“What the hell was that?” I asked Tanner when Penny was outof earshot.
“What the hell was what? I thought that went really well.”
“You told her I have the hots for some random high schoolstudent.”
“Oh. That.” Tanner shrugged. “I wanted to see if she gotjealous. It didn’t seem like it to me, but I promise I’ll get to the bottom ofit over the next couple hours.”
“I don’t want you to talk to her at all. Especially about anyof that.”
“But I’m your wingman. We can’t forgo this opportunity. Whenelse will I have a chance to decipher all her secrets? Scarlett looks likeshe’s around the age of a kid that will probably need a nap after all thatfood. Which gives me a couple hours to talk to Penny one on one. I’ve got this.Trust me.”
I usually trusted him. But I didn’t want him to do any ofthat. “Tanner…”
“Go Eagles!” he said and started walking away from me.
“Tanner!” I hissed.
He ignored me, walked up into the stands, and sat down wherethere was enough seating for three.
The scoreboard made a beeping noise, signaling it was timefor the game to start. My team ran out for the coin toss. But my mind was inthe stands. So much so that I hadn’t even realized that we were down a kicker.
“Where is Jefferson?” I asked.
“Here!” Jefferson said as he rushed onto the field balancinga few trays of cookies. So many cookies. And in a super wide variety. It seemedlike maybe Jefferson was more of a baker than a kicker.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My mom and I had to finish thelast batch of cookies. It took longer than we thought.”
Several guys on the team snickered.
“Perfect timing,” I said and grabbed the trays from him. “We’lleat these after the game. Sound good?”
Jefferson nodded with a huge smile.
Hopefully they were the best damn cookies ever. Because ifthe game was anything like the one last week, Jefferson was going to miss aminimum of 3 PATs and a field goal.
I pulled out my clipboard and went over the plan for ourfirst few plays. “Now let’s get out there and bury Calver Academy before halftime!”
Smith nodded. “We got this, Coach Caldwell.”
I knew that they did. I just really hoped that this timeJefferson would be a part of that victory. And that for once we didn’t win inspite of him. “Go Eagles on three.” I put my hand out and they all threw theirsin too.
“One, two, three…Go Eagles!” we all yelled at the top of ourlungs.
***
It was really distracting having someone I cared about in thestands. Not that I didn’t care about Tanner. He came to all my games, which wasreally nice of him. But I didn’t care about him the same way I cared aboutPenny.
Mason and Rob teased me about having a crush on her. So muchso that I knew Penny had worried about it before. She’d even confronted meabout it. But I’d told her they were idiots. And that the two of us were justfriends. It was mostly true. I fantasized about her. But I knew it was just apatch on a wound. I didn’t love her. I didn’t love anyone. My friends refusedto drop it though. They just kept on teasing me. And James’ teasing felt a lotmore like threats. He’d made it clear several times that Penny was off-limits. Itwas probably why I kept thinking about her. I always wanted what I couldn’thave.
Although in this case, maybe I could have Penny. Because I couldfeel her staring at me. And it made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
I turned around to look at her. But instead of Penny staringat me, there was another woman’s gaze pointed at me. She looked vaguely familiar.But I couldn’t place her.
A smile crossed her face and she lifted her hand and waved tome.
Fuck. I swallowed hard. I remembered. Specifically, Iremembered that hand around my cock a few months ago. We’d met at some bar. We’dfucked at a nearby hotel. And I’d left in the middle of the night like I alwaysdid. No exchanged numbers. No promise of ever speaking again. I always bouncedwhile they were sleeping. To avoid an awkward next morning. To avoid everseeing them again. Yet…here she was.
I immediately turned back to the field. Jesus, was shestalking me? I tried to discreetly look back over my shoulder. She was stillstaring and smiling. She waved again. And a little farther up in the stands,Penny was deep in conversation with Tanner.
Now I had some one-night stand here and Tanner talkingto Penny. Could this night get any worse?
I watched as Jefferson’s extra point sailed way to the right,nearly crashing through a window of a nearby skyrise. It bounced off the brickwall and then knocked into one of the floodlights.
Damn it.
He came running off the field.
“Good try, Jefferson.” I put my fist out for him to bump andhe awkwardly shook it. This poor kid. “Did it hit your laces again?”
He looked down at his cleats and shrugged. “I’m not sure. Itried to make contact with my instep like you said. Did it look like I hit mylaces instead?”
I honestly wasn’t sure. Because I was too busy thinking aboutwhat Tanner was saying to Penny. And whether or not I had a stalker situation Ineeded to deal with.
“We’ll keep working on it next week.” I tried to give him anencouraging smile.
“Have you tried a cookie yet?” he asked.
“Oh. No. Let me try one.”
I took a bite. “This is great.” I finally got to tell himsomething positive and truly mean it. His cookies were delicious. Which wasgood, because if they were as bad as his kicking, I’d for sure get foodpoisoning.
The rest of the game was painfully slow. Tanner and Penny hadnot stopped talking for a second. And to make matters worse, Scarlett was soundasleep on her lap. Which meant Tanner was probably grilling Penny about her sexlife or inviting her to his sex club or something else wildly inappropriate.
Empire High won by two touchdowns, but
