by Kira Ward
I smile. “My favorite was the class I took on Homer. You know, the Iliad and the Odyssey.”
“So you’re into mythology.”
“Sort of.”
“My professor spent a whole week on the symbolism of the Cyclops.”
That makes me laugh. “I tried to discuss that with one of my advanced classes last year, but it went right over their heads. All they could think about was the more sexual references that only teenagers can see in a one-eyed creature.”
We start to talk about the symbolism of the Green Knight and before I know it, the evening has just flown by. He glances at his watch and seems a little reluctant to let me know it’s eleven-thirty.
“I should probably get you home.”
I nod, just as reluctant as he. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone to discuss literature with, other than my students. My dad doesn’t read anything heavier than Sports Illustrated, and my mom’s idea of great literature is Stephen King. Amelia loves Shakespeare and Dickens, but she looks at it more through the eye of an actress than a reader. This—I can’t believe I’m even thinking this—was fun!
He comes around and helps me out of my chair. We walk out of the restaurant side by side, not touching, the silence on the elevator bringing back some of the tension that left my shoulders when he mentioned his college major. When we step off, he reaches for my hand. For a brief second, I think he does it because he genuinely wants to hold my hand. But then we step through the door to the waiting car and the paparazzi appear. And then I remember why we’re here.
“How long have the two of you been dating, Magnus?” someone calls to him.
“Is this just a publicity stunt?” someone else wants to know.
“Aren’t you up past your bedtime, Cricket?” someone else says, causing some of the photogs to laugh.
I manage to ignore them despite the fact they’re pointing their cameras just inches from my face and snapping picture after picture, the flash nearly blinding me. Magnus guides me into the car and slides in immediately behind me, his thigh pressing hard against mine as he urges me to move over faster.
The second the car pulls from the curb, he lets loose with a soft string of curses.
“Is it always like that?”
“More often than you’d think.”
“That’s insane! Were they reaching for your jacket? It looked like one of them grabbed your jacket.”
“They do whatever they can to get my attention.” He glances at me even as he twists around to see if any of them are following us. “You handled it well, though.”
“I just wanted to get away from them.”
“You did exactly what you should have done.” He settles back again. I suppose he’s confident that they aren’t following us. “I’ve dated models who don’t know how to handle the paparazzi as smoothly as you just did.”
I blush, feeling like he’s just given me the best compliment he could have offered.
Silence falls between us, but it’s not the same awkward silence that settled over us before. We’re both clearly lost in our own thoughts, but those thoughts aren’t necessarily exclusive of one another.
“You’re going back to New York tonight?” I ask after a while.
“In the morning.”
I incline my head slightly. “It’s a long flight?”
“Not terrible.” He’s studying my face as though he’s trying to figure out why I asked. “We have practice late tomorrow morning. I need to be there for that.”
“Of course.”
“We have a Monday night game this week, in Minnesota.”
“Does it ever throw you off, playing Monday instead of Sunday?”
He shook his head. “What throws me off is playing the Sunday after a Monday night game. It may not seem like a big deal to have one less day of practice, but sometimes it can be.”
“I can imagine.”
He glances at me, like he expects to see a teasing light in my eyes. But I’m serious. I can understand how the littlest interruption in a routine can cause problems.
Silence falls again as the car takes us back to my suburban neighborhood. I try to imagine what his neighborhood back in New Jersey must look like. He probably has a huge house with servants that keep everything running well while he’s away. I’ve seen pictures of some NFL players’ homes. Some of them live better than Bill Gates.
“Would you mind if I call you this weekend?”
I roll my head toward him, surprised to find he hasn’t really moved. He’s still watching me like he was before, his eyes fixed on my face.
“I suppose.”
“Frank wanted me to ask you out for Friday night, but he forgot that I have a team meeting that night.”
“I suppose we could work something out for next week.”
He shakes his head. “My schedule is pretty crazy next week. But maybe the week after that.”
“Okay.”
The car stops at the curb in front of my house. Magnus climbs out and reaches in for me, tugging me gently out of the back of the car. He holds my hand all the way to the door even though there are no reporters here.
“Thank you for the donation,” I say, turning to face him on my front stoop.
“I am sorry for what happened to you, Cricket,” he says softly. “It was an accident.”
“I know.”
He tilts his head slightly. “Where did you get a name like Cricket, anyway?”
