Page 10 of The Problem with Sports
“And before you scold me because you think I’m being too hard on myself, I’m not,” I told her. “I’m stating simple facts, Rach. That man can get any woman he wants. He doesn’t need to resort to single mothers who don’t know anything about sports.”
“How do you know he doesn’t want something different?” she challenged.
“Different from perfection?” I asked, the sarcasm obvious.
“Don’t judge a man you know nothing about, Andrea,” she chided.
“I’m not judging him, Rachel,” I denied. “But I know you know what the man looks like.”
“Okay, so, yeah, maybe he looks like he should live on Mount Olympus, but-”
“Maybe?”
She sighed. “Fine,” she exhaled dramatically. “He’s beyond perfect and can get any woman he wants. But still, that doesn’t mean you can’t be that woman.”
Rachel was forgetting one very real and serious concern. “Rach,” I said sternly, “the man barged into my home and started arguing with Grant over baseball opinions. He’s clearly taken one too many bats to the head.”
“Why does he have to be crazy?” she countered. “Why can’t he just be passionate about the subject? Heisa retired baseball player, after all.”
“Did you miss the part where he knocked on a stranger’s door to challenge an eight-year-old?” I reminded her. “He’s clearly crazy.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “If you had even a tiny inkling that he was dangerous or really crazy, you would have called the police, Andie. That man is not crazy.”
While she did have a valid point, I still couldn’t dismiss how he had barged into my home, like a lunatic, to argue baseball with a child. However, he hadn’t come across mean or threatening. He had actually seemed upset that Grant hadn’t chosen him as the best Condors player ever.
I shook my head. Maybe retirement was making him loopy.
And then a thought occurred to me. “Rachel, you can’t tell anyone Nathan’s my neighbor,” I blurted out. “If it gets out that he lives here, this place will start crawling with tabloid vultures and gold-diggers.”
“Firstly, I know better,” she retorted. “And secondly, I doubt he would have bought that penthouse if he hadn’t believed it was safe and private.”
“Well, if everyone knows he retired and has come back home, then-”
“Andie, he’d have the problem of being famous, no matter where he lived,” she pointed out. “I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”
The entire thing was…weird.
And not that there was a chance he’d ever be interested in me, but I couldn’t deny it was a nice fantasy to indulge in. If I was going to fling the chastity belt off, who better with than someone who was built like Nathan Hayes? One look at the man, and how could you not think about wall sex?
“Well, even if I were interested-”
“You have a pulse. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be,” she interrupted.
“-I seriously doubt Nathan Hayes is the guy to take the training wheels off with,” I retorted. “I need a nice, boring, mild-mannered CPA or something to practice with first.”
Silence.
Complete silence.
“Rach?”
“Are you telling me that, after over two years without sex, you want your first time to be with someone who’s going to insist on keeping his socks on?” she asked incredulously. “You want your first time to beboring?”
“Not boring,” I denied. “Just…something tells me sex with Nathan Hayes would be explosive, and that would suck-”
“What?”
“All I’m saying is it would be a tough act to follow,” I clarified. “The last thing I want to do is have mind-blowing sex, then have to make do with average afterwards.”
