Page 5 of Matched By My Rival
It was nice to blow off steam and remember that football was fun, not just a crap ton of work. With the intense last season we’d had, I needed that.
There were a few onlookers—Cruz’s girlfriend, Johnston’s on-again, off-again hookup, and a few girls who’d probably like to snag one of us—along with one or two students who’d paused to watch for a few minutes and shake their heads before continuing across campus.
My phone vibrated in my back pocket. “Hold up, I got a call.”
“Let me guess. Brunette, starts with H and ends in T?”
Johnston looked between me and Cruz, forehead creased in confusion. “Harriet?”
“No, dipshit,” Cruz said, giving Johnston a shove that sent him stumbling a few clumsy steps. “Hot. H-O-T. Jesus fucking Christ!”
They started bickering like an old couple, and I tuned them out as I checked my phone.
Not a brunette, but my very blond mother.
She called now and then to check in, and I usually answered because I knew she was lonely in the house without me there. Dad worked a lot, and we’d always been close. She was a huge football fan, a booster for high school and collegiate sports, and had the coach’s ear—whether he wanted her to have it or not. Dad loved football too, but he traveled for work, so it was usually Mom in the stands, cheering until her voice was hoarse.
“Hey, Mama,” I answered warmly. “You’re up late tonight.”
She sniffed. “I’m forty-three, not seventy. I don’t eat dinner at four or go to bed at eight p.m.”
I snorted a laugh. “Good to know because it’s after eleven.”
She sighed. “I guess it is. I watched a sad movie, and I needed to hear your voice.”
“What were you watching?”
“Sophie’s Choice.”
“Ugh, Mom, why would you do that?” I didn’t understand people who watched depressing shit. Wasn’t the news bad enough? Mass shootings, black men being murdered by cops, riots in the streets—and my mother was watching Holocaust movies.
“I like history,” she protested. “If we don’t remember it—”
“We’re doomed to repeat it,” I echoed over her words, having heard this line one or two hundred times in my lifetime. “I know.”
“Besides, you don’t get to lecture me, mister. You’re still up, and you’re the one with a 6 a.m. drill. First one since break, isn’t it?”
I winced. “Shit.”
“Tell me you didn’t forget.”
“How could I?”
We’d been reminded in weight training this morning. I’d had it on my calendar alerts for weeks. I’d remembered when I met up to hang with Cruz and Johnston. After a few beers, though, it’d become a selective memory. One I’d happily forgotten in the name of a little fun.
Cruz and Johnston started trash talking one another, shoving and laughing. I waved my hand at them, trying to get them to shut up, but they were drunken idiots at this point.
“What’s going on there?” she asked, a thread of tension entering her voice. “Are you at aparty?”
“It’s not a party,” I said. “I’m hanging with a few of the guys. We’re just—”
“Toss me another beer, bro!” Cruz yelled.
Fucking great.
“—blowing off steam,” I finished weakly. “It’s the off season.”
She sighed. “Honey, I know you’re young, and you want to have fun. I get it, but…”
