“What the hell was what? I thought that went really well.”
“You told her I have the hots for some random high school student.”
“Oh. That.” Tanner shrugged. “I wanted to see if she got jealous. It didn’t seem like it to me, but I promise I’ll get to the bottom of it over the next couple hours.”
“I don’t want you to talk to her at all. Especially about any of that.”
“But I’m your wingman. We can’t forgo this opportunity. When else will I have a chance to decipher all her secrets? Scarlett looks like she’s around the age of a kid that will probably need a nap after all that food. 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 of that. “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 where there was enough seating for three.
The scoreboard made a beeping noise, signaling it was time for the game to start. My team ran out for the coin toss. But my mind was in the 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 balancing a few trays of cookies. So many cookies. And in a super wide variety. It seemed like maybe Jefferson was more of a baker than a kicker.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My mom and I had to finish the last 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’ll eat these after the game. Sound good?”
Jefferson nodded with a huge smile.
Hopefully they were the best damn cookies ever. Because if the game was anything like the one last week, Jefferson was going to miss a minimum of 3 PATs and a field goal.
I pulled out my clipboard and went over the plan for our first 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 time Jefferson would be a part of that victory. And that for once we didn’t win in spite of him. “Go Eagles on three.” I put my hand out and they all threw theirs in too.
“One, two, three…Go Eagles!” we all yelled at the top of our lungs.
***
It was really distracting having someone I cared about in the stands. Not that I didn’t care about Tanner. He came to all my games, which was really nice of him. But I didn’t care about him the same way I cared about Penny.
Mason and Rob teased me about having a crush on her. So much so that I knew Penny had worried about it before. She’d even confronted me about it. But I’d told her they were idiots. And that the two of us were just friends. It was mostly true. I fantasized about her. But I knew it was just a patch on a wound. I didn’t love her. I didn’t love anyone. My friends refused to drop it though. They just kept on teasing me. And James’ teasing felt a lot more like threats. He’d made it clear several times that Penny was off-limits. It was probably why I kept thinking about her. I always wanted what I couldn’t have.
Although in this case, maybe I could have Penny. Because I could feel 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 staring at 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 to me.
Fuck. I swallowed hard. I remembered. Specifically, I remembered that hand around my cock a few months ago. We’d met at some bar. We’d fucked at a nearby hotel. And I’d left in the middle of the night like I always did. No exchanged numbers. No promise of ever speaking again. I always bounced while they were sleeping. To avoid an awkward next morning. To avoid ever seeing them again. Yet…here she was.
I immediately turned back to the field. Jesus, was she stalking me? I tried to discreetly look back over my