Playing Hard to Get

Playing Hard to Get

Monica Murphy




PLAYLIST



“august” - Taylor Swift “Come Kick It” - Tesia “Falling in Loves too Mean” - Hether “laugh with me” - Korantemaa “I Don’t Really Know” - FLOOR CRY

“Bad Habit” - Steve Lacy “Aloha” - Valley Boy

“You&I.” - milk.

“The Boat I Row” - Tame Impala “In The Strangest Way” - The Hails





Find the rest of the Playing Hard to Get playlist on Spotify: http://bit.ly/3A4XyA8





ONE





JOANNA





Athletes. They kind of…scare me.

Specifically football players.

There are plenty of reasons why they freak me out. First up is their sheer size. These guys are huge. Massive. Most of them are freakishly tall and overwhelmingly bulky, and when you first see them, they’re intimidating.

Second, they’re just so dang loud. They enter a building, a room, the quad, the football field (well, that’s a given), and everyone notices them. Not only because of who they are, but they deliberately make a scene, like they want the attention. They talk, they yell, they cause a commotion everywhere they go and everyone looks upon them with awe.

And the football players revel in it.

Finally, most of them are extremely good looking. Even if they’re not attractive in the traditional sense with a handsome, symmetrical face, the majority of them have a raw magnetism that draws people in—specifically women. There’s always a crowd around them, mostly female, though the guys on campus idolize them as well. No matter where they go, they’re surrounded. Even mobbed sometimes. It’s wild.

I don’t get it.

I attend Colorado University and our college football team is made up of the most popular guys on campus. The Golden Eagles are loved. They are revered. When the fall semester starts, they’re all anyone talks about: every single conversation, everywhere you turn. The day after their games, where they almost always win?

It’s a nonstop analysis of their every move through all four quarters, right down to the final seconds.

All I can ever think is how exhausting it must be, to have so much sitting on their shoulders. They are responsible for the overhyped school spirit on this campus, and when they—heaven forbid—lose, it’s like the end of the world is coming.

No joke.

“Did you watch this weekend’s game?”

I barely look up as the customer asks the question that’s on everyone’s tongue this Monday. I work at the campus bookstore, and while I love my job, I don’t love these types of questions.

Being truthful gets me attention I don’t want. Because I don’t watch the game. I never watch the game.

I don’t care about sports.

And I really don’t like football.

Can’t let that get out, though. I’ll get my college admission revoked, despite the fact that I’ve been here two years already and am starting my junior year. I don’t understand the adulation, the way these guys are treated like gods on campus when all they do is throw a football on the field.

I honestly don’t get it.

“I did watch,” I finally answer, lying through my teeth.

“It was a good one, huh.” He says it as a statement, not a question. He flat out assumes that I watched it and loved every minute of it. Because…who wouldn’t? How could a member of the student body not spend their Saturday watching the game?

Glancing up at the guy, I immediately note that he’s decent looking, which is…interesting. I haven’t really noticed a guy’s looks in a while.

He has friendly brown eyes, which are currently zeroed in on my face. His lips are curled into a pleasant smile and he’s wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, which is trendy yet also somehow ironic? Maybe? “Can’t believe that catch Maguire made in the third quarter,” he says.

It takes everything inside me not to roll my eyes.

“I know, right? He’s so good,” I say, grabbing the Intro to Psychology book the customer is finally getting and scanning it before I add it to the bag of other supplies he’s purchasing. We’ve been in class for a week. Most everyone moved in at least three to four days prior to that. Which begs the question—why is he only picking up this book now? I saw on his order slip that it’s been here at the store since before school even started.

The guy scoffs. “Good? Major understatement. Maguire is the best tight end out there. Period. He’ll go pro next year for sure.”

Right. I’m sure he will if this dude says so.

I just don’t really give a damn.

“He needs to watch that knee though,” he continues. “It might trip him up.”

I don’t know much about Knox Maguire’s knee, but I did overhear a customer at the store say that after he injured it his freshman year, it still gives him trouble.

Like it gave him trouble at Saturday’s game. The coaches eventually benched him, but only during the fourth quarter because they knew they were going to win. Which they did.

Naturally.

That I even know these little facts about their first game of the season tells me I retain more facts than I thought I did. And the fact that they occupy even a little bit of space in my brain is seriously so frustrating.