Bad Ballers: A Contemporary Sports Romance Box Set

by Bishop, S. J.

  I opened the moon roof and let the cool night air fill the cabin. Erin leaned back and closed her eyes, her thick, dark lashes brushing against the crescents of her cheek.

  “It was cliquey, but not in the way you see in movies. There wasn’t a lot of bullying or anything, just…everyone had their own interests, and they kept to their own groups of friends.”

  “Except us?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t like that,” I said. “It wasn’t all ‘Jack and Diane.’ There was no school-wide outrage because I started dating a loser.”

  “Oh. So I was a loser?”

  “Total loser,” I confirmed.

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “I think you’re going to have to take my word on all of this until you get your memory back,” I teased.

  “If I get it back,” muttered Erin, sounding slightly defeated. I couldn’t help but reach over and take her hand in mine.

  I lived in the South End, in an apartment overlooking a public park. I had the valet park my car and took the elevator up to the tenth floor. Erin did her best not to look impressed, but I caught her staring at her still-bruised reflection in the gilt-edged elevator mirror and saw her eyes roam over the spotless leather and dark wood once we entered my apartment.

  “Have a seat,” I said. “And if you’d like some wine, I have some bottles on the rack over there…” I’m not a big wine drinker, but I have enough women over to keep some on hand. Three glasses of wine can really do a lot to lighten a mood. I watched Erin move toward the wine rack and smiled as I went back to my room.

  Erin and I were similar in that neither of us had particularly enjoyed our high school years. I couldn’t wait to leave Texas, and there was a lot from my past that I’d pushed aside, but there are other things that I’d kept with me.

  While Erin perused the wine, I went into my bedroom, grabbed the large cardboard box from the top of my closet, and hauled it into the living room. Erin had opened a bottle of red wine and was drinking it thoughtfully, staring at the collection of clocks that I kept on the living room bookshelf.

  “What’s the fascination with time?” she asked, whirling around as I thumped the box onto the coffee table.

  I shrugged. “I suppose I’ve given myself a lot of deadlines,” I said. I didn’t know. I like clocks. I’d read The Phantom Tollbooth as a kid and had always had a thing for them. I also tend to think of my day in terms of seconds. I knew how long it took to get from one end of the field to the next. I knew how long most wide receivers lasted in the NFL. My clock was ticking.

  “So, what do you have there?” asked Erin.

  I pulled out trophies, high school letters, and pins – mementos celebrating achievements in my life. I had a few pictures of ex-girlfriends. Erin was on the bottom, so she was able to thumb through photos of Ashley and Reese – college girls – before I found the stack with her in it.

  “You keep pictures of all of your ex-girlfriends?”

  “Why not? They’re all babes,” I said, shrugging. I found the stack that had us in high school, and I handed it to her. There were only six pictures. The one on top was my favorite.

  Erin stared at it, her eyes narrowed to focus on the details of us. I’d wedged my phone camera between the rocks and set a timer. In the photo, my arms were outstretched, the sun bearing down on the full expanse of my bare chest. Erin had climbed up on my back and wrapped her legs around my waist. She was grinning at the camera for all she was worth: the joy on both of our faces was brilliant.

  I was so busy looking at the picture (I hadn’t seen it in so long) that I didn’t notice the change in Erin. One moment she was examining the photo; the next she was trembling violently.

  “Are you okay…” I started to ask, but she was backing away from me.

  “I…I have to go,” she said and, grabbing her phone from the hall table, she bolted.

  11

  Erin

  I was halfway to the Common by the time I came back to my senses. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell had just happened? I nearly turned around and rushed back to apologize, but – no. I couldn’t face him.

  That photo… I hadn’t reacted to it the way I’d reacted to most remembrances of the past. So far, photos had triggered memories. I should have remembered the day, remembered the sun, remembered how Ted smelled, or remembered why we were on that river bank and what we’d been doing that day.

  All of that was still a mystery. Instead, I hadn’t gotten memories as images; I’d gotten memories as emotions. A fuck-load of them. They’d slammed into me hard: yearning, love, anxiety, and heartbreak. And that bombardment of emotions had sent adrenaline rushing in like lactic acid after a hard workout. I’d freaked out. I was still freaking out.

  So I called Casey and told her about it.

  “Shit,” said Casey. “Wow. What do you… why do you think that happened?”

  “Who knows,” I said. The Park Street T-stop was dead ahead. I could take the red line back to my apartment. “I guess the emotions of the day were stronger than the memory.”

  “Did you take the photo with you?” asked Casey. “I’d love to see it.”

  “I left it there,” I said, heading down into the T. “But it was legit. It was me as a teenager and Ted. And I was on his back grinning like an idiot. Listen, it’s late. I’m headed home. I’ll call you tomorrow, hopefully once all this adrenaline burns off.” I felt like I could run a mile.

  “Okay,” said Casey. “I hope you feel better.”

  “Thanks,” I said, hanging up the phone.

  I had my T pass loaded on my phone and waved the phone over the scanner. The doors opened. I was halfway to Central Station when I realized something pretty damn important: I’d left my purse at Ted’s house.

