Page 86 of Tight End

32

Taylor

When I was a little girl, my dad was fond of saying, “Your mom makes me a better version of myself.”

At the time, I didn’t really get it. I thought it was just another way of saying that he loved her. Or that Mom helped him with the dumb little things, like remembering his lunch before going to work, and washing his clothes. To my teenage brain, I pictured a worse version of my dad as having a lot of stains on his shirts.

But now that I was with Brody, I truly knew what he meant by that. Having Brody in my life, and knowing he was coming over to crash at my apartment tonight, allowed everything in my life to seamlessly fall into place. I could feel it while I was cheering on the sidelines of Stallions games, and when I was teaching radiological dating to a class full of freshmen. My mind was focused and sharp in a way that it had never been before.

The closest analogy I could think of was that I had spent my entire life sleep deprived, and I was finally getting a full night’s sleep every night.

“You seem happy, Professor Fox,” one of my students said at the end of class.

“What do you mean, Elisha?”

She shrugged. “You’ve been humming a lot during class, whenever you’re writing on the board. And you smile a lot more. Are you dating someone new?”

“Mind your own business,” I told her, but I said it with a wink and a grin.

Brody and I had been spending every night together. I wasn’t sick of him yet, and he certainly didn’t seem sick of me. Normally, I wanted a few nights to myself. But I couldn’t get enough of him. Just the thought of spending a night in a bed that was absent of his warm, strong body made me shiver with loneliness.

I wanted to shake things up though, just in case he did get sick of the routine we were falling into. But I didn’t know how. There were only so many restaurants where Brody could wear a hoodie or baseball cap to conceal his identity. Other public activities were risky. Brody had warned me that paparazzi occasionally followed him around town, snapping photos for whatever tabloid or gossip website paid the most. And if a photo of us appeared on the front page of TMZ, it would certainly get back to Isabella.

“Taylor!” Eric said, walking into my office. “Plans tonight?”

Eric and I had stayed relatively friendly since our breakup. He still swung by my office to chat every day, and didn’t show any sort of resentment that I had declined to get back together with him. I suspected he was on his best behavior because he still hoped we would eventually start dating again.

“Um, I’m not sure what I’m doing tonight,” I said. “Why?”

He gave me an obvious look. “It’s Tuesday. We could use your help at trivia tonight.”

I hadn’t gone to trivia with Eric and the other professors since we broke up, and I didn’t intend to start now. But his invitation did give me an idea.

“Sorry, I have to pass,” I said. “Maybe next time.”

As soon as he left my office, I pulled out my phone.

Taylor: Tommy’s Bar. Seven o’clock. Can you be there?

Brody: A pack of bears couldn’t keep me away.

I got to the bar early and ordered two beers and some appetizers. Brody arrived with his usual sweatshirt, the hood up to cover his face.

“Uh, ‘scuse me, ma’am?” he said. “Don’t mean to bug you, but is anyone sitting here?”

I grinned. It was verbatim what he’d first said to me the night we met.

“My boyfriend is sitting there,” I said.

He sat down and leaned forward on the table. “Boyfriend, huh?”

“We haven’t discussed the specifics, but I certainly think of him that way.” I slid a beer across to Brody. “I’m planning on getting him drunk and then dropping that bomb on him.”

“Based on the way you’re looking?” His eyes raked down my chest, then back up again. “He’d be a damn fool to say no.”

I touched my glass to his. “Good answer.”

And just like that, Brody and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. Even if it was secret.

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