“Hey, are you okay?” he interrupted in that deep voice of his, his dark eyebrows furrowing together as he looked down at my face.
“—yet you still managed to drop that pass against the Raiders,” I continued, wondering why I sounded like I was slurring. “How is that even possible?”
His face froze in a look of surprise, and then he disappeared as everything went dark.
2
Connor
The girl fainted the minute the insult left her lips.
I caught her—oh, the irony—as the crowd gasped, but before anyone could even react to the situation, a silver-haired guy came running out from backstage, yelling, “She’s fine!”
What the fuck?
The guy—who was wearing a vintage Coyotes jersey that I was guessing he bought in the ’80s—rushed right up to me and said, “She’s fine. She always faints when she gets nervous. It’ll only be a second.”
As if on cue, her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at me.
“See?” the man said, both to me and to the studio audience, seeming desperate to reassure everyone that this was no big deal. “She’s fine.”
“What happened?” she asked, blinking fast as she began to reorient herself, her body still fairly slack against my arms.
“You insulted me and passed out,” I said, making a few people laugh.
“Iinsultedyou?” she asked, sounding surprised.
Duffy Distefano was kind of cute in person. She looked like every photo I’d seen of her on the news over the past couple of weeks—dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, no makeup, no nonsense—but her brown eyes were wicked sharp, like she had a million things going on behind them.
“You brought up the pass he dropped in overtime,Duff,” the older man said accusingly, his disapproving tone hinting he was very unhappy she’d mentioned it.
“Well, that’s not an insult,” she said plainly as she looked up at me. “It’s just a fact. Youdiddrop that ball, did you not? But I mean, I suppose you can’t catcheverypass, so—”
“So I have your permission to make a mistake?” I said around a laugh, because I couldn’t believe she was giving me shit about the drop after I’d just saved her from a face-plant. Who the fuck was this girl?
“Well, I mean, I would prefer youdon’tdrop the passes you’re intended to catch,” she said with the perfect amount of sarcasm in her voice, “but—”
“Can I butt in with a wellness check here?” Kel interrupted. “Are you okay, Duffy?”
“Oh, she’s fine,” the jersey-clad man said again, waving a hand dismissively. “She’s totally fine. This happens all the time.”
“This happens all the time?” I asked, wondering if she realized she was still leaning into me.
“No,” she said in disgust, her eyebrows crinkling together. And then I saw the exact second she realized my arms were still supporting her because she literally jumped away from me, her cheeks turning pink.
Which I somehow just knew she would hate.
“Only when she gets nervous or sees someone she’s got a crush on.”
“Oh, really?” I said, suddenly more entertained than I’d been in quite some time.
“Relax, Football,” she said with an eye roll, tucking her hair behind her ear with one hand while tugging on the bottom of her sweater with the other. “There are a lot of people here. It’s nervousness, trust me.”
I heard a few laughs from the audience at that.
“Yeah, you shoulda seen her the time she bumped into Bill Cowher at the airport. Her eyes glazed over and she went down like a grizzly with a tranquilizer dart. Hit the deck so hard she got a concussion.”
“Dad, can you—”
