by Cassie Cole
Danny raised a plate in my direction. “Waffles are ready, Roberta.”
I skipped over to the kitchen and took a seat at the counter. There was a little cup of warm syrup and a platter of soft butter too. I slathered them all over my waffles and then dug in, careless that I was getting syrup on my face.
“I’m sorry again,” I said when I came up for air. “I think I felt guilty because I was the one that left her at the party. She was totally sober when I left!”
Lance sat at the counter across from me and rested his huge arms on the marble surface. “I had my eye on her all night. Mostly because she was ogling me all night like I was a juicy steak. I think she switched from beer to jungle juice, and then it hit her hard.”
“Everclear is always a mistake,” Feña declared. “I have learned this lesson many times.”
“So,” I said. “You always take a video like that? For what, evidence?”
“Sorta kinda. It’s not like I’m just trying to cover my ass. When a girl wakes up in a new place and has no memory, something like that can help.”
“That’s really sweet,” I said.
Lance grinned deeper. “You hear that, Danny? I’m Batman and I’m sweet.”
“She just doesn’t know you yet,” Danny teased as he added two more waffles to my plate. I made a grateful noise in the back of my throat.
“It’s kind of funny,” I said while dumping more syrup, “because last night Aly mentioned you had a reputation for taking home a different girl every night.”
“Oh? You guys were talking about me?”
“It was tough not to, since you were doing keg-stands and dancing around the room,” I pointed out.
“This sounds like Lance,” Feña said, sipping his tea.
Lance planted an elbow on the counter and rested his chin in his hand. “So you guys were watching,” he said in a suggestive voice. “It’s alright. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the gun show.”
“Watch it,” Danny said, gesturing with a wooden spoon. “I saw her first.”
“I haven’t heard her compliment you this morning,” Lance shot back.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. An email dropping into my inbox. I wasn’t planning on reading it, but the sender’s email caught my attention:
[email protected]
Ignoring the sticky syrup on my fingers, I swiped across my screen to open the email. My eyes grew wider with each line.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
Danny’s mouth hung open. “What?”
“I’m sorry, but I have to leave! I’ll explain later!”
I rushed to his room, retrieved my shoes, and then ran out the front door.
6
Lance
Roberta ran out of the house like she’d suddenly sobered up and remembered that she had a boyfriend. As soon as the door slammed shut, Danny looked at me and Feña in confusion.
“Dude,” I said. “What’d you do to her last night?”
“Nothing!” Danny protested. “Well. I mean, not nothing. But everything was awesome. We had a great time. She was happy this morning! You saw her!”
I shrugged. “Sounds like she got a good look at me and realized she chose the wrong man.”
Feña snorted, but when I glared at him he covered his face with his tea mug.
“So,” I said to Danny. “You decided to take my advice and hook up with someone, huh? About time you lived a little.”
“I am equally surprised,” Feña said. “This is not like you, Daniel. Especially not with the season beginning. What is this girl to you?”
Danny turned back to the waffle iron, but not before I saw him blushing. That was weird, too. He was the kind of quietly confident guy who didn’t get embarrassed. He gave every option a good long think before making a decision. He didn’t jump into things on the spur of the moment.
And he definitely didn’t have one-night stands.
“Roberta is nice,” he said while pulling more waffles out with a fork. “We hit it off at the party.”
“Oh shit!” I said, smacking my forehead. “Were you the ones making out in Trevor’s room?”
Danny’s blush deepened while he focused intently on the next waffle batch.
“Dude! On his bed? And then you brought her back here? I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“We hit it off,” he said simply.
“She is very beautiful,” Feña said. “There is no need to be embarrassed.”
“She’s passionate, too. Did you see how she reacted when she thought I’d taken advantage of her roommate? A pillow pummeling isn’t the best way to wake up in the morning.”
“She seems really cool,” was all Danny said.
“Come on,” I said. “What was it? Not that you need a reason to hook up with a girl with a bangin’ body, but…”
“She didn’t know,” Danny finally said.
Feña and I looked at each other.
“She had no idea who I was,” Danny went on. “She asked about my major. What I wanted to do with my degree when I graduated. She treated me like a person.”
“Duuuude,” I said.
Being a college athlete was tough. Everyone wanted to be your friend or girlfriend, but you quickly realized it was all superficial. Sometimes I felt like the last tenderloin at the market for girls to fight over. That’s not bragging, either. I couldn’t walk from one end of campus to the other without girls wanting to take selfies with me. Half the time they tried to kiss me so they could brag to their friends. I wore headphones all the time to make it easier to ignore the more obnoxious ones.
Yeah, I know. I probably sound like a dick for complaining. Most guys would kill for that kind of attention. But after a while? Shit got old.
Nobody wanted to get to know me. They only cared about my status.
A girl who was hot, funny, and had no idea who Danny was? No wonder he fell for her so fast.
