Page 17 of Our Secret Moments

This is supposed to be a good thing. It’s supposed to show me how my writing could work in the real world and how I would conduct interviews with real celebrities or even with local people. But trying to organise a room full of football players is like trying to teach a puppy to potty train.

Coach managed to line them up in the sports classroom, but it feels fucking tiny with me at a desk, papers and my laptop in front of me and men who are way too tall to be considered students towering over me, pestering me with questions I don’t have the answers to. It’s only half of the team, but it feels like there’s at least fifty of us in here.

I’ve never been in a space with this many men and it’s starting to freak me out. They all talk too much and too loud.They also smell disgusting and they keep giving me the heebie jeebies for looking at me for too long.

Worst of all? Connor fucking Bailey won’t keep his eyes off me. Since the party, I’ve felt him everywhere and in every fibre of my body. It’s like he’s attached himself to my mind and my body without meaning to. And I hate that it feels like I have no control. But I’m supposed to. I’m supposed to have the upper hand.

I take a deep breath, ready to calm them down and get my first person up. I stand, hoping to make myself visible to anybody who will listen.

“Can everybody calm down, please?” I ask as loud as I can without sounding insane. Nobody moves. “Hey!” I try again and nothing.

I’m about to give up and try again in a few minutes before Connor’s eyes lock with mine as Wes and another guy talk at both sides of him animatedly. I don’t know what’s going on in his brain, but he looks at me like he knows what I was trying to do and he nudges Wes and the other dude and they stop talking.

“Can everyone shut the fuck up so we can get on with this and you can all leave and get about your day?” he booms.

The deepness and roughness in his voice causes me to stumble a little and I catch myself on the table as everyone goes hauntingly silent. He is the captain of the team after all, and the bossy side of him is weirdly attractive.

He keeps his eyes on me and half of me is grateful that he has my back like that, but the other half of me is annoyed that they don’t listen to me. If I’m going to do this, it needs to be on my terms and under my leadership and control. I won’t be able to survive in the real world if I can’t get a bunch of twenty-year-old boys to listen to me.

“Thank you,” I mouth to him, and he nods, his cheeks turning the tiniest shade of pink before he continues talking to Wes at a manageable volume.

The classroom is big enough so the boys should be able to take a seat at the tables that are scattered around like a detention room, but most of them settle for sitting on top of the tables. There’s something so fascinating about boys and their inability to sit on furniture the right way.

I double check the list that Coach made for me. He suggested I get through as many as I could until I couldn’t take it anymore, which seems doable.

I call out the first name. “Michael Redford?”

The boys whoop and cheer as the unlucky guy walks forwards. Unlucky because he’s the same guy who suggested keeping his shirt off when I first went into the locker room and also because he’s ginger with the unlucky last name ‘Redford’ and everybody calls him ‘Red.’

He walks towards me, his cheeks – you guessed it – red. His legs are so long that they go way past my chair underneath the table. I scoot back a little, trying to put some distance between us.

As much as it’s easy to get information about the players from Coach’s files, I’ve learned that the best way to learn things about someone you already know is by asking them basic questions and seeing how they present the answers to you.

Which is why I shouldn’t be surprised by the number of stupid answers that I get when I asked three boys in a row what their height was, and they replied with some variation of “Do you want to know my shoe size too? You know what they say. Big feet means big dick.”

When I’ve gone through four boys, each of them having similar descriptions and hobbies, I’m already falling asleep. It’s not that they aren’t interesting. Some of them say the mostoutrageous things that confuse me so much that I need to take a step back. Some of the boys are quiet, a little shy and nervous that they’re being questioned like this on a random day.

But when Wes’s name is called, I can’t help but smile up at him. It feels like we’ve not spoken properly in years, but he’s always fun to be around. He’s usually attached to one of the Bailey twins’s hips and often has something inappropriate to say. It’s best when all of us are together and I can watch the way he feeds off everyone's energy and becomes one huge ball of light.

Connor doesn’t think I notice the way his face scrunches up and he rolls his head back when Wes walks up to me. I’ve purposefully skipped his name off the list, moving to all the people around him instead of him.

I also don’t think he’s noticed that I’ve picked up on him trying to skip the queue – if you can even call it that – by attempting to bribe others to make up an excuse and leave early so he can get to me quicker. He’s getting antsy and I’m having way too much fun watching him squirm.

“Cathy!” Wes calls, pulling out the chair and immediately man-spreading as he sits. Like his dad, he has dirty blonde hair that is a messy heap on his head and he’s one of the lucky people whose eyes change colour depending on the lighting. Now, they look sort of grey. It’s fascinating.

“Don’t call me that. You make me sound like an old woman,” I say, laughing as I pull up a clean page on the document I’ve been working on.

He sulks, crossing his arms against his chest. “But you’remyold lady,” he says.

The laughter rushes out of my chest. He’s been calling me that for as long as I can remember. I think it has something to do with the fact that I’d always get chosen to be the grandma whenwe’d play house as kids. Wes was always the pet on a leash and he always belonged to Nora.

“Keep doing that,” he whispers, turning back to the group of boys as most of the room has cleared now. I end up gasping, trying to catch my breath and process his words at the same time.

“What?”

“When you have the next person come up to you, laugh and smile at them like they’re the funniest person you’ve ever met,” he says quietly, leaning into me. I smile, shaking my head slowly at his mischievousness. “It will drive Connor up the wall. He’s already being pushed back and he clearly wants to talk to you.”

“What’s his problem? He seems nervous,” I say to Wes.

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