So here I am, breaking my promise to Jet, watching the game at Greg’s. From September to February, football is a Sunday afternoon tradition for us. I hope that doesn’t change after the wedding. I obviously don’t care if Deirdre watches with us, but it would be just like her to make Greg spend Sundays working on the yard or the house. Or going antiquing. Or something equally horrid. It would be just like him to shove me aside and go along with it. Gross.
Today, the first thing he says next to me after kickoff is, “Are you nervous for your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I counter automatically, feeling like a teenager and hating how often I’ve felt that way lately.
Teasing me about guys has been one of Greg’s greatest pastimes since high school. Especially because I used to have a bad habit of crushing on his friends. His Spanish tutor, Phillip, a shy, self-conscious, self-deprecating smart guy with a quick sense of humor and a quiet delivery. I contemplated learning Spanish so that he could tutor me. But I’d already learned every French curse word, and it was too much work to become trilingual in obscenities.
Greg persists now about Jet, “You went on a date with him, and he’s called you since. That’s a boyfriend.”
Merde! Why do I tell him things? I must be a masochist.
“No, it’s not. Of course, he’s a ‘boy’ and he’s a ‘friend,’ so maybe that qualifies.”
He groans. “Not that old line. Jet Knox is a man, anyway. The man, if he leads the Chiefs to a Super Bowl win.”
“Shh! Don’t jinx it!” I admonish, smiling at how much I sound like Jet.
“You’re right. One game at a time. It’s gonna be hard enough to beat the Ravens.”
I grab a handful of pretzels from the bowl on the coffee table in front of us and focus on the TV on the wall across the room.
The first series is a disappointing three-and-out, but Greg says, “Bah! The boys are just warming up. Your man looks tight out there, though. And not in the way you like.”
Instead of protesting, I grit my teeth and hiss some insults under my breath. The more I resist, the more he’ll tease.
Plus, he’s right, unfortunately, about Jet looking tight. In more ways than one. I’ve always appreciated his striking figure in those little football pants, but now that I’ve had some one-on-one interaction with him, I’m looking at him differently. He’s not just a professional athlete or celebrity or piece of meat. He’s a person. I know things about him, like his hopes for the future, and his dog’s name. And that my laugh makes him happy.
The Ravens fumble on their second down, and a Chiefs player falls on top of the coughed-up ball. When the pile clears, the ball is still in our hands, so the crowd goes crazy, as do Greg and I. And the players on the sidelines, including Jet. He looks like a jubilant kid as he slaps the butt of the guy who recovered the fumble. Then he quickly goes into attack mode, sliding on his helmet and fastening his chin strap. He has the same look in his eyes he had the other night at dinner, when he didn’t appreciate the assumptions I was making about him: closed-off, cold, focused, and stony.
I still don’t have a clue how I feel about him, as a person, but I suddenly don’t have a single doubt about this game.
My instinct proves correct, but I’m hoarse from shouting all the way through the fourth quarter. After falling behind twenty-one points in the first half, the Ravens came back in the second half and tried to make it interesting. Jet was having none of that, though. Every time the opposition scored, he went out there and led the team on marathon drives that ate up clock and almost always resulted in more points on the board. He played out of his mind.
Before giving myself too much time to think about it at the end of the game, I pull out my phone and send him a text: Great game! Yeah, I watched. Next stop: Beantown. No problem!
Greg simpers after chugging the last of the beer from the bottle in his hand. “Texting the victor? You say he’s not your boyfriend, and act like you don’t want to be his girlfriend. You have a crush! What did you say to him? ‘Watching you out there made me wet, Jet’?” he says in a high voice that sounds nothing like mine. “Hey, that rhymes!”
“No, you big, fat jerk. Grow up! I congratulated him on a great game and gave him some encouragement about the next one.”
He rubs the side of his nose. “Oh, yeah. They’re gonna get clobbered in New England.”
“Who says?”
“Everyone!”
“Well, not me. I don’t think it’s an automatic win for those prima donna cheaters.”
Now he laughs in earnest at me and tries to snatch my phone from my hand. “Oooh! Someone’s super-defensive about her boyfriend’s team. Maybe you should travel with them and be Jet’s private cheering section. Or…” He gives up on his quest to grab my phone but puts his bare feet on me and nudges me with them, first on my legs, then edging up to my arms and, finally, my face. “…you could try out to be on the cheerleading squad next season so you and Jet could be together always.” Fluttering his eyelashes at me,