It made me wish I had something like that.
“It was… refreshing,” Danny said while hunched over the waffle iron. “I didn’t realize how much I missed that.”
“That’s fucking awesome,” I said, going to him and slapping him on the shoulder. “Sorry we gave you shit about it. Marry that girl. Hell, share her with me and Feña. Maybe we can fight over her. I bet I could beat you in a duel. Especially if she was the prize.”
“You mean the girl who ran out of the house like her pants were on fire?” Danny said with a weak smile.
“Yeah…” I winced. “Hopefully she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“That would be unfortunate luck,” Feña said.
I noticed something on the kitchen counter, next to the plate of waffles Roberta had abandoned. “She left her phone. You can check to see if she has a boyfriend.”
“That wouldn’t be very ethical,” Danny said, but he took the phone from me anyways. “Maybe I can find out where she lives so I can return it to her.”
“Like a modern version of Cinderella’s glass slipper,” Feña said cheerfully.
There was a groaning noise from the other room, and a voice that called out, “Roberta? Are you there?”
Danny nudged me. “Looks like your waffles can wait, Batman. You’ve got a citizen who requires your services.”
I grabbed a plate of waffles for Aly. “Fuck yeah I do.”
I went into my room to explain to her what had happened.
7
Roberta
I rushed out the door and across the street toward campus. Thank goodness their house was so close.
The email was from the school athletic director, asking if I could come to his office this morning to discuss my physical trainer application. He was free until 10:00 a.m., and it was already 9:45.
I’m getting another chance.
That was the only explanation I could think of. The rejection letter was a mistake. Maybe another position had opened up, or the person they accepted for the physical trainer position turned it down. It had to be goo
d news. Why else would I get called in on a Sunday morning?
Hope filled me as I crossed the baseball field toward the athletics building. Thank goodness I’d worn comfortable clothes last night; showing up to a meeting with the athletic director in a short skirt and high heels would not have made a good impression.
I ran into the building and realized I had no idea where his office was. I reached into my pocket for my phone…
Shit. I must’ve left it at Danny’s house.
I looked around for a directory but the walls in this lobby were filled with ribbons and trophies from track meets, so I picked a hall at random and started walking. None of the offices had name plates, just numbers on the doors. Every office was empty, though.
Finally I came to a building directory and found what I needed: Athletic Director Mueller, Office 1082.
I kept walking in the same direction while scanning room numbers. The building didn’t seem to have any order to it; the room numbers rose, then fell, then rose again. I walked faster and faster, terrified that my fresh opportunity was going to dry up.
Finally I came to room 1082. It was closed, so I took a moment to compose myself and then knocked.
“Come in.”
The office was cluttered with papers in manila folders, to the point that I couldn’t even see the desk surface underneath. Behind it all sat a man in an orange-and-silver visor. He was very tan, bordering on sunburned, like someone who spent all of his time outside. He was bent over the desk scribbling something in a folder, and didn’t look up at me until I closed the door.
“Can I help you?”
“Director?” I asked. “My name is Roberta Gallo.”
“Right, right, come in,” he said. He had a way of speaking quickly, in short spurts. “Have seat. You can call me Coach Mueller.”
That’s right. He was both the athletic director and the coach of the football team.
“I’m surprised you’re working on a Sunday,” I said while sitting across the desk from him. “All the others offices I passed were dark.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Football season is in full swing. The first game is next week. No days off for me until January.” He waved it away with a hand. “I wanted to talk to you about your application. For the sports medicine position for the football team? The physical trainer?”
“Yes!” I said excitedly. “I received the rejection letter yesterday. But I’m extremely motivated, and I love kinesiology. The human body is incredible. Like, um, a machine. I feel like an engineer sometimes…” I tried to remember what I’d said to Danny last night when describing my passion, but my heart was racing now that I was in front of the athletic director and I struggled to put words together. “I hope the position is still available? Was my rejection a mistake?”
Coach Mueller listened quietly until I was done. I couldn’t get a read on what he was thinking behind his beady eyes. “Traditionally, we have a robust athletic department here at Appleton. Last year we had 50 full-time employees to support the 600 student athletes across our 24 programs. Unfortunately, thanks to budget cuts, we can’t maintain the same staffing level as past years. Instead of the three physical trainers I normally keep, this year I can only hire one. These students are incredible young men and women, and they need devoted attention from someone whose entire focus is their health and recovery. Especially if there’s only one trainer instead of three.”
“Absolutely,” I said, nodding along. “Sports medicine is a lot more than just stretching before practice. Athletes need focused, specific treatment for their individual needs. A baseball pitcher’s rotator cuff is completely different than a football player’s.”
“Right,” he said. “Why do you want this job?”
“It ticks a couple of boxes,” I explained. “It’s great hands-on experience that I can’t get in a classroom. I need six work credits for my master’s degree. But most important of all, sports medicine is what I want to do after I graduate. Either in physical therapy or for a specific group of athletes. The human body is my calling. It’s what I want to do. This job is perfect.”
