I frown. “You get asked about your personal life in soc—football interviews?”
He smiles when I correct myself. “Yes. Often.”
“I guess that makes me glad no one has ever wanted to interview me.”
“They will,” Otto says confidently.
Warmth unfurls in my chest. There are plenty of people who have encouraged me over the years. Mom…teammates…coaches…friends…boyfriends, until they lost patience, have all offered support. But that’s different from belief. From certainty. Otto makes it sound inevitable that I’ll matter enough in this sport that someone will care what I have to say. That faith would mean something coming from anyone. It means the most, coming from him.
“I don’t talk to my dad,” I confess. “He divorced my mom and married the woman he’d been cheating on her with a few months later. My sister, Cassidy, went to their wedding, but I refused to. Even my mom tried to get me to go, saying I’d regret it later.”
“Do you regret not going?”
“No. But I do…I do miss my dad. When I was younger, we were really close. I wanted to be a zookeeper?—”
He smiles. “A zookeeper?”
“Shut up. I was six.” I knock my knee against his rock-hard thigh and sort of…leave my leg leaning there. “My dad grew up in Detroit. Every summer, we’d go visit my grandparents for a week. When I was in my zookeeper phase, he would bring me to the Detroit Zoo every single day. I got a token from this souvenir machine, and I still carry it around with me everywhere. I’ve never played a game without it in my pocket.” I pull it out now, dropping the coin on the comforter between us.
Otto picks it up, peering at the impression stamped on the surface, shiny from years of being transferred around. My stomach flips when I see the flat piece of metal dwarfed by his huge palm. He might as well be holding a chunk of my heart—that’s how exposed I feel. Even my mom doesn’t know I still carry that around.
I laugh awkwardly. “Please tell me you have a good-luck charm so I feel less weird about it.”
Otto carefully sets the coin next to the framed photo. “No good-luck charm. But not because I think it is weird. Nothing I care about enough to carry around.”
He hasn’t moved his leg away. Neither have I. An electric current is pulsing from that point of contact, wreaking havoc on my nervous system.
I like my body. I can run ten miles without stopping, and I always beat every boy in gym class during sit-up contests. But my body isn’t the svelte sort of fit-but-not-too-muscular model frame most guys seem to fantasize about. I beat one of Nolan’s buddies in a drunken arm-wrestling match, and the next morning, Nolan suggested I should lay off lifting for a while. I broke up with him two days later, but I hate how that comment has stuck in my head for so much longer.
Now, I’m wondering if Otto likes my body. If he’ll care that I’m wearing a spandex sports bra or about the scrape on my knee from a tackle earlier that’s raw and red.
There was a moment, before I climbed out of his car, when I thought Otto might kiss me. He didn’t. He hasn’t, and it’s feeding all my insecurities, which were already multiplied by the fact that he’s not only a hot guy, but he’s also an international soccer star who must attract attention anywhere he goes.
And I’m…me.
I fiddle with the flap of the box from Mom, searching for something witty to say. Swear when my thumb catches on the rough edge and cardboard scrapes a slice of skin away. Blood wells immediately, trickling down to my palm, and I curse again.
“Here.” Otto’s grabbed a handful of tissues, pressing them against the cut.
“Thanks,” I say, suppressing a wince. I’m annoyed at myself, more than in pain, for ruining the moment.
I climb off my bed, hustling into the attached bathroom to wash my hand. The cut is shallow, but it’ll scab. Possibly scar. I hunt through my toiletry kit for a couple of Band-Aids while Otto hovers in the doorway, repeatedly asking if he can do anything.
“All good,” I state, flashing him my bandaged thumb.
He catches my hand in his, which I’m not expecting, peering at my thumb. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” My voice is breathy, and I think he hears it.
He’s so close. I could?—
Someone pounds on my door, followed by, “Claire!”
Mackenzie’s voice.
My stomach drops.Shit.
I glance at the window, and Otto laughs.
