I’d have to be dead for that not to excite me. After all, he knows a butt-load of cool people. “I don’t know about that…” I hem, standing directly in front of him, looking up into his twinkling eyes.
Gently, smiling affectionately, he reaches out and runs his finger along my face. “You have pillow creases on your cheek. You must have been out of it. In all your clothes.”
I weaken a bit at his tender gesture. “Yeah. I guess I was.” I lead him toward the kitchen, but he pauses several times along the way to look at posters, then stops at the locked, glass-fronted cabinet that straddles the threshold between my living room and dining room.
“What’s in here?”
“My collection of official screenplays,” I answer, trying to sound casual about my pride and joy, nearly one hundred leather-bound scripts in alphabetical order by title.
“No way. Like, the ones the actual actors used?”
“Or directors. In some cases. Supposedly.”
“Are any of them signed?”
“A few.”
“That’s why you have them locked up, huh?” He drops to a crouch in front of the cabinet, balancing on his haunches. “Shakespeare in Love, Gladiator, All About Eve, Terms of Endearment… Wait. These are Oscar winners!”
I kneel next to him, hanging onto the top of the cabinet for balance. “Yeah. I’ve concentrated my efforts—and funds—on purchasing the majority of the Best Picture winners. Of course, some of them are impossible to find or way out of my price range, but whatever.”
“So cool. Ooh, The Departed. I loved that movie!” He straightens his legs and stands at his full height, then offers me a hand up. “Do you, like, wear gloves when you read them?”
Shaking my head, I laugh. “I don’t touch them much after I put them in there.”
“That’s a seriously impressive collection.”
“It’s relatively puny by most standards. Now, my film library… That’s another story.”
He searches the living room, as if expecting to find it housed somewhere out here.
“Oh, no. It has its own room.” Grabbing his hand, I drag him down the hallway and into the spare room.
When I flip on the light, his eyes bulge, and his jaw drops. “Holy crap.”
“Yep.”
“How do you— Oh, my gosh, there’s more than one row on every shelf? There must be a million movies in here!” He walks to the nearest shelf and runs his fingers along the spines of the cases. “Dude! You have Caddyshack on VHS? That’s old school.”
“It’s one of my favorites. I have a digital copy, too. But I got that tape when I was a teenager. Eventually, I’d like to replace all of my VHS copies with updated formats, but it’s a slow process.”
“Do you still have a working VCR?”
“Yeah, but it’s about to die, and some of my tapes have been watched so many times, they’ve degraded.”
“Bummer.”
I shrug. “Most of my favorites have already been updated. I can’t quite force myself to throw out the originals, though.”
“Don’t! Ever!” Still surveying the room, he says in almost an awed whisper, “This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in a normal person’s house.”
“Can you really say I’m ‘normal’ after seeing this?”
“You know what I mean. A lot of the guys on the team collect stuff—mostly sports memorabilia—but most of them have more money than they know what to do with. You…”
“Well, I haven’t bought all of this. Some things were gifts. I scour garage sales and flea markets, bargain bins at stores…” I point to the “Be Kind, Rewind” sign above the door. “Going out of business sales.” I stifle a yawn. “What else do I have to spend my money on?”
He follows me from the room and back down the hall to the living area. I continue into the kitchen, feeling like I should offer him something, although I’m not sure the usual hostess rules apply at this hour.
Without asking if he wants it, I grab a beer from the fridge and turn to give it to him. But he’s right behind me.
“Hi,” I say stupidly into his chest, offering him the bottle.
He takes it from me but sets it on the counter behind him without opening it.
I look up into his face and instantly regret it. I know that face. It’s his heading-for-the-end-zone face. It makes me squirm.
“So, anyway… I’m sorry about the game,” I say, cringing at my inability to scramble in the proverbial pocket.
“What game?”
I can tell by the set of his jaw that it’s an effort not to think about it and worry it was a mistake to bring it up. However, I need to distract him from me. “You know what game. Less than twelve hours ago, you were on the football field, in all your gear, hoping to make it to the Conference Championship.” I take a step back. He moves with me.
“There are more important things in life than football.”
“Oh, you don’t have to be brave for me.” I chuckle nervously. “You didn’t get where you are today by shrugging off losses. You’re a competitor. You must be hurting.”
“My shoulder’s sore, but other than that…”
I cross to the other side of the galley kitchen. It places about two feet of space between us, but that’s two feet more than before.
“Where are you going?” he asks, clearly amused.
“I feel like I’m about to be sacked.”
He raises an eyebrow, his eyes sparkling. “For the first time today, I like the sound of that.”
My guts jump pleasantly as my body betrays my brain. “I dunno. I’m tired,” I supply lamely.
He sobers quickly. In one stride, he’s directly in front of me again, his hands on my shoulders like a set of oversized pads. “I just want to kiss you, Maura. I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.”
“Uh, okay,”