I smile. It’s a question I get often. “It was my grandmother’s name. It’s kind of an old southern thing.”
He nods. “I kind of figured but I wanted to ask.” He lifts his hand like he’s going to touch me, but then lets it fall back to his side. “I’ll call you.”
“Okay.”
He studies my face for a long moment more, then slowly turns away. He’s halfway to the car when he looks back again, his hand lifted in a casual wave. I raise my hand, too, unconsciously biting my bottom lip as I admire the way he moves in that suit when he climbs into the back of the car. Even after he’s gone, I keep standing there, staring where he stood, feeling as though I don’t have the strength to turn and go inside. Eventually I do, but I find myself thinking about that moment again and again as I lay alone in my bed, trying to pretend that it didn’t do something to my equilibrium to be close to him, that it didn’t make my knees shake and my thighs quiver whenever he touched my hand, the small of my back.
I can’t see him again. Not because of some stupid football rivalry or even because of his conceited attitude. I can’t see him again because I know, I know deep in my soul, that he’s dangerous for me. That man could have power over me if I just give a little, just the teeniest millimeter. He could—if I let him—shatter my comfortable, simple life.
That man could break my heart if I give him the chance.
Chapter Nine
Magnus
I find myself staring out the window of the private jet as we rush away from Dallas, my thoughts still on the night before. I surprised her, I know I did. She thought I was some dumb jock, but I showed her that I had a little more intelligence than she imagined. And she seemed to enjoy our conversation, smiling and laughing at all the right places, not just injecting a laugh here and there because she thought that was what I wanted. Cricket is so different from the women I usually date. I find myself thinking about her at odd times, remembering something she said in the hospital, on the phone, or even just last night when someone else is talking to me about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the conversations Cricket and I have shared. It is so…distracting.
The last thing I need right now are distractions. Coach called me into his office before I left yesterday, reminding me that my contract is about to be under negotiation and that I’d better give a good performance this season. He doesn’t like me. Never really did. But his opinion doesn’t matter as much as the owners. If I can take the Giants to the playoffs, they’d look like fools if they fire me.
I sit
up a little and drag my fingers through my hair. The flight attendant, an attractive woman with a body like an adolescent boy and the face of an angel. She smiles at me, this smile that says she open to just about anything. All I want is a bottle of water.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket and scroll through my contacts until Cricket’s number is displayed. I stare at it for a minute, like some angel might appear on my shoulder and tell me that what I’m about to do is ill-advised. But it doesn’t and I can’t help myself.
I write the text three times, deleting words here, adding some there. Then I press send. I don’t expect to get an answer right away because I know she’s in school this early in the day. But not five minutes pass before my phone vibrates against my hand.
I asked how she slept last night. It’s a lame question, but it was the first thing that came to mind. She answers, Restlessly. Must have been that amazing steak.
I smile. Don’t tell me you’re one who believes in only eating red meat once or twice a week, I say.
No, she responds. I’m a Texan through and through. I believe in eating steak every day. Maybe twice a day. But that steak was so amazing, my body was craving more at two o’clock in the morning.
Are you sure it was the steak? I ask. Maybe it was craving something else.
Maybe. We were having a pretty intense conversation.
I can’t help the thrill of pleasure that rushes though me at that comment. It wasn’t one sided. She did enjoy the night as much as I did. That makes me happier than it probably should.
We can do it again soon, I tell her.
I’ll be waiting, is her answer.
The team has sent a car for me. I step out of the plane and am delivered directly to the stadium where practice is in full swing. It takes a little bit before I can get my head where it needs to be. We lost on Sunday. Monday night’s game is an important one despite the opponent. We need to have a 5-2 record when we go into our bi-week. Right now, we’re 2-1. Three more games. I need to have my head in the game, in the strategy.
I work hard, wearing myself out by the end of the afternoon. Then it’s three hours of meetings, game tapes and reviewing plays. By the time they set us free, it’s late evening, and I’m exhausted. I go home to my condo and jump in the shower, falling onto my bed without bothering to dress. I have to be up at dawn for another practice. I know I should go to sleep. But I reach for my phone anyway.
Are you still awake? I ask her.
She answers almost immediately. I’m here.
Can I call you?
Sure.
My heart is in my throat as I stare at the phone, wondering what that sure means. Does it mean that she’s saying okay just because she’s being polite? Or does it mean she really wants to hear my voice. I can’t decide. But I desperately want to hear her voice.
I push the little telephone icon and press the phone to my ear, waiting as her phone rings nearly fifteen hundred miles away. And then she answers, and the pleasure I hear in her voice—do I really hear it, or is it imagined?—soothes the uncertainty away.
“Hey, Cricket. How was your day?”
Chapter Ten
Cricket
I’m sitting at my desk Wednesday afternoon, staring at pictures of Magnus on my computer when Amelia suddenly bursts through the door. I wasn’t being creepy. Not really, anyway. I was just trying to learn more about him, but what I was learning…the press sure tried hard to make him look like a womanizing jerk!
“I can’t believe it!” Amelia announces.
“What?”
She’s so breathless, she can hardly get the words out. I watch, somewhat impatiently, as she takes a few deep breaths.
“An anonymous donor made a huge donation to the arts departments of the entire district!”
I smile softly. I wondered how long it would take for the news to trickle down to her.
“And,” she says, still breathless, “they made a directed donation to my program. Two hundred thousand dollars to be paid out over five years. That’s forty thousand dollars a year. That’s almost as much as my salary every year! Do you know what I could do with that kind of money?”
Wow! Even I’m impressed by that. “Who told you?”
“The principal. She called me into her office and I thought I was getting fired, but she tells me this. She says all the other programs are getting roughly fifteen thousand a year for five years. I could have done a lot with that. But forty thousand? I almost feel guilty.”
“You shouldn’t. The drama department hasn’t had a decent budget since before I was a student here. You deserve it.”
“I wish I knew who the donor was. I’d like to thank them.”
I want to say something but I can’t. I just nod in agreement, my eyes shifting back to the picture of Magnus I’d been studying when she burst in. He was at some sort of party over the summer, a blond woman with enormous breasts dangling from his arm. He looks almost bored, a stiff smile on his lips. She looks high. I found myself wondering about the conversations he might have had with a woman like her. Would they have talked about literature? Would she even be able to define literature? Why do guys insist on going out with women like that, women who clearly share no interest in anything other than their own beauty with the men they date?
Some of the conversations Magnus and I have had over the last two days are intense, entertaining, and intelligent. He has insights that I’ve never dreamt of. And the smooth, baritone of his voice just…
“Cricket? Are you listening to me?”
I look up. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Will you help me figure out what to do with this budget? We need costumes and scripts and this money gives us so many options as far as the sets and props go. We can have the sets built or buy them already done. And we can have so many more props, better props. And…” She keeps going, talking fast and repeating herself.
I finally turn off my laptop and stand, grabbing her shoulders. “Let’s go get some dinner and we’ll talk it out.”
We go to this pizza place not far from my place and order a massive three meat pizza with pepperoni and sausage and Canadian bacon on it. I take a big bite and sigh as the flavors burst over my tongue.
“There’s nothing pizza can’t solve,” Amelia says.
I groan in agreement as I take another bite. A couple of my students walk past the table. They smile and wave, but God forbid they actually have a conversation with their teacher on their time off.
“I think you should organize the drama club,” I say. “Once you get that going, you can decide what to do with the money. A couple of field trips. Maybe even enter your kids in one of those drama competitions. We used to do a one-act play competition when I was in high school.”
Amelia nods. “That would be great. If we get some awards, maybe the school district will realize that we’re not a useless class.”
“You know, forty thousand is a lot of money. You could keep the program running for years.”
“We can. I have all these ideas for what to use the money on, but, really, even if I did everything I want to do, I couldn’t spend all the money. This money could keep the program running for ten years. Maybe longer.” Amelia takes a bite of her pizza before focusing on me again. “Would you hang out after school Friday, help out with the drama club’s first meeting?”
“Of course.”
We begin talking about all these things we can do as we finish eating. I’m about to get up go wash my hands when my phone rings. I glance at the screen. It’s Magnus. I excuse myself and slip outside to take the call.
“Hey,” I say, a blush burning over my cheeks.
“Bad time?” his deep voice murmurs in my ear.
I can’t believe I’m talking to Magnus Fuller. These last few days…it was like someone had turned the world on its axis. Monday afternoon I hated Magnus with a passion. But Monday night…funny how quick things can change.
“Sort of. I’m not home yet.”
“I won’t ke
ep you long, then. I just wanted to say