His lip twitched in a smirk. “It’s not because you want to be close to all the college boys on my football team?”
I made myself laugh at the stupid joke, even though I was mildly annoyed by it. “My intentions are purely professional.”
His eyebrows rose up toward his visor. “Come on. Roberta. You’re not a little bit interested in putting your hands on good-looking, muscular, athletes? Feeling them from head to toe?”
It was more difficult for me to laugh this time. Bristling at the insult, I said, “No, sir.”
“Because that’s what we get a lot of here,” he explained. “Girls want to be trainers to get close to our athletes. To be friends. To be more than friends. Popularity and fame breeds leeches.”
“I have no interest in campus popularity,” I assured him. “I’m honestly an introvert. I keep to myself and never go out. My focus would be entirely on your athletes’ physical health and wellbeing.”
Coach Mueller looked at me a few short moments, then pulled out his laptop. He typed for a few moments, then spun the screen around.
My jaw dropped.
It was a photo of me and Danny at the party last night. We were standing close together by ourselves, with Danny leaning in. I knew he was leaning close so I could hear him over the sound of the music, but in the photo it looked more romantic than that.
I glanced at the names. Aly was the one to post them, tagging both me and Danny.
“You want to explain,” Coach Mueller said slowly, “why you’re flirting with my star quarterback?”
My eyes bulged so much that I probably looked like a cartoon character. “Your what?”
He tapped the screen. “Danny Armstrong. He’s Appleton’s quarterback.”
“I… I had no idea.”
He blinked at me with those tiny eyes. “You want to be a sports medicine trainer for the athletic department, yet you didn’t recognize our quarterback?”
“I’ve been to plenty of the games, but he always has a helmet on!” I protested. “I don’t stalk the players outside of games. He was just a random guy who started talking to me at a party.”
“He started talking to you at the party?” he asked skeptically. “Danny’s a good kid. Doesn’t let himself get distracted.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with the position,” I said. “And I don’t understand why you’re monitoring Facebook like this.”
Coach Mueller crossed his arms. He looked bored. “It’s important that I check in on my athletes. Make sure they’re not making poor decisions that could embarrass themselves, or worse, embarrass the school. Aside from Lance dancing like a fool—which he always does—there wasn’t anything noteworthy last night.” He pointed. “Except for our quarterback chatting up a girl who just so happened to apply for a position with the team.”
“All we did was talk,” I lied. He has no way of knowing. And even if he did, it shouldn’t matter.
“Okay,” he said blandly.
“I was already rejected from the physical trainer position,” I said. “I got the letter in the mail. Why did you bring me in here? To tell me to stay away from Danny?”
He closed the laptop with a soft click. “We’ve got another position open in the department you might be interested in.”
My pulse raced. “Really?”
He gestured around his cluttered desk. “Our old secretary took an early retirement last week. The filing system has been a mess. You would need to have a strong focus in organization, which your resume mentioned. There’s a lot of paperwork in this department. Scholarship information, newspaper coordination…”
“You… you want me to be a secretary?” I asked in a small voice. “What about the physical trainer?”
“That position was filled. A freshman named Brett—he’s a business major, but he seems interested in sports, and I like his attitude. Forget about all that, though.
You interested in this secretary position or not?”
“Would I get sports medicine credits for it? For my degree?”
“Well, no, of course not,” he said bluntly. “But if you do a good job as secretary, in a few years who knows what might happen? You’d have a higher chance of becoming a physical trainer once you’ve been working here.”
“I’m a senior,” I said numbly. “I graduate in May.”
“Oh.” He removed his visor and scratched his head. “Well, the secretary job has a lot of other benefits. You would report directly to me…”
I let him drone on about the stupid secretary job, nodding along without listening. I was too disheartened to be mad. I shook his hand when he stuck it out to me, and then I numbly left his office.
I made it outside before the tears finally broke through.
8
Roberta
I had to go down three different halls before finding my way out of the maze of a building. By the time I reached the fresh air and sunshine outside, tears were pressing heavily against the corners of my eyes.
I sat on the bench outside the building and held my head in my hands while trying to calm down. Yet all I felt was stupid. I shouldn’t have allowed my hopes to get up on the way to the meeting. Now it was like getting rejected from the same job twice. Things were just as hopeless as they were yesterday.
“Thanks, Aly,” I muttered to myself. It wouldn’t have made a difference since I didn’t get the physical trainer job either way, but Aly tagging me in those photos added a whole bunch of humiliation from the athletic director. Because that’s how I really felt right now: humiliated. In a moment of weakness, I’d gone home with a guy at a party. And even though he was amazing and sweet and last night was incredible, having it rubbed in my face by a total stranger wasn’t my idea of positive reinforcement.
This is why I don’t go to parties.
