by Ivy Smoak
I lowered my voice so no one nearby could hear us. “Tanner, you own a sex club. Not a matchmaking service.”
“It’s not a sex club. How many times do I have to tell you this? It’s a club to find true love. If you would just come see…”
I laughed. I was just messing with him. It was hilarious that he truly thought he didn’t own a sex club. I was in charge of all his finances. And there was no other way to describe those expenses. “I have to politely decline the offer. Again.” Yes, I was pretty sure it was a sex club. But the way Tanner talked about true love did freak me out a little. I didn’t want that. And if there was any possibility of stumbling upon it in his club, I wanted nothing to do with it. I liked being alone. I ran my fingers down the condensation on my glass. No, I liked being with Penny.
He shook his head. “Excited for your game tomorrow?”
I didn’t mind the change of subject. I’d heard enough about true love for one night. And it was actually really nice that he always came to my games. Mason, Rob, and James never stepped foot in our old stadium. “Yeah, it’s going to be fun. Penny’s coming. And Bee and Daphne I think.”
“Great. I’ll sit with them.”
“You can’t harass Penny about the dating app thing. It’s our little secret. I wasn’t even supposed to tell you about it. And I don’t want anyone else knowing about it either.”
“I wasn’t going to harass her. I might ask her some questions about how she feels about you though.” He downed his drink and stood up.
“Please don’t do that.”
He laughed and picked up his binder full of women. “Just you wait and see. I’m going to matchmake her to you before she can matchmake you to some rando.”
“Tanner…”
“I have to get going. I’m going to be late for a date at my sex club.” He put the last two words in air quotes. “Let me know if you change your mind about the car fire,” he said a little too loudly as he started walking away from me. “I’ll see you and the lovely Penny tomorrow.” He waved his hand through the air and disappeared out the door as quickly as he’d come.
I would have gone after him, but he’d left me with the check. I knew how much money he had because my firm was responsible for investing it. Yes, I was rich. But he was a hell of a lot wealthier than me. Cheap asshole.
Chapter 5
Friday
I should have been watching the team warm up, but my eyes kept wandering toward the stands. The last time I’d been this nervous for a game was way back when I was playing. Specifically homecoming game sophomore year. I remembered that day perfectly. When I was more focused on winning Brooklyn back than winning the game. I’d won both. Although, Coach Carter had almost made me sit out the second half after my stunt in the homecoming parade. It was all worth it though. To see Brooklyn smile.
Just thinking about her made my chest hurt. But for the first time in ages, my eyes weren’t scanning the crowd for a ghost. I was searching for Penny. So far though, Tanner was the only person I recognized in the crowd. He waved at me and walked over, stopping on the track that circled the field.
“Ready to impress Penny?” he asked, but then frowned. “Whatever are you wearing, dear boy?”
I looked down at my gray sweatpants and Empire High t-shirt. My whistle dangled around my neck and I had a clipboard tucked under my arm. “I wear this to every game.” It was pretty much my coach uniform.
“Exactly. Every game. But this one is important.” He shook his head like I was ridiculous. “The coach over there is wearing a fitted suit.” He pointed at the douchey coach for Calver Academy.
“It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing.”
“I thought you were trying to woo Penny? Speaking of which, is she here yet? I want to sit with her and her friends.”
“You are definitely not sitting with them.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll talk too much.” I’d sworn Penny to secrecy about the whole dating app thing. And I’d gone and blabbed to Tanner about it. I was seriously regretting both things right now. Because if she found out that I’d broken our code of secrecy, who knew who she would tell? Actually, I knew exactly who she would tell. She’d tell James. And his brother, Rob.
Tanner laughed. “Exactly. I’ll find out everything you need to know about her.”
“I know everything about her.” Except what her lips tasted like. And how her body felt beneath mine.
“There’s plenty you don’t know about her,” Tanner said. “Like all of the important things.”
