Page 21 of The Baller

He shook his head, trying to keep his face serious. “It’s been logged, but we haven’t submitted it in our daily report.”

“And are you going to?”

One small compensation of being trailed by Secret Service – it was against protocol for them to report on any day-to-day behavior of their protectee – meaning my mom wasn’t permitted to know about anything, unless I told her. One loophole of that, however, was any type of incident or physical altercation.

Millie and I stared at him, waiting for an answer. Ethan was the hardest of my detail to read, so when he still hadn’t answered after five seconds, I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny.

“Yes,” he said finally, “but… Jake hasn’t named the guys. He’s written them up as frat boys.”

My entire chest deflated in relief until I received a swift nudge in the ribs from Millie.

“Lucky save! If she finds out you’ve been hanging out with the Lions, you’ll be back in D.C. faster than one of Ace Watson’s pitches.”

“Tell me about it.” I could almost imagine it happening, being summoned to the Oval Office to explain myself. “Ethan, she won’t find out, will she?”

He shook his head. “If she does, it won’t be from our team. Jake and I spoke to the guys after you left, and we agreed it wouldn’t add anything to the report if we named them, formany reasons,” he added.

I gave a silent prayer to anyone listening, though this time I wasn’t sure what was worse – the headlines from the media, or my mom finding out.

Since I was a kid, our family had functioned around sports. Both my parents had been born and raised in Philadelphia, therefore, in the winter we supported the Eagles, and in the summer, it was the Phillies. There was no negotiation; it’s how it had always been.

A running joke from the Presidential election campaign was that it had followed the calendar of the Phillies. My mom had seen them play away games fourteen times while she’d been on the road.

For Opening Day this year, she’d been asked to perform the ceremonial throw for the Lions at Phillies game. “This is what I really became President for,” she’d said and winked at me before she took to the field.

She’d had her aides out for a week on the White House lawn practicing her pitch. I think she’d been more excited to step onto the field at Citizen’s Bank Park than the night she’d won the election, especially when the Lions crumbled, and we watched our team smash home run after home run.

The first day of the football season a few weeks ago was the last time we’d been together as a family before I headed to Columbia. We’d stuck with our years’ long tradition of celebrating it with friends, including Millie, her mom, and her brothers, albeit this year was spent at Camp David. The boys had painted their faces, yelled at the screen until they were hoarse, then celebrated the win against the Patriots by drinking all night until they passed out.

It had been the first normal day I’d had all year.

“It’s kind of romantic, don’t you think?” Millie asked. Hersmirk served as a warning that she was about to cause trouble. “Ethan, what do you think? Radley getting saved by Lux Weston because he thought Jake was a creeper is romantic, right?”

She dodged my hand right before I could slap it over her mouth. “Millie! Shut up. Ethan, you don’t have to walk with us anymore. Sorry.”

He chuckled quietly. “Anytime, Radley. We have your back.”

“Thank you… hey, did you pull the short straw for class today?”

His dimples popped with a grin; he really was cute when he smiled, and I wasn’t the only one holding that opinion based on the girls checking him out when he walked ahead of us. “Yeah. And if you want a good seat we need to move quicker because Jake’s there, and he said it’s filling up.”

Millie escaped my clutches to look at him. “And… what else did he say?”

“That he couldn’t understand why anyone would be getting to a Shakespeare class before they needed to.” Ethan’s grin widened as he let out a chuckle, while Millie snorted.

“Can’t believe you asked that,” I hissed, after Ethan quickened his steps to give us some space and move out of earshot.

“What? There’s no way Jake wasn’t going to complain about a Shakespeare class.”

“No,” I shook my head, “not that. About Lux Weston being romantic, or whatever point you were trying to make. Actually, what point were you trying to make?”

“That Lux taking on Jake was romantic, even if he did get it disastrously wrong. I wanted a boy’s opinion.” She shrugged, hooking her thumbs through her backpack straps as it slid offher shoulder.

I turned, and scowled. “What does that mean?”

“He thought he was saving you from a creeper. No one’s ever done that before.”

“Because I come with built-in protection. No one needs to.”

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