Page 6 of The Handoff

Chapter 3

Dane

Iwassupposedto be at practice, but David told me about Lisa, and I had to see her for myself. It wasn’t easy keeping up with things if David was somewhere and then I was supposed to be there.

Yeah, I was Dane—the one who got into UCLA—and my brothers live with me, but everyone thinks we are one person. Shit, we’ve been doing it for so long and everyone always calls us Dane, sometimes we forget we are three. The only thing that distinguishes us are the tattoos of our names we got one drunken night. Our names were written in Korean, so unless someone knew the language and saw the tattoos—and figured out they were a little different—we were in trouble.

So far, no one on the football team has noticed—the same guys we get into the showers with after practice. If someone said, “Hey, your tattoos are different!” It would mean that the guy was checking you out, so we mess around, and there’s no mention of anything on anyone’s body.

As for women, we have one rule of no more than a one-night stand. Any more than that, and the woman would notice that we were three guys. Not that we’ve tried, but there was no way we would be the same in bed, and for sure, women would pick up on that sort of thing.

We had to do this; we had no fucking choice.

Dad ran off with his secretary, leaving Mom penniless to raise the three of us. That was when we came up with this crazy idea and somehow, we morphed into one kid instead of three. Only one of us had an up-to-date dental record, the other was up to date with his shots, and the other… well, he’s missing both. We have our schedule, and we keep to it.

No one understands how after a big game, Dane will get wasted and the next day, he’s out jogging at eight. That’s because I’d be at the game, Daxon would be drunk that night, and David would be the one running the next day.

We all play our part, and we know who needs to do what… and when. But sometimes we fuck up a bit—we’re not perfect. Sometimes we forget things, nearly get caught, and then laugh about it. Yeah, we get a bit of a kick out of it, too. We need to laugh to keep going.

“You didn’t need to come and watch us,” Fiona purred as I watched from the door, ignoring the other tryouts and waiting for the star to show up.

“I don’t mind being here. In fact, I think I should be one of the judges.”

“Judges?” She backed off. Whatever it was about this Lisa, I could tell that it got Fiona rattled up, which was a shame. I got up close and personal with her once. I didn’t tell the other guys that was the reason she felt there was a connection between us. Yeah, it’s a shitty secret I should share with my brothers, seeing as we’re pretending to be the same person. But this one, I dunno. I just wanted to keep it to myself. I told her it was something between us and that we shouldn’t share the one magical moment we had, and she’s so desperate to keep Dane happy that she would do anything he said. Which makes me feel sorry for her. If only she knew the truth.

“Yeah, I thought I could sit at the end, and then, well… who knows what could happen after tryouts. It’s been a while…” I winked at her, which was all the encouragement she needed. Somehow, during it all, she felt threatened by Lisa and became defensive about us. I couldn’t encourage her too much, or David and Daxon would have my guts for dinner. Neither of them liked her; they labeled her as the spoiled brat who had a privileged life, something we were never privy to. They both said that no matter what happens in the future, we would stray away from being someone like her or her type.

But I’ve seen the other side to Fiona, the one she keeps hidden from everyone.

“You heard from your parents?” I asked as I grabbed her hand, remembering the last time she had an encounter with them.

She shivered as she said, “No. I think they’re going through a divorce. I don’t know, but something’s up.”

“Why have they been down?”

She shrugged. “You want to know the truth?”

I nodded, but realized that she wasn’t asking if I wanted to know. It was a hypothetical question.

“I haven’t seen them in a year. Mom had called and I was telling her about the last game, and how I had a great routine and stuff. Before that, I haven’t seen her. I haven’t seen either of them. You know it just gets me, because I only joined the team to make her proud of me. She was captain…”

Penelope walked in, cutting our conversation short. “Fiona, are we doing the tryouts or what? I’ve got a date after this.”

She nodded. “Sure.” She moved toward me with sympathetic eyes. “We’ll catch up later.”

I smiled as I thought about Penelope having a date. She meant she had a booty call. That girl was some kind of sex addict. I was the only guy on the team she hadn’t fucked. But whether she had with Daxon or David was questionable. My brothers were horny, there was no doubt about that. Me, on the other hand, I wouldn’t say that I was fussy, but Penelope just wasn’t my type at all. She was too damn perfect—tall, blond hair, blue eyes, said the right thing, and smiled all the time. The girl had no flaws, and it just wasn’t natural. As Fiona and Penelope moved into the main hall, I followed them. As we reached the table, Fiona blurted to me, “Get a chair and sit with us.”

I did, but I didn’t sit at the end of the table. I sat directly next to Fiona. She smiled and I could tell that me being near had somehow reassured her.

“Next, we have Tanya. Tanya?”

She was maybe just under five feet. Completely different from all the other tryouts in terms of her height. She had a petite figure and bright blue eyes that shone as she waved her hand and announced her presence. I could tell that it annoyed Fiona because she shifted in her seat the moment Tanya said she was present.

“I’ll be doing a routine to Jerusalem.”

One judge, Ursula, said to Fiona, “Hey, that’s your favorite song.”

Fiona ignored her as she barked, “We have things to do. Get on with it.”

---