“What important things don’t you know about who?” Penny asked.
Tanner and I both froze. We hadn’t seen her walk up. Bee and Daphne weren’t with her. But she was balancing Scarlett on her hip.
“The blonde over there,” Tanner said, hitching his thumb over his shoulder. “Matt has the hots for her.”
What the fuck? I was pretty sure he was pointing at a high school student.
Penny just laughed. “Hi, Tanner, it’s good to see you again.”
Tanner smiled at her in a way that had me frowning.
“Hi, Mr. Tanner,” Scarlett said very politely. But then she turned to me with a huge smile on her face. “Uncle Matt!”
“Hey, kiddo.” I ruffled her hair. “Have you ever been to a football game before?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But Mommy said I could have a hotdog if I came with her.”
I laughed. “She’s correct.” I pointed over to the concession stand. “There’s hotdogs and even soft pretzels.” I knew how much she loved soft pretzels.
“Pretzels! Mommy, I need one of those too.” Scarlett turned back to me. “Mommy said I could have whatever I wanted so she wouldn’t have to sit alone.”
Penny shook her head, but she looked a little embarrassed. “Bee and Daphne were both busy.”
I tried not to stare at the blush crossing her cheeks. God she was beautiful.
“No problem,” Tanner said. “I’ll sit with you ladies. This is going to be so much fun.”
Fuck me.
“Oh, that’ll be great!” Penny said. “Let me go get Scarlett the hotdog and soft pretzel I promised her and then we’ll meet you in the stands?”
“Perfect.”
“Good luck,” Penny said to me. “I hope you guys win.”
“We’ll definitely win,” I said.
Penny whispered something in Scarlett’s ear.
“Oh yeah. Go Eagles!” Scarlett yelled. “Did I do it right?” She looked up at Penny.
“Exactly right.” Penny kissed the top of her head, gave me a thumbs up, and headed over toward the concession stand.
“What the hell was that?” I asked Tanner when Penny was out of earshot.
“What the hell was what? I thought that went really well.”
“You told her I have the hots for some random high school student.”
“Oh. That.” Tanner shrugged. “I wanted to see if she got jealous. It didn’t seem like it to me, but I promise I’ll get to the bottom of it over the next couple hours.”
“I don’t want you to talk to her at all. Especially about any of that.”
“But I’m your wingman. We can’t forgo this opportunity. When else will I have a chance to decipher all her secrets? Scarlett looks like she’s around the age of a kid that will probably need a nap after all that food. Which gives me a couple hours to talk to Penny one on one. I’ve got this. Trust me.”
I usually trusted him. But I didn’t want him to do any of that. “Tanner…”
“Go Eagles!” he said and started walking away from me.
“Tanner!” I hissed.
He ignored me, walked up into the stands, and sat down where there was enough seating for three.
The scoreboard made a beeping noise, signaling it was time for the game to start. My team ran out for the coin toss. But my mind was in the stands. So much so that I hadn’t even realized that we were down a kicker.
“Where is Jeffers
on?” I asked.
“Here!” Jefferson said as he rushed onto the field balancing a few trays of cookies. So many cookies. And in a super wide variety. It seemed like maybe Jefferson was more of a baker than a kicker.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My mom and I had to finish the last batch of cookies. It took longer than we thought.”
Several guys on the team snickered.
“Perfect timing,” I said and grabbed the trays from him. “We’ll eat these after the game. Sound good?”
Jefferson nodded with a huge smile.
Hopefully they were the best damn cookies ever. Because if the game was anything like the one last week, Jefferson was going to miss a minimum of 3 PATs and a field goal.
I pulled out my clipboard and went over the plan for our first few plays. “Now let’s get out there and bury Calver Academy before halftime!”
Smith nodded. “We got this, Coach Caldwell.”
I knew that they did. I just really hoped that this time Jefferson would be a part of that victory. And that for once we didn’t win in spite of him. “Go Eagles on three.” I put my hand out and they all threw theirs in too.