  “Oh fuck!” I cried out, startling one of the passengers next to me. I buried my face in my hands and groaned. This was terrible. What the fuck was wrong with me?!

  Lifting my head, I opened my phone to shoot Ted a text, but there was one from him already waiting.

  U left ur purse and ur keys. Txt me ur addrss + Ill bring thm.

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I just texted him the address. This is what you get when you live alone with no roommates. There’s no one to open the door for you when you freak the fuck out on your ex because you’re suffering from amnesia and dash off into the night. Fuck.

  I hopped out at Central Station and walked home, arriving just as Ted pulled up to the front of my building. Please don’t park, please just stop… No such luck. He parked.

  Getting out of the car, Ted looked irritated and perplexed. He had my purse in one hand and the other hand shoved into his pocket.

  “Hey,” he said, striding up. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I just took the bag.

  “You want to tell me what happened back there?”

  I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Not really.”

  Ted glowered. “Yeah, okay. I suppose I don’t deserve an explanation…” But he clearly wasn’t going anywhere until he got one.

  “I don’t know. It’s weird. The last few days, pictures and things have helped me retrieve memories… This one seemed to…ah…retrieve emotions.”

  Ted blinked. “Emotions?” He sounded skeptical.

  I nodded. “A lot of them. Too many. I kind of overloaded – like a US outlet plugged into a UK wall socket. I wasn’t prepared for the charge.”

  Ted shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  I sighed. “I don’t understand either.”

  We stood there on the sidewalk. Ted didn’t seem angry anymore, but he seemed wary and looked as lost as I felt. I took a deep breath. I’d been more than willing to entertain sleeping with Ted Schneider when I’d thought we were strangers. But the stakes seemed somewhat higher now that I knew we had a past. But if I thought about it, I still wanted the same thing. “Do you want to come up?”

  Ted cocked his head
to the side. “Do you want me to come up?”

  Okay. That triggered something. I saw him as a teen, his arms crossed over his chest and an eyebrow arched in frustration. Do you even want to be with me!? Do you want me to want to be with you?!

  “Yes,” he said after a moment, misreading my silence. “I’d like to come up.”

  I nodded, troubling over the strange memory, fished my freshly returned keys out of my freshly returned purse, and let Ted into my apartment.

  As he followed me up the stairs, I felt overwhelmed and close to crying. Teddie. The name floated across my mind.

  “Did I use to call you Teddie?” I asked as I wrenched my door open.

  Ted nodded. “Everybody did. I switched to Ted when I got to college.”

  I shook my head and opened the door to my apartment. Ted followed me through and stood awkwardly in my kitchen for a moment.

  “So what kind of emotions did you get,” he asked, his eyes roaming around my apartment, “when you saw the picture?” Was it my imagination or had his voice become deeper, more suggestive?

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “There were a lot of them. Tell me about that day. When was it? Was it significant?”

  Ted headed into my living room and sat down on my couch, propping his feet up on my worn coffee table. He smiled at the leather chair in the corner. “I remember that chair,” he said. He looked at me, and his smile grew. “We were playing hooky. We’d spent a good chunk of the summer together and had just gone back to school. So we skipped and pretended like it was still summer. I got the inner tubes from my shed and picked you up about a block away from school.”

  “Whose idea was it?” I asked. I headed over to sit on the chair, but Ted patted the sofa next to him. I sat down. I knew where this was heading; I’d known where this was heading when he’d parked the car instead of just dropping off my purse. My stomach clenched in anticipation.

  “Mine. But you didn’t take much convincing.”

  “Did we used to fight a lot?”

  12

  Ted

  I blinked. Shit. “Where did that come from?”

  Erin shook her head, still looking troubled. I had the feeling she might have remembered something. What did she remember? Which time?

  “All teenagers fight,” I said, trying to do damage control. I hadn’t realized it until she’d bolted out of my house, but I wanted Erin, badly. I wanted to kiss every single bruise on her goddamn face and hold her until I was sure we were okay again. “There are too many feelings at stake,” I continued. “We had the occasional disagreement, but nothing significant.”

  It was best to change the topic, so I said, “You were something else in high school.”

  “Was I?” That got her. She walked over and sat down beside me on the couch, and I reached over, taking her hand in mine. I flipped it over, running my thumb across the smooth skin of her palm and finding that scar on her palm from when she had been cleaning dishes one night and had broken one. I smiled. I remembered that scar.

  Erin seemed to respond to my touch. She leaned forward, and I got a good whiff of her shampoo. I closed my eyes. God, she smelled nice.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You were something else.” I opened my eyes and thought back to that girl who’d blown my mind. “You know how some girls don’t want to raise their hand in class because they’re afraid the boys won’t like them for looking smart?”

  Erin stared at me, and I rolled my eyes. I know girls don’t think we notice these things, but we do. And it’s not hot. “You weren’t like that,” I said. “Granted, I wasn’t in that many classes with you. You took honors courses. But you also made a real presence of yourself. Wherever you went. You weren’t afraid to voice your opinion or tell someone off. You had this really attractive confidence.”

