“Thanks for shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. Please take your receipt and come again,” the slightly dazed young cashier says as she looks past me to the leather-clad hottie hovering behind me. “Are you Dillon McQueen? You’re so amazing. And gorgeous. I don’t care what they say, you’re gonna be the starter this year, and if you aren’t, you can always try the movies,” she gushes, already digging around for a pen and paper.
He gives her that lazy smile. “Thanks.” Then he focuses on me, his expression hardening, but he tries… “Let me have the beer, baby.”
I’ve been upgraded to baby. How cute.
I put a little extra southern in my voice when I speak. “Bless your heart, if you’d only known who I was or batted your lashes at me. Check Walmart, sweetie…” I tip my hat at him and flip around, hips swaying as I leave the checkout area, smiling as I go out the door.
For the first time in eighteen months, I feel like myself again. Girl on fire indeed.
3
We leave the Pig and walk through the dark parking lot to my black Escalade. The girls are chattering about the party, and I tune them out as I carry the bags. Between these ball-squeezing pants, the guys texting me snack preferences, and my worry about the season, my head spins. I should be excited about a house party, but I’m not.
Women elbowing each other to hold my hand is pissing me off.
All for the sake of a tradition I managed to get entangled in.
Dillon’s never been to the Theta Fall Ball. He’s not dating anyone. We will offer him as tribute, Sawyer told the team this past May before school ended. He riled them up, got them excited, and convinced them to vote for me.
Normally, I’d be willing to go along with the contest, if just to keep things fun, but this year is my last chance for the NFL. On the other hand, every year that we’ve participated in the Theta tradition, we’ve had stellar seasons. We won a national championship last year when Zane was the prize player. Now it’s a superstition that we have to do it. I’m talking serious. We don’t want to screw up the upcoming year, and that means repeating the rituals we did last year. We touch the tiger mural when we enter the stadium, we chant the fight song before we leave the locker room, Sawyer eats the grass, I kiss my hands before I leave the tunnel—and we do the Theta thing.
That means I have to deal with the girls’ attention, trying to balance it with the inadequacy that keeps pricking at me. Even the cashier had to bring up my shortcomings.
I roll my neck.
For the past three years, I was Ryker’s backup, but now that he’s gone, I’m in charge. He was the number-one pick in the draft—how do I live up to that?
Does McQueen have what it takes to lead the Tigers? was this morning’s trending topic on Twitter.
The worst part is my new backup is in the wings, just waiting to take the ball out of my hands. This team has been my family for three years, and it stings that Coach is pitting me against some untried freshman.
Owen Sinclair took his school to state. Won MVP. Runs like a gazelle. Rated a 5 by ESPN, he told me in a one-on-one meeting this week.
A muscle pops in my jaw. My father replaced me with a new family, and now my team is close to doing the same thing.
My gut swirls.
This season is mine, I tell myself. This is my shot and I can’t blow—
What the hell?
I jerk to a halt at the girl I see. Her. Again? She’s like a curse!
Four Dragons has jumped out of her vehicle, slammed the door, and is currently glaring at the hood of her car as if she expects it to tell her what’s going on.
She kicks the tire with her boot then lets out a yelp of pain and hops around on one foot. “Just one more year. That’s all I’m asking!”
She doesn’t see me and I narrow my gaze, taking her in. She’s downright frumpy in those pants and old shirt. Honestly, she looks like she just rolled out of bed, threw on a hat, and came to the store. I recall her heart-shaped face under the fluorescent lights, the smarty-pants curl to her lips, the sly barbs she directed at me. I couldn’t even see the color of her eyes behind those nerdy glasses.
One of the girls asks me to unlock the car, and I click the fob.
I walk around to where the Four Dragons girl is. “Car trouble?” I ask, and she jumps and whips around, a slow flush rising on her cheeks.
She fidgets and stares at the ground. “I think it’s the alternator or the battery. Honestly, I have no idea, but I’m sure it’s expensive.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Yeah.” She glances back at her car, a frown worrying her forehead.
I grew up in a world where if a vehicle didn’t work or was involved in a fender bender, another one took its place. When I was sixteen, my parents gave me a white tricked-out Hummer, and when I wrecked it six months later, they replaced it with a black one. A long sigh comes from me. I had material things, not denying that, but I would have traded it in for parents who cared about me.
She blows out a breath, full of defeat. “Son of a nutcracker.”
“Hey, that’s mine.”
“No, it’s Will Ferrell’s. It would have been nice if you’d said it when I needed it. You cost me.”
“Son of a nutcracker,” I snap. “That work?”
“I don’t have my phone handy, so no. It has to be spontaneous. I can’t cheat. It has to be fair and square.”
No clue what she’s jabbering about.
We stare at each other, and a