“One, two, three…Go Eagles!” we all yelled at the top of our lungs.
***
It was really distracting having someone I cared about in the stands. Not that I didn’t care about Tanner. He came to all my games, which was really nice of him. But I didn’t care about him the same way I cared about Penny.
Mason and Rob teased me about having a crush on her. So much so that I knew Penny had worried about it before. She’d even confronted me about it. But I’d told her they were idiots. And that the two of us were just friends. It was mostly true. I fantasized about her. But I knew it was just a patch on a wound. I didn’t love her. I didn’t love anyone. My friends refused to drop it though. They just kept on teasing me. And James’ teasing felt a lot more like threats. He’d made it clear several times that Penny was off-limits. It was probably why I kept thinking about her. I always wanted what I couldn’t have.
Although in this case, maybe I could have Penny. Because I could feel her staring at me. And it made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
I turned around to look at her. But instead of Penny staring at me, there was another woman’s gaze pointed at me. She looked vaguely familiar. But I couldn’t place her.
A smile crossed her face and she lifted her hand and waved to me.
Fuck. I swallowed hard. I remembered. Specifically, I remembered that hand around my cock a few months ago. We’d met at some bar. We’d fucked at a nearby hotel. And I’d left in the middle of the night like I always did. No exchanged numbers. No promise of ever speaking again. I always bounced while they were sleeping. To avoid an awkward next morning. To avoid ever seeing them again. Yet…here she was.
I immediately turned back to the field. Jesus, was she stalking me? I tried to discreetly look back over my shoulder. She was still staring and smiling. She waved again. And a little farther up in the stands, Penny was deep in conversation with Tanner.
Now I had some one-night stand here and Tanner talking to Penny. Could this night get any worse?
I watched as Jefferson’s extra point sailed way to the right, nearly crashing through a window of a nearby skyrise. It bounced off the brick wall and then knocked into one of the floodlights.
Damn it.
He came running off the field.
“Good try, Jefferson.” I put my fist out for him to bump and he awkwardly shook it. This poor kid. “Did it hit your laces again?”
He looked down at his cleats and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I tried to make contact with my instep like you said. Did it look like I hit my laces instead?”
I honestly wasn’t sure. Because I was too busy thinking about what Tanner was saying to Penny. And whether or not I had a stalker situation I needed to deal with.
“We’ll keep working on it next week.” I tried to give him an encouraging smile.
“Have you tried a cookie yet?” he asked.
“Oh. No. Let me try one.”
I took a bite. “This is great.” I finally got to tell him something positive and truly mean it. His cookies were delicious. Which was good, because if they were as bad as his kicking, I’d for sure get food poisoning.
The rest of the game was painfully slow. Tanner and Penny had not stopped talking for a second. And to make matters worse, Scarlett was sound asleep on her lap. Which meant Tanner was probably grilling Penny about her sex life or inviting her to his sex club or something else wildly inappropriate.
Empire High won by two touchdowns, but only by twelve points, thanks to missed PATs by Jefferson.
As the team came off the field celebrating, I gestured toward the cookies. “Great game, guys. To celebrate the win, Jefferson brought us all a treat. Go Eagles!”
“If only he could kick a field goal,” someone said under their breath.
I didn’t see who said it or I would have called them out. “It’s a team win. We celebrate as a team.”
“Jefferson sucks,” added someone else through a fake cough.
The whole team laughed.
“We’re celebrating our team win together right now,” I said more firmly.
Smith rolled his eyes at me. And not in a cute way like Penny did. But in a disrespectful way.
“Everyone eat a damn cookie or I’ll have you running sprints until Monday morning!” I wasn’t sure what made me snap. Maybe it was the frustration of not being able to help Jefferson fit in. That I just kept making it worse somehow. Or maybe it was the stress of who was in the stands. I didn’t know. But I did know what it was like to be on the team. They’d all be going to a house party tonight. Drinks. Drugs. They didn’t want cookies. I’d basically set Jefferson up for failure.