  I could still see her, striding down the halls of school in her ankle boots, her hair swinging about her shoulders, completely unaware that people were watching her. That I’d been watching her.

  “The girls didn’t like you that much,” I continued. “At least, not the ones I hung out with. I think they were jealous. You were pretty. You used to wear these cut-off jean shorts that showed off so much of your legs…even at work. You strolled around the restaurant with your legs on display.”

  I looked down. She was wearing jeans, but I had a feeling that her legs were just as fine as I remembered them.

  “I like the girl you’re describing,” said Erin, softly. “Where did I work?”

  “You were a hostess at the American Kitchen downtown.”

  “And how did we get together?”

  I tried to think about where to start that story. We’d known each other enough to say hi because we’d worked on an economics project together during our sophomore year. But we’d never done more than nod to one another in the hallway until that one night toward the end of Junior year. “I’d just broken up with Michelle Kelly. Does that name sound familiar?” Erin shook her head. “No? Anyway, I’d broken up with Michelle, and Michelle didn’t like you. I think you two had a class together. One night, after the game, a bunch of the guys went out to American Kitchen for dinner. Michelle was waiting in line right behind us, so I started flirting with you to make her jealous.”

  Shit, Ted, what the fuck’s wrong with you? It’s not that the story was a lie. In fact, it was the same story I’d told Erin back when we were dating and she’d asked me why I’d chosen to get her number that night. I mean, it was true – part of me had been happy to stick-it to Michelle, who was a real brat about our break-up. But the other part of me just wanted to talk to Erin more. When she’d smiled at me over the hostess counter, I’d been ready to do anything to make her smile again.

  “So, you were a real nice guy then,” said Erin, rolling her eyes.

  “I mean, it worked out,” I said, shrugging. “You were funny. I liked you. So I asked you for your number, and you gave it to me.”

  Holding her hand wasn’t enough. I wanted more contact. I reached out, brushing my hand along her thigh and resting it near her knee in a clear suggestion. “And you were sure of yourself. It was damn sexy.”

  “Most people are sure of themselves,” Erin said, her eyes resting on my hand.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Most people hate themselves.” Take my word on that one. “You never hated yourself. You hated your circumstances. You hated growing up without your dad, and you hated how hard your mother had to work for you guys to make do. That’s why it was so upsetting to see you in that hospital room. It’s not where I would have envisioned you.”

  I ran my hand up and down her thigh, relishing how her muscles flickered beneath my touch. I looked up, catching her hazel eyes and reveling in the obvious desire written all over her face. Goddamn. I wanted this woman. I wanted her badly. “You know, we never slept together.”

  13

  Erin

  “We didn’t?” My voice was a husky whisper. Why on earth would I have not slept with Ted Schneider? “Why not?”

  Ted sighed. “I have my theories.”

  I found myself leaning into him, resting my hand tentatively on the hard muscle of his shoulder. “What are your theories?”

  “That you didn’t trust me. That you thought I wanted to sleep with you and after that, I’d be gone.”

  “Was I right?” My hand traveled up his nape and tangled idly in the blond hair that curled at the nape of his neck.

  “We never found out,” he said, leaning forward until I was pressed back against the arm of the couch. “Do you want to test the theory?”

  I licked my lips, and his eyes tracked my tongue. “I’d be willing to test the theory…”

  Ted’s hand moved to cup the still bruised side of my face, his fingers tangling in my hair. “I’ll be gentle,” he murmured. And before I could respond, his lips came down.

  Gentle was an understatement. The kiss was as delicate as butterfly wings, his sculpted lips dancing across mine, stoking my inner fire more effectively than his
hands down my pants. My lashes fluttered down, and his hand swept from my brow to my hip, his lips feathering up my cheekbone to my ear.

  Then the kiss turned hot.

  I moaned as his teeth closed on my sensitive lobe and his tongue swept into my ear canal, where the nerves cried out. I fell forward into his arms.

  Ted’s lips found mine then. The kiss still gentle but deep and long. I sighed against his mouth, and he tightened his grip around me.

  Goddamn, Ted Schneider could kiss a girl. He was igniting nerves I didn’t even know I had. His hand moved across my torso, gentle but insistent, learning each curve of me.

  “Shall we move this somewhere more comfortable?” he asked, his voice gravelly with desire.

  Fuck, yes. I stood and he stood too, but then he whirled me into his arms, tilting his head to bestow a scorching, full-mouthed kiss on me, his tongue surging in and out of my mouth in a carnal promise. I felt my knees buckle until it was only the strength of his arms that held me up.

  God, it was like being cherished. I don’t know when I was last held like I might break. But Ted somehow managed it. He towed the line between desperate and respectful, backing me inch by inch until my back thudded against my door, his hand protecting my head.

  I reached out blindly and managed to find the handle at the same moment that Ted’s hands found the bottom of my shirt and tugged it over my head. His hands were hot against my bare skin, and his fingers lingered on my bra, as if waiting for permission to unclasp it.

  I responded by grabbing his belt buckle and moaning at the thick promise pressing against his pants.

  “It’s all yours, baby,” he said, snapping my bra open with a practiced flick of his fingers and nodding his appreciation as my breasts sprang free.