Page 5 of Hard to Score

It’s only when he jogs to the side of the field, takes a seat on the bench with his back to me, and takes his helmet off that I walk through the open gateway in the fence.

He turns when he hears the click of my heels at the same time that I speak. “I’m impressed. Practicing after a game? Not many players do that these days.”

“What . . .” The word falls from his mouth at the same time his eyes meet mine, but the man with a rifle of an arm isn’t Justin Hobbs.

Not in the least.

No, the eyes that meet mine are a mixture of blue and green and are the same ones that stopped my heart many times in my teenage years.

Recognition flickers in his just as quickly as his expression falls before a slow, reminiscent smile spreads on his lips. “Well, if it isn’t Bratty Brex.”

My heart jumps in my throat at his voice and a thousand teenage dreams about my first crush come flooding back. My heart feels like it just turned over in my chest in a way I haven’t felt in forever.

But my own smile remains steady even if the ground beneath my feet feels like it just trembled.

“If it isn’t Dreadful Drew,” I repeat the childish nickname of our youth while remembering the secret ones my girlfriends had for him later in our teens. Sexy Drew. Dreamy Drew. *Sigh* Drew.

“God, I haven’t heard that in forever.” The second string quarterback for the New York Raptors chuckles softly and angles his head to the side to take me in.

I study him in turn. His dark, short hair is wet with sweat and going every which way from him running his hand through it. His skin is tanned from being out in the sun, and those eyes of his are unrelenting as they meet mine again.

“What? I mean—why—or rather how come…” I shake my head as nerves I shouldn’t feel tinge the edge of my voice.

How have we avoided each other this long?

How are you?

How have we been in the same industry for so long and our paths never crossed until now?

“Probably because of the same reasons as you,” he says when I don’t complete my scattered thoughts.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You always struggled to complete your thoughts when you were flustered. I always thought it was cute.”

“I’m not flustered. Or cute.”

“You’re right. I was wrong. You’re not cute at all.” Drew’s tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. “You’re gorgeous.”

There’s a brief beat where I simply stare at him, eyes blinking to make sure I heard him properly, before I burst out laughing. This is not something Dreamy Drew would say to me.

This is something I might have dreamed and wrote in my diary that I wish he would say, but it’s not something I know how to process . . . so I laugh clumsily.

And luckily he does too, because there’s a sudden awkwardness between the two of us—two kids whose parents were best friends, who vacationed together . . . and then acted like the other didn’t exist after scandal hit.

“Thanks. I mean . . . yeah, thank you.” I shift on my feet and try to look anywhere but at him. “Why are you out here? Why don’t you have the lights on? Why—”

“You still ask a million questions, don’t you?”

I pretend I’m not melting inside at his shy smile and playful tone. But I totally am.

“And you still get annoyed by it,” I say, waving a hand at the field in front of us. “What are you doing out here in the dark?”

“Doing the same thing I do after every game.”

“Which is?”

“Putting in a full game’s worth of passes by myself since I didn’t get to touch the field today.” He nods. “I’ve got to keep my skills sharp in case I’m called to play.”