“She must be hot for you to lose your cool that way.”
Sliding farther down on the seat, I mumbled, “What-the-fuck-ever. I had no idea I lived in a house full of gossipy old ladies.”
Danny’s laughter filled the cab of his Mustang. I ground my teeth and focused on the road. It was one thing for the guys to razz me about the jersey chasers whose attention I loved—which apparently was a problem I couldn’t bring myself to care about. Sue me. But those girls were nothing more than a distraction, someone pretty to hang out with rather than looking at my friends’ ugly mugs all the time. Chessly was different. Special. Not someone I was okay with the guys giving me shit about.
“Don’t get pissy, Finn.” Danny smirked. “It’s game day. You’re the one who’s always reminding us it’s the best damn day of the week.”
One side of my mouth lifted in a sneer, which didn’t faze my roommate in the slightest. Guess all his military experience left him immune to sarcasm.
We arrived at the facility to find Coach Ainsworth waiting right inside the doors, clipboard in hand as he checked off players’ arrivals. If anyone even thought about showing up late on game day, Coach would make an example out of him for the next week. None of us had ever made that rookie mistake, even when we were rookies, but we also knew he was checking to make sure we’d followed all the rules—including the dress code.
“Nice shirt, Bax. Not so sure about that tie, though.” Ainsworth coughed into his hand.
Back at the house I’d been so focused on saving my friend from his T-shirt-wearing stupidity that I hadn’t paid any attention to his tie. Guess that had been true of our other roommates too because we couldn’t help our grins at the light pink tie with the red lips all over it.
“That’s as close to a girl’s mouth as Bax has been in weeks,” Callahan said, laughing.
“Not true,” I corrected.
Callahan’s brow shot up. “Yeah? Do tell.”
“Shut up, asshole,” Bax said as he shouldered past all of us and headed down the hall to the locker room.
For once I was on the giving end of the razzing. No way could I pass up this opportunity. “Bax’s unicorn is a real person. He says she started it at Stromboli’s the other night, but no matter who came on to who, they both had swollen lips when they came back from the can.”
Coach Ainsworth narrowed his eyes. “I hope you boys are being smart. We don’t need anyone putting the team in a jam over some woman.”
That sobered the rest of us up quick.
“Got it, Coach.” Callahan spoke for all of us.
As we headed toward the locker room, we couldn’t help but to exchange snickers and grins. Since I’d been on the receiving end of Danny’s jokes about women, it was fun to be dishing them out for once. Coach’s warning notwithstanding. A picture of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed babe flashed through my head, and I tensed.
As I folded my dress clothes and stacked them neatly on the bench in front of my locker, images of Chessly Clarke played on a loop through my thoughts. Her friend said they’d all be at today’s game. Maybe if I impressed her with my play, she’d forget about my clumsy fuckup when I asked for her number.
Then again, I don’t think that was my fuckup at all. Somehow, without me having a clue, I blew it on the night we met when I acknowledged Tory Miller outside the dorm when I’d dropped Chessly off. When it came to women, I might be a little slow on the uptake—all right, a lot slow—but I caught on quick that bad blood swirled between Chessly and Tory. Wish someone had given me a heads-up about that before I found out the hard way.
After I pulled my pungent pads from my locker, I tugged them over my head and wrinkled my nose at the stink of sweat assailing my sinuses. Too bad these pads couldn’t be run through a washer when the team managers washed our uniforms. I jerked my jersey down over them and yanked on my pants. As I laced my cleats, Bax sat on the bench beside me.
“You ready to knock some heads out there today?”
My response was automatic. “Damn straight.”
He slapped me on the back. “That’s how we impress a certain pair of ladies.”
“Speak for yourself.” Standing, I grabbed my helmet from the shelf above the lockers. “I plan on messing Crawford up for the beat-down he gave us last year when he had that NFL-caliber O-line. From what I saw on film, their replacements are mostly rookies.” Flexing my fist, I said, “I’m going to own them.”
“That’s what we love about you, Finnegan.”
My brow shot up.
“How you flip the switch from sweetheart to beast mode the second you pull on your pads.” He held out his fist, and without thinking, I bumped it, wondering if “sweetheart” was a compliment. The gleam in his eyes could have meant anything.
Coach Ellis called us together for our final pep talk before we ran out onto the field. In his usual understated fashion, he had the entire team wound up and ready to kick some Bulldogs’ ass. For a time, I forgot all about a certain hot blonde and how much I wanted to impress her.
As we exited the tunnel to run behind the tumbling cheerleaders through the gauntlet of marching band members playing our fight song, the roar of twenty-five thousand screaming fans rumbled through my blood, amping me up for the dogfight we all knew would be our latest contest with our archrivals. When I reached the sidelines where my teammates and I back-slapped and high-fived and fist-bumped each other, all I wanted to do was race out onto the gridiron and go to work.
Then I glanced up into the stands. Like a heat-seeking missile, my focus zeroed in on a certain hot physics major and her friends. For a few seconds, our gazes locked and the whole stadium faded away.
