had.

And maybe I hadn’t noticed before because I’d never paid quite as much attention, or been so aware, but there were a lot of Watson shirts.

“Doesn’t she have a whole bank of screens and her team up there?” I nodded to the boxes where we usually watched the game from.

The box was where I thought we’d be watching the game from,hopedwe’d be watching the game from, not in the seats at the bottom of the steps I was walking down where I could smell the sweat. Where I could probably reach out and touch Ace.

I hadn’t seen him for nearly two weeks. Not IRL, anyway. Not since I’d sat in his kitchen eating pancakes, and he’d dragged me back to bed. But since then, we’d fallen into a pattern of talking every day, several times a day. In fact, I talked to him more than I talked to my family – not thatthatwas an astounding feat – but two days ago, I talked to him more than I talked to Kit.

Which was astounding.

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