by Amber Heart
“I guess you’re rubbing off on me. So where do you want to go where we won’t be recognized?”
“How about the mall? We can hang out in the food court. With the game tonight, no one will be there.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Once they’d looked around for people they knew and gotten settled in the food court, Claire flipped open Chase’s notebook. “Okay, so what’s the problem?” When he opened his mouth, she held up her hand. “I know that they’re all problems. Which one is giving you trouble?”
“Joke stealer. And it’s this one.” He pointed and she leaned over it. “Are you hungry?”
“Focus,” she ordered.
“But the pizza smells so good. And I’m a poor benched football player with little reason to go on.”
She looked up at him. “Drama queen. Go get pizza.”
He jumped up before she could take it back. “What do you want?”
“I didn’t bring my purse,” she said.
Chase shrugged. “You’re helping me pass math. I can buy you a slice of pizza if I want to.”
“I guess that’s a good point,” she said. “And I’m a woman of simple tastes. Pepperoni with lots of those red pepper flakes.”
He gave her a salute and got in line. By the time he got back, Claire had written out the solution to the problem and they went over it together while the steaming hot pizza slices cooled down.
“I don’t know how you make it seem so easy,” he said as she began devising a new problem that used similar techniques.
“It’s sort of how you can catch anything they throw at you,” Claire said. “Natural talent and a healthy bit of practice. Try this one.”
He pushed the new problem to the side and slid her plate in front of her. “After we eat.”
She would have argued, but the pizza looked really good. With her roommate situation, it had been a while since she’d had hot food. She took a bite and chewed contentedly.
“What are you looking at?” she asked a few moments later when Chase kept glancing across the food court. To her surprise, he blushed.
“Nothing.”
“Hot girl?” The thought sent a brief stab of jealousy through her, and she worked hard not to let it show on her face.
“No, it’s...” he sighed. “I do this thing where I make up stories about people.”
Claire raised an eyebrow. “What kind of stories?”
Chase gave an embarrassed half laugh. “Okay. Don’t stare, but there’s a woman over there in jeans and one of those puffy vests.”
Claire leaned down, pretending to fix the laces of her sneaker. “I see her.”
“Well, she’s waiting for her lover.”
“In the food court?”
“It’s not a high budget affair,” Chase said defensively. “But it’s all the thrill she gets these days.”
Unexpectedly drawn in, Claire couldn’t help but ask, “Why?”
“See, she works for an accounting firm, but it’s a total boys club and she’s a glorified secretary. This affair keeps her sane while she plots her ultimate takeover.”
“I like it. Do you think she’ll manage it?”
“Oh yeah. She’s a fighter. In the end, she’ll own the whole place.”
“You’re kind of a feminist,” Claire said in surprise.
“I’m a total feminist,” Chase corrected. “Sydney made sure of it.”
“What about that couple over there?” she discreetly indicated a pair of teenagers waiting in line for chicken sandwiches.
“First date,” Chase said after a moment. “He’s been in love with her since freshman year, but she was seeing someone else. Then he had to wait till the right moment to step in after they broke up because he didn’t want to look like an asshole.”
“What does she think of him?”
“To be honest, she never noticed him. She only accepted the date to get her mind off of her ex. But now that she’s out, she’s actually having a great time and she’s hoping that he goes for the kiss at the end of the night.”
“Are all of your stories romances?”
“Of course not. For example, the guy standing near the cell phone kiosk is a former F.B.I agent.”
Claire nearly choked on her soda as she laughed. “What?”
“The guy who works there is a Russian spy, but the F.B.I man could never pin anything on him. He’s retired now, but he can’t let it go. They both know they’re playing cat and mouse but they aren’t sure who’s who.”
He said the last line in his best movie announcer voice and Claire clapped quietly. “Very nice.”
“Thanks.” He finished his last bite of pizza crust and swept their plates off of the table. “And thanks for not pointing out how incredibly ridiculous this hobby is.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” she said when he sat back down. “It’s pretty creative. I’m horrible at stuff like that.”
“Sure, but you can do this,” Chase said, tapping the math worksheet in front of them.
“Big deal. Math is easy.”
He snorted. “I’ve got tests that prove you wrong.”
She glanced at her watch. “I hate to cut the evening short, but we’d probably better get back. The game is almost over and my roommates are having a huge party. I need to be back before it's over.”
“So nobody sees me?”
She shrugged, looking down. He reached across the table and tilted her chin up.
“I don’t mind not saying anything about you being my tutor,” he said. “But I don’t mind saying something either. Just let me know what you want me to do, okay?”
“Thank you, Chase.”
“And hey, it’s kind of cool being someone’s dirty little secret,” he said as he stood up.
“There’s nothing dirty about this,” she protested.
“Don’t take away all the intrigue,” he ordered, slinging his arm around her shoulders as they walked out of the food court. “That’s the best part.”
“Fine, fine,” she said, pretending to be more annoyed than she was. “And if you saw us walking like this, what would the story be?”
“I’d say that lies, bad timing, and general confusion probably kept the two of us from liking each other as much as we should,” he said after a moment.
She glanced up at him. “I’d say that makes a lot of sense,” she said shyly.
“And I’d say that it looks like it's getting better,” he went on hopefully.
“I’d say that she was finally ready to accept his apology,” Claire replied. “And that she doesn’t think that the guy is a jerk...and she’ll be really let down if he turns out to be one.”
His heart jerked at the shy look she gave him and he vowed to himself that he’d do everything he could not to let that happen. Letting Claire down wasn’t an option
Chapter 9
Chase knocked enthusiastically on Claire’s front door a week later and she opened it with a raised eyebrow.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she reminded him.
“Yeah well, I’ve got big news.” He didn’t even wait for her to ask what it was before he went on. “Professor Porter didn’t exactly come out and say it, but I think she’s impressed,” he said, his words nearly running together in his eagerness. “I took a makeup test on some of the earlier course material and she graded it and she didn’t look at me like she felt sorry for me!”
Claire laughed. Then she caught her breath as he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off of her feet, twirling her around in jubilation. He set her back on her feet and cupped her face in his hands.
“Thank you, Claire.”
“I...you’re welcome.”
The heat of his skin against hers made her heart thump in her ears and she pulled away. Not because she wanted to. At least, not exactly. But because she wasn’t sure that what she wanted was the right thing.
“If you want to keep up the momentum and get more friendly looks from your math teacher, we should
probably get started on today’s assignments.”
To his credit, he let her go as soon as she stepped back. But she didn’t miss the look in his eyes. A look that told her that he wasn’t at all unsure about what he wanted.
“Let’s just stay here today,” he said.
Claire bit her lower lip, thinking hard. “Okay,” she said finally. “My roommates shouldn’t be home for a while. And the kitchen is clean.”
“My hard work influenced you?” Chase asked with a grin.
“I will neither confirm nor deny being under your influence. And we need to get to work.”
“So tell me something,” he said once they’d put in the solid thirty minutes that Claire insisted on before she’d let him have a break. “How’d you end up in Louisiana?”
Claire cocked her head at him. “I go to college here. I’m starting to think that trig is frying your brain.”
“Very funny. I know that you’re not from here.”
“How?”
“No accent and an appreciation for snow.”
She grinned. They’d talked about how much they missed cold weather a few days ago and she was happy that he’d remembered. “Okay, fair enough. I’m actually from Moosehead Lake, Maine. And I ended up here because out of all the schools I got accepted to, it was the one that was least like home.”
“You don’t like Maine?”
“No, I love Maine. I thought it would be fun to be somewhere different for a while. What about you? Did you come here just for the football?”
Chase nodded. “Pretty much. This team has a better chance of putting me in the spotlight than the one I left. And I know how shallow that probably makes me sound--”
“No,” Claire said. “You need a place to shine. We’ve got scouts all over us and our ratio of players who’ve gone on to the NFL is one of the best in college football.”
Chase blinked. “Yeah, it is.”
She smiled. “Football is kind of my game, remember? I think you definitely made the right choice. And you kicked ass last night.”
“You watched?” He’d taken his share of shit for being benched, but everyone seemed to have forgiven him. And they’d played well last night. It had been one of those magic games where he hadn’t even felt tired until they were on the bus back home.
A good game was almost like good sex, both the high and the exhaustion. And, apparently, the rarity. Because it had been way too long. It hadn’t bothered him until he’d started spending so much time with Claire.
“Yeah. It was the first game I watched this season. You’re a cut above any wide receiver we’ve had before.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. Coach Davis had said the same thing, and it felt just as good to hear it from Claire. “Thanks.”
“How long have you been playing?”
“My whole life. I started when I was about 5 at the Y. The coaches there liked me, and I ended up getting a lot of extra training. Our high school coach was pretty good too, but it didn’t do a whole lot to prepare me to play at this level, so I did a lot of extra training by myself. It helped a lot, but there was probably some luck involved too.”
“I doubt that. Hard work always pays off. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re built perfectly.” Claire’s face went beet red. “For the position, I mean.”
Chase grinned, but he didn’t pursue it. With her face that red and her eyes locked firmly on the paper in front of her, he knew that she’d said more than she meant to. “When the position opened up here, I transferred as fast as I could.”
“What did your parents think? It’s kind of far from Montana.”
“They were fine with it. I mean, they weren’t thrilled, but they know this is my best chance. And they know I’m not going to be a lawyer, so they figured I might as well be rich and famous.” He grinned to show that he was mostly kidding about the last part. “The only who really cared was--” Shit. It was too late to stop himself now. Claire was looking at him curiously. “Um, my girlfriend.”
Her face blanched white. “You have a girlfriend?”
“No. I did then but I don’t now. She’s my ex.” Chase took a second and untangled his sentences. “She dumped me when I told her that I’d gotten accepted here. She said she’d never want to live anywhere but Montana.”
“But she knew that you were going to try to go professional,” Claire said, her heartbeat slowing down to a more normal level as she processed the information. Chase didn’t have a girlfriend. Whatever was building between them wasn’t going to hurt anyone else. “You would have had to move anyway. At least for part of the year.”
“Yeah...the thing is, she didn't think that I was actually going anywhere with it,” he said. “She said there was no point in me running all the way down here just to end up roofing houses for a living when I came back.” At Claire’s confused look, he said, “I worked for my uncle’s construction company in the summers. She said she knew that she was going to be the one supporting us financially and she was fine with that, but that I needed to settle down and not keep running after pipe dreams.”
“Obviously you disagreed,” Claire said. “And, just for the record, I disagree too.”
He grinned at her. “Thanks. It kind of screwed me up for a while...I even called Coach Davis and told him that I might not be able to play for him after all. He told me to do some serious thinking. Then Syd found out.”
“What did she do?”
“Smacked me across the back of the head so hard that I swear I saw stars and little cartoon birdies,” Chase answered. “Then she took me out to dinner and asked me what I’d been trying to do my whole life, play NFL football or marry Maria.”
“The more I hear about your sister the more I like her,” Claire informed him.
“I’ll be sure to let her know that the next time we talk.” Chase leaned back. “In the end, it didn’t matter what I wanted to do, because Maria broke up with me the next day.”
“I think it matters a lot,” Claire protested. “What did you decide?”
Chase shrugged. “I decided to go for the thing I’d been going for my whole life. Maria was...she was important to me. We’d been going out since the eighth grade dance. She was my first...” he stopped and cleared his throat, pushing his hand through his unruly brown hair. “Um, everything. Anyway. I loved her, but once we got out of high school things sort of started falling apart.”
Claire looked down at the table wondering...if this girl had been his first and he’d dated her until he showed up here...did that mean that he’d only been with one girl? The thought was surprisingly tantalizing. With looks like that, she’d have expected him to have racked up a lot more experience. She nibbled her lower lip.
“What are you thinking about?”
His voice broke into her reverie and she jerked her head up. “Nothing!”
“Come on, Claire. I know you. You’re never thinking nothing.”
She swallowed hard as he leaned toward her across the table. “I...well...” What did she have to lose? Before all of this with Logan, timidity had never been her style. “I guess I wondered...if she was your first...is she your only?”
Chase looked down for a second and she was afraid that she’d ticked him off. Then his eyes met hers once more. “Yeah,” he said. “She was. But lately I’m thinking how good it would be to change that.”
“Hey there!”
McKenna’s voice was like a bucket of ice water. Chase leaned back in his chair and Claire let out a long, slow breath. This wasn’t going to be good.
“What are you doing here?” McKenna asked brightly, her eyes wide with curiosity.
“Claire’s the one responsible for my presence at the game last night,” Chase said. “She’s helping me in trig.”
“Oh my God, you were amazing last night!” McKenna said, sitting down and squeezing Chase’s arm playfully. “But I’m not surprised, you always are. I was so worried when you had to miss that other game because of your tutoring issues.”
&
nbsp; She switched her gaze to Claire meaningfully and then looked back at Chase with a big smile. “It’s good that you got her all straightened out.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Claire was never the problem,” he said simply. “I just had to get my head out of my ass. But thanks for the compliment.” He turned back to Claire. “What should we work on next?”
“Um, you were having issues with a few of the things here,” she said, pushing a worksheet over. “We should probably go over them so we can move forward.”
