Page 25 of Play the Last Track
Where did that girl go?
“You don’t have to change,” Ivy says, touching my arm. “You look great in whatever you wear.”
I give her a small smile and shake my head. “I’m going to change. Give me five minutes.”
***
Standing at the sidelines before a game is nothing like I have ever experienced before. Ivy and I are situated behind a velvet rope on the edge of the field, watching the team warm up. Players and coaches are scattered across the field, the media running amongst them as they try to catch someone to talk to.
Ivy bounces on her feet next to me, her jacket hanging off one shoulder, and she furiously waves her arm in the air. She doesn’t need to. Scott hasn’t focused on his warm-up since the moment we walked out onto the field tonight.
“He sees you, Ives.” I laugh, shoving my hands into the pockets of the leather jacket I changed into. After staring at myself in the mirror of my bedroom for a solid minute and a half, I switched my black skinny jeans for a pair of blue denim straight legs, a white tee, and a leather jacket. I’m not in the team colors, and I’m not wearing Flynn’s number, but at least I don’t look like I just got off a shift at the bar anymore. Still, even though I’m wearing what feels like my old armor again, discomfort crawls up the back of my neck and makes my hands sweaty.
I know it’s because of Grant. He’s a football fan. A big one. We used to come to almost every home game he could get tickets for. He was too cheap to buy season tickets, but would get them on discount if any were going at the last minute. Scott offered us hisfamily friend’s tickets most of last year, even if Ivy wasn’t coming to the game, and Grant jumped at the chance. Barely said thank you. We had a huge fight over it. I got annoyed that he was using Scott for free tickets and tying us to him, especially because Ivy was struggling with the wholeScott’s an NFL playerand her grief.
Grant didn’t give a shit. It was a red flag that I chose to ignore.
I glance into the stands, wondering whether he’s in there somewhere. It makes my stomach turn over. Inside the safety of my jacket pocket, I clench my fist and dig my nails into the palm of my hand. I force myself to laugh at Ivy, still waving at her boyfriend … sorry,fiancé… across the field. Dirty blond hair flickers in the periphery of my eyeline, and my gaze catches on a man walking toward Scott.
With his pads and uniform on, with the helmet hanging by his side from his fingers while his other hand racks through sweaty hair, Flynn Reed is a god.
On a football field, he’s otherworldly.
He smiles. He plays around with his teammates. He laughs loudly, and his movements are big. He doesn’t have to ask for anyone’s attention because he knows it’s already on him. He’s a character out here.
One very different from the man who wears superhero-branded T-shirts at home after he showers and watches renovation shows with me.
I wonder what’s real. The player or the homebody?
Like snow blanketing the ground in the wintertime, silence falls when he looks at me. The stadium seems as if it goes completely quiet. His eyes travel down, and then up my body. Fingers grip the helmet by his side, and when the other drops from his hair, it flexes before he lifts it and waves.
I’m stuck on him. His gaze traps me and, for a moment, I’m taken right back to Italy. That night, with him, I felt …alive.
Getting caught in his gaze when he’s in his element feels the same. It sets my skin on fire, and my heart starts pounding in my chest. It gets hard to breathe, and I feel as if I could run a marathon. In which direction, who knows?
A hand wraps around my elbow, and the sound of the stadium comes crashing back in. The noise is deafening as Flynn pulls his gaze away from me, and the hand on my arm tugs me around.
“You’re here,” the small woman holding onto me says. She’s got long reddish-brown hair and a Louis Vuitton Alma BB hanging from her wrist. She’s a little shorter than I am, but when I look down, I see the five-inch heels she’s balancing on. This must be Hollie, Flynn’s publicist. Or is it manager? Agent? Maybe it’s all three.
“Hi, Hollie,” Ivy says, finally looking away from Scott.
“Good to see you, Ivy.” She barely spares Ivy a glance before focusing back on me. “You’ll do. We need to get you a jersey, but this is fine for today. I’ll send over a bit more of a brief for the next game.”
“Uh?” I cross my arms over my chest, feeling a little defensive. A brief? The brief I got from Flynn was that I just needed to show up to games. Maybe kiss him on the cheek and clap when he gets a touchdown. Is there more to the brief?
“Don’t worry, I’ll provide the team gear. You won’t have to pay for anything.” She must mistake my confused look for worry. Hollie pulls out her phone and starts typing furiously. “I’ve organized a photographer from theBoston Dailyto get a picture of you and Flynn kissing. It’ll run on the front page of their gossip section tomorrow morning. Working title,Flynn Reed finally wifes up.” She waves a hand in front of her face as if she’s visualizing the headline in lights on Broadway. I cringe a little.
“Wifes up?” Ivy giggles behind her hand.
“I know, it’s a little much, but if Flynn hadn’t decided to punch someone in front of a camera, then we wouldn’t be having this problem, would we?” She looks up from her phone and out to the field of players. “Where is he?”
“Over there.” I point before I can stop myself.
“Reed!” Hollie yells out. For a tiny woman, her voice carries right across the field to where the guys are standing. Flynn’s head whips back around, his eyes momentarily connecting with mine again before sliding over to Hollie. She waves him over, and he begins to shake his head. Then, I see the moment he realizes why she is here and what that means. His shoulders sag a little, and his hand shoots to the back of his neck, tugging at the strands of hair as Scott says something to him.
With a clap on the shoulder from Scott, the two of them walk toward us.
I didn’t see Flynn before he left for the field this morning. Over the last week, we’ve met in the kitchen at dinner time, decided on what to order to eat, and then sat on opposite ends of the couch until Flynn decided he needed to head to bed. I always follow not long after because once he’s gone, my interest in the show completely vanishes. We discuss whichever show we’re watching, we argue about which Thai place on the delivery app is better, but we never talk about the situation we’ve found ourselves in. I realize as he walks toward me now that perhaps we should have.
