The Hard Count(34)

“That was seriously the best game we’ve ever had!”

Her red lips stretch into an enormous grin, and her eyes are vibrant, almost twinkling like the gold on her skin. She talks rapidly, her hands moving with every word.

“Oh my God, Reagan. Seriously…I thought we were going to lose, and then no…Nico just says no, and it’s like awesome, and he almost gets tackled and then he doesn’t and then he throws the ball. I mean, that was far, right? So far!”

I giggle the more she talks, and eventually she smacks my bare knees playfully.

“Don’t make fun of me. I’m excited!” she says.

“I’m not,” I say through laughter. “It’s just…I watched the game, too. You don’t need to give me the play-by-play.”

“Right,” she says, nodding with a short breath, lips closed in a tight smile. I hold her gaze for a second, and then roll my eyes.

“Go ahead,” I say.

“Oh, thank God. I just can’t quit talking about it. That was seriously the best thing I’ve ever seen. And Sasha is so fast! And Nico…oh my God, Nico! Reagan, he is so freaking hot!”

I force the same look on my face, but the second she shifts from being excited about the game to being excited about Nico, my body does the strangest thing. My skin goes numb, and there’s a rush through my veins that feels like morphine—tingling until my stomach drops and clenches. She’s talking so fast that I hope she doesn’t notice the small flinch that I can’t control. I blink it away.

He’s hot. She thinks he’s hot. It’s nothing. It’s just the game. The excitement.

I preach to myself over and over, but my friend mentions Nico one more time before she’s done. And I can’t lie to myself this time.

“I am so into him, Reagan. He better be going to Charlie’s for after-game,” she says, and I get to my feet, letting my eyes focus on the rail I hold, on getting my feet back under my body, on the crowd exiting behind and around me. I turn so I face them, and I keep my eyes down while my head begs “no!”

I’m not sure what that no means—no, Izzy cannot be interested in Nico, or no, I should not care. I think it’s both.

“Hey, I’ll meet you at Charlie’s, okay? I have to go change!” my friend shouts from the field level. I raise my hand with a thumbs up, and I turn enough to see her grab her pom-poms and weave through the stream of friends and family all making their way out to the field.

The stands empty quickly, and I give a polite nod to Coach O’Donahue as we pass on my way back into the press box to get my camera.

“Hell of a game,” he says.

“Sure was,” I say, turning to watch his back as he takes the steps down one at a time. He’s faking, too. I recognize it, because that’s the way I walked away from Izzy—like everything’s fine. He wanted Nico to fail, and he’s going to want that every single Friday until it happens.

I get back to the press box rooftop and my hands grip my camera, turning it to power it down and begin packing up, but my sideways glance also catches a glimpse of Nico…and Izzy. I leave the camera running and point it on my surveillance targets, every piece of me feeling childish, just not enough to stop. I look through the lens, but can only tell Nico is smiling and Izzy’s head is bopping up and down, her hands still wild and her hair vibrating with every word she says.

I almost quit watching, but then Alyssa comes running up, and Nico bends down, sweeping his niece into his arms, holding her on his hip and nuzzling noses with her. He looks to Izzy and says something, and Izzy hands Alyssa one of her pom-poms, which she grips and shakes against her chest. The sick feeling rushes back, so I drop my camera lower and power off, promising myself not to look again.

I keep the promise, packing and carrying my equipment to the film room, dropping most of my things in the locker in my father’s office so I can keep them safe while I go to Charlie’s. I’ll pick them up again over the weekend. I keep the small handheld camera out, holding it in my lap while I shuffle to the training table in the back of the room, sliding into my familiar seat, my legs stretched out in front of me and my father’s favorite assistant and trainer, Bob Melch, by my side.

“Hey, Reagan. You get that dandy of a game on film?” Bob asks.

I smile and nod.

“Sure did,” I say.

He places his large, wrinkled hand on my shoulder and pats down twice. Probably even more than my dad, Bob is excited about the film I’m making. He’s been the trainer here for two decades, and this year—it’s his last. While most of the members of the coaching staff fall into that football-coach stereotype, Bob bucks the trend. He has sixteen grandkids, and not a single one of them plays football. I asked him about it once, and he told me he’d rather they got into the arts—or took up film, like me.

“This right here? It’s just a game. What matters are the relationships inside of it,” he told me.

I was maybe thirteen when we had that talk, and I’ve never forgotten those words. I hope I never do. I wish my brother heard them. I’m not sure he would understand, though. Noah’s programmed to win, and the rest doesn’t really matter much to him.

It’s almost twenty minutes before everyone is showered and sitting on the rows of benches in front of my dad. His arms are folded, the playbook still tucked under his forearm. He hasn’t changed positions since he entered this room several minutes ago, looking up only slightly to congratulate certain players on specific plays he thinks they went above and beyond on. His mouth is a hard line, and his players begin to quiet as they nudge each other until the room becomes so still that I hesitate to breathe.