Or embarrassed that they were doing everything for me, and everyone could see?
I kept my eyes on my plate, grateful for something to do with both my hands and my eyes. Someone put a beer down in front of me but I ignored it. I didn’t drink much at the best of times, and the last thing I wanted to do was embarrass myself even further by getting drunk in the middle of the day with a bunch of my brother’s friends.
“So, how did you two meet?”
I looked up at the sound of Aiden’s voice, hearing it directed in my general area. He was talking to Caleb – asking him about Aubrey – while chewing on a buffalo wing.
“We met at college,” Aubrey said. Her tone was somewhere between proud of her man and coy, obviously happy to be telling the story. “He came up to me after one of the games in the first year.”
“Oh, you were watching?” Aiden asked.
“She was not watching,” Caleb said, shaking his head wryly, and I couldn’t help but smile. I knew the story. “She was taking part in a protest.”
“I was handing out leaflets about the rate of concussions in football players and how no one’s doing anything about it,” Aubrey said, with a chuckle and a shake of her head. “I have no idea how I managed to end up dating one. You’d think it was me with the brain damage.”
“Hey!” Caleb said, clutching his chest as if wounded. Everyone laughed. “I think it was actually my smooth sweet-talking skills that sealed the deal.”
Aubrey tilted her head at him. “You asked me if taking me out for a drink would get me to stop hassling all the people who came to just have fun and watch the game.”
Caleb reddened a little, clearing his throat. “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”
“No, it did not,” Aubrey said, laughing and shaking her head. “You had to ask me… what was it? Eleven more times?”
Caleb coughed. “Twelve,” he said. “In my defense, your so-called friend gave me really bad advice about how to impress you.”
“Oh, she did that on purpose,” Aubrey chuckled. “And she told me, too. We were both enjoying watching you walk around in those terrible band t-shirts. Where did you even get one in your size, anyway?”
Cade shrugged. “I borrowed them from someone else on the team.”
“Who?” Davies, Jason, and Oliver asked him all at once.
“Karlson,” he shrugged.
“That’s the guy with the mohawk?” I asked. I regretted it immediately when everyone turned to look at me.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Caleb said, shrugging. “They were baggy on him.”
Aiden zeroed in on me. “You come to the games?”
“Yeah,” I said. I’d been traveling to Caleb’s games ever since he first played. First it was from home, and now I came from my own college.
That was how I’d met Brody – outside one of the games. Just like how Caleb had met Aubrey, but without so much of a cute story behind it.
I swallowed. I didn’t want to think about Brody.
I looked down at my plate, wanting to disappear somehow into it.
“So, Aubrey,” Aiden said, way too casually to really be casual. “Do you have any single friends?”
Jason threw a piece of bread roll at him, prompting Davies, Oliver, and even my brother to do the same. “Come on, man,” Caleb chuckled.
“What?” Aiden asked innocently, throwing his hands up in the air. “I didn’t know there were cute girls standing around outside our games in the first year, or I’d have gotten myself a girlfriend, too.”
I was glad he’d saved me from the attention – but a small part of me was a little disappointed. Of course, he was straight.
But it would have been nice to maintain a fantasy about him – because he really was super hot. Not just in a football player kind of way, but more than that. He was actually handsome, and –
A cracking sound echoed out behind me and I immediately swiveled in my seat, my heart in my mouth, to see what had it had been – because it sounded like a gunshot.
