“What position do you play?”Hailey asked.She sidled up beside me as I topped up my coffee with a splash of half-and-half.
“Backup QB.”Eyeing her over the rim of my cup, I couldn’t miss the way some of her interest leached out as she paused in petting the end of her braid.
“Oh.”
A blur in a red puffy coat and matching hat blew out of the back room.Taryn barely gave Danny a second to react before she was in his arms, her mouth fused to his.After about twenty minutes, she let him up for air with a breathy, “Hi.”
My first instinct was to call him out for his mush when he returned her greeting, except: one, he was the first teammate to reach out to welcome me to Mountain State, and two, that instinct was way too much about being jealous of his obviously great relationship.
Instead I sipped my coffee and waited while Hailey danced awkwardly from foot to foot beside me as she watched them.While she was cute in a country-girl kind of way, she couldn’t have telegraphed her interest in bagging a Wildcats player more clearly if she were wearing nothing but a sandwich board reading, “Wants to bang a Wildcat, especially a starter.”Yeah, been there, done that.Didn’t keep the T-shirt.
At last Danny remembered he’d invited me to tag along.Slinging his arm over Taryn’s shoulders, he said, “Let’s grab some lunch.”
He led the way from the coffee shop, but instead of heading back to his car, we hung a left and started walking down the sidewalk.Before I could ask, he said, “You don’t have to go far for the best coffee and the best sandwiches in town.”He smiled at his girlfriend.“T showed me that.The Coffee Kiosk has excellent brew.”
I lifted my cup to salute Taryn.“I thought he only recommended it because his girlfriend works there, but this is good coffee.”
She grinned.“Thanks.”
“Right here you’ll find the best subs you’ve ever tasted.”He led us to the door of a tiny hole-in-the-wall that looked more like a pantry than a café.“The Pickle Barrel makes to-die-for subs—and they deliver.”
“Judging by the size of this place, they’d have to.”I chuckled.But I wasn’t laughing a few minutes later when the three of us overwhelmed a small table in the corner beside a massive wooden barrel filled with dill pickles, and I bit into my first Pickle Barrel.“Damn.You weren’t kidding about the food.I think I might have died and landed in sandwich heaven.”
“I know, right?”Danny said.
“Danny says you’re a transfer,” Taryn said.“Why Mountain State?”
“Coach Ellis recruited me first.Then I got starry-eyed when the big boys came calling.Now they’ve changed their minds, but luckily for me, Coach Ellis was still interested.”I filled my mouth with an unmannerly bite of kick-ass cheesesteak sub, hoping to put that part of the inquisition behind me.When I finally swallowed, I turned the tables.“Why do you call her T?”
“Inside joke from when we met.”Danny smirked.
“Ah.So when’s the wedding?”I asked.
Taryn nearly choked on a bite of her sandwich, but Danny smiled.“Sooner rather than later if I get my way,” he said.
The look she shot him said this plan was news to her, so I ducked my head.Their relationship was none of my business.
We finished our meal, and after kissing the hell out of his girlfriend in the parking lot behind the coffee shop, Danny invited me over to his place.I asked him to drop me at my Jeep, and I followed him over to a big Victorian in the middle of the old part of town.
When we walked into the living room, the Wildcats’ starting tight end Callahan O’Reilly and two guys I recognized as defensive starters were playing some game on the forty-two-inch TV they’d hung on the one wall in the room without a window or a doorway.
“Hey, Danny.Ready to get your ass kicked inMadden?”asked the defensive player wearing a T-shirt that read, “Please tell your boobs to stop staring at my eyes.”
I snorted at his shirt, and he grinned back at me.“Hey.You’re Cash.Recognized you from the film fiasco today.”He stood and offered his hand.“Wyatt Baxter, but everyone calls me Bax.Welcome to the team.”
“Finn McCabe,” the other guy said as he extended his hand.“You fixin’ to take Patty’s place?”Though the question was posed in an even tone, the tenseness in his shoulders told me how he truly felt.
“I’m here to contribute to a winning team in whatever form that takes.”I raised my brows.“Have you noticed how the QB for the Golden Bears always shrugs the shoulder of the direction he’s going to pass?From what I saw in the film of your game, he’s good at looking guys off, but that shoulder shrug gives him away every time.”
Finn and Bax exchanged a look.
“No shit?”Bax stared at me with the kind of respect I wanted from the rest of the team.“You notice the tells of the other quarterbacks in our conference?”
“I was only paying attention to the Wildcats’ biggest rivals.”I stuffed my hands in the front pockets of my jeans.“But like I said, I’m here to contribute.”
The tight end who’d impressed the hell out of me in his game film stood and extended his hand.“Callahan O’Reilly.”He handed me a controller and nodded to an open spot on the couch between Finn and him.“Danny’s going to ruin the game by playing the Broncos, so we’ll give him a bye, let him lose in the next round.”
Danny responded to Callahan’s chuckle by upturning both middle fingers before disappearing through a door across the living room.I grabbed the controller from Callahan and made myself comfortable on the couch.
