Me: Butterfly?
Matt: You’re spreading your wings.
Matt: Don’t forget to hydrate. And eat something with protein. Not just gummy bears.
I snort. He knows me too well, but not as well as I would like. I snicker while staring at my phone.
Me: You say that like gummy bears aren’t a food group.
That’s when I realize he knows a lot more about me than I do about him.
Matt: You should treat your body like a temple. Healthy foods.
Me: Maybe you should teach me how, Coach.
Matt: Don’t call me Coach.
The bubble appears again and lingers. I picture him in the quarterbacks’ room in Austin, hunched over a laptop, laser-eyed and bossy. But I remember he’s not there, andsomething flips in my stomach. I’m beginning to feel this thing with Matt is beyond revenge on Brooks.
I like him. More than as my brother’s best friend or my white knight saving me from a crappy boyfriend, but as someone who makes my heart smile and gives me goosebumps just from thinking about him.
I tuck the phone into my back pocket and head for the linebackers.
Around noon, the heat hardens into a wall. I feel it when I step into the sun—the way it presses on my skin and turns my head cottony. My last interview is with a rookie who can’t stop giggling on camera. I laugh with him, and then, when I step out of the frame, my vision blurs at the edges; people become outlines without faces.
I bend my knees and breathe. I’m fine. I am.
“Hey, you good?” someone asks. Footsteps scuff. It’s Josiah again, helmet tucked under his arm, sweat gleaming on his forehead. “You look a little?—”
“Don’t say pale,” I warn, forcing a smile. “I prefer ‘gorgeous’ or ‘mysteriously luminous.’”
He chuckles and extends a half-empty bottle of lemon-lime Gatorade—the good kind, the kind that tastes like Little League and childhood. “You should sit. It’s a hundred degrees.”
I eye the bottle, then Josiah. “You’re offering your backwash? That’s how documentaries start.”
He looks horrified. “Oh, my bad. I can run and…”
“I’m kidding,” I say, taking it and tipping it up. The salty-sweet drink hits my tongue, and I suddenly realize I’m parched. I swallow twice and hand it back. “We’ll pretend the CDC approved that.”
He laughs, relieved. “Noelle, take care of yourself. Wewouldn’t want you to have a heatstroke on your first day in action.”
“Got it. Now go run faster if you want to be on the highlights tonight,” I say, waving him off.
When he jogs away, I sit on the edge of the sideline bleacher for exactly ninety seconds, the aluminum branding the backs of my thighs, my stomach doing a slow barrel roll. Nerves, heat, dehydration—I pick a culprit and point at it. Then I stand, fix my ponytail, and march back to the field.
The afternoon crawls, but then I get sprayed by an errant water bottle and wear it like cologne. Every time I slide the mic flag into my palm, the network name catches my eye:ESPN. My stomach swoops. In a good way.
By the time the producer finally says, “We got it,” my legs feel like they belong to a much older woman and my brain is fried. I help coil cables anyway, because my dad didn’t raise me to stand around while other people work, then the crew and I step onto the shuttle with a sigh that comes from my toes.
My phone vibrates as we pull away.
Matt: You alive?
Me: Technically. A rookie shared his Gatorade with me.
Matt: You drank after a player?
Me: He has dimples. I assessed the risk.
