Page 24 of Most Likely to Score
My feet sink into the sand as we traverse the beach and memories of my childhood wishes return. “I wanted everything when I was a kid. I was an only child, so I was convinced I needed a four-legged friend since I didn’t have a brother or sister. I’d have taken anything. Dog, cat, hamster, bunny. I even tried to get a hedgehog once.”
“A hedgehog? Those are pretty damn cute.”
“I know. But I had no luck, either. My mom was allergic to everything, so we never had any pets. The ironic thing is my dad finally got a dog a few years ago after my mom died.”
Jones stops in his tracks, reaching for my arm. “I didn’t realize your mom had passed.”
Sometimes, I think I know him well. I work with him, share his stats and performance with the media, and I sit down with reporters when they interview him. But that’s superficial. There’s so much we haven’t talked about. So many conversations we haven’t had. “She had a heart attack four years ago,” I say, doing my best to keep my tone even and ignoring the lump in my throat that forms inevitably when I talk about her.
“I’m really sorry.”
“Me, too,” I say softly. “She wasn’t that young, though. Not that that makes it easier necessarily. But she was sixty-five. She was over forty when she adopted me. My parents were both a little older. They didn’t have any luck trying to have a child the old-fashioned way. Ergo, I’m their kid.”
He wraps an arm around my shoulder and gives me a squeeze. “I’m sorry you lost your mom, Jillian. I would be devastated.”
“I was, but my dad was the one who took it the hardest. I was worried about him for the longest time. I still worry about him, but he’s doing so much better.” I reflect on the shifts I’ve seen in him recently. He laughs more, smiles more, and spends time with friends. He’s healing. “I think that’s why the dog helps so much. It gives him something to focus on, someone to love. And I try to visit him as often as I can.”
“That’s what you should do,” he says, squeezing my shoulder once more.
My eyes drift to his fingers, spread over my shoulder. For a moment, I flash back to dinner, to my dirty fantasies of his hands.
I never expected the first time he’d have them on me for so long, it would be like this, borne of some kind of comfort.
Or that I would like it this much.
Especially since he doesn’t take his hand off me for the rest of the walk.
13
JONES
“Dude, did you lose some speed in the off-season? Want us to help you find it?”
The smart aleck comment comes courtesy of Cooper Armstrong as we round the far end of the practice field at our training facility two days later.
“You’re slower than a Pop Warner lineman today,” our kicker Rick goads, climbing on the insult train.
From behind my shades, I raise my eyes to their backs. The two of them are several feet ahead of me. Harlan’s running in front of them.
Huh.
Truth is, I may have been running slower than usual because my mind drifted back to yesterday and the second photo shoot Jillian set up. The shot she planned was golden, as in . . . everything. The dog was a golden retriever mix, and the photog snapped a sweet image at the edge of Sausalito with the Golden Gate Bridge rising majestically. The pooch put his paw onmy leg as we sat on a rock, the gorgeous blue waters of the bay behind us.
Afterward, Jillian and I grabbed lunch at a place on the water and chatted about our top fantasy baseball picks as a San Francisco Cougars game played on the flat-screen in the background. Turns out she has a wickedly good eye for fantasy sports, and her baseball team is leading in her league. “Confession: I get very ornery if I lose,” she’d admitted.
“Confession: I get pretty damn annoyed if I lose the Super Bowl.”
She’d laughed. “Yeah, that does seem to be a bit of a bigger deal.”
It’s funny how I’ve had my eye on her for the last few years, but I’m only recently learning all these fascinating details about her, from her family to her fantasy addiction.
But now I’m dragging at laps since my mind is on the woman, and that won’t do.
I pick up the pace. “The only weight I put on in the off-season is all this muscle.” I peel off my T-shirt and throw it straight at Rick. He dodges it, naturally, and I run past Rick and Cooper, flexing my biceps.
As I speed up, I turn around, running backward so I can fully enjoy flipping the double bird to my teammates. “And I will see you fuckers downfield. If you ever wondered who was the fastest on this team, you’re about to be schooled.”
Spinning around, I take off. Sunglasses on, I sprint the final lap as if I’m racing to catch a football,sweeping past Harlan, too. And he’s a fast bastard. But I’m faster.