I grabbed a cookie and bit into it a little more violently than necessary. “Now,” I added and pointed at one of the trays.
The team slowly obliged. But I knew I hadn’t helped Jefferson at all. I’d just made myself look like a dick and showed favoritism toward everyone else’s least favorite player.
Jefferson pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he watched everyone grab a cookie.
“These really are great,” I said with my mouth full.
He smiled, but it didn’t look like he believed me.
I felt defeated. I was trying my best, but I was just making his life at Empire High worse. There had to be a way to improve his game. I just…didn’t know what it was. I patted Jefferson on the back. “We’ll keep practicing next week, okay? I know you’ve got this.”
He nodded and then went to pick up his trays of cookies, one of which had gone entirely untouched.
“Great game,” Penny said as the stands emptied. Scarlett was asleep in her arms, and Tanner looked very pleased with himself.
“Thanks. Here, let me.” I lifted Scarlett up. She really was getting heavy.
I felt someone staring at me. I looked over to see the one-night stand no longer smiling. Actually, she seemed rather horrified. She looked back and forth between me and Penny and then retreated into the crowd.
Weird. I looked down at Scarlett. Oh. She thought… I lifted my gaze to meet Penny’s. That woman must have thought that this was my family. Scarlett my daughter. Penny my wife.
And for the first time in ages, I wanted it. I wanted a family. A wife. A fucking life. I immediately pushed the thought away. I’d made a promise to Brooklyn. To love her and only her. And despite what she thought before she died, I wasn’t a liar. It was like I could feel the guilt twist around my chest. I don’t want a family. I don’t want a wife. I’m fine.
“Do you guys want to grab milkshakes or something to celebrate?” Penny asked. “I know there’s a diner down the street. I could really go for a chocolate milkshake right now. It feels very high school.”
Tanner laughed. “Sounds good to me. Although back in my day milkshakes didn’t…” he cleared his throat. “Sorry, something in my
throat. They weren’t popular, I mean.” And then he nudged me in the ribs. Which in Tanner speak meant he had something to tell me. Which meant he’d grilled Penny. And he had answers.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here.” I needed those answers. And I needed to be as far away from this stadium as possible tonight. Because I couldn’t stand here thinking about a possible future without feeling like a monster.
Chapter 6
Friday
“So Tanner has a few ideas about your potential dating prospects,” Penny said.
I choked on my milkshake.
She started talking again, oblivious to the fact that I was going to die a slow painful milkshake death. “And it will be kind of nice to have his help because James doesn’t exactly like us hanging out alone. He’s got it stuck in his head that you want to sleep with me.” She laughed like the thought was ridiculous.
It wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t.
“Don’t worry, I promised him that you don’t have feelings for me like that,” she said. “But he’s being really stubborn about this. You know how he gets a little overprotective sometimes.”
“Oh yeah,” Tanner said, slapping me on the back to help with my choking. “Sorry, I forgot to give you a heads-up. During the game I found out that James knows about Penny helping you find true love.”
Clearly. How the fuck did James find out? What the hell was going on?
“It’s cool,” Tanner said. “We have a solution to work around that. A loophole, if you will.”
I ignored him. “Penny, you promised you wouldn’t tell anyone,” I said.
“Right. Any random person. Or like one of our friends. But I tell James everything. You know that. I don’t know how to keep a secret from him. Besides, we have cameras all over our apartment. He wanted to know why you were there. And don’t look at me like that. Tanner was the one that brought it up at the game. So we’re even. I told my husband and you told your…your Tanner.”
My Tanner? I didn’t have time to digest how gay that sounded. Because James was going to kill me for sneaking around behind his back with his wife. I was having dinner with him and Mason and Rob tomorrow night. Which meant I probably wouldn’t live to see Sunday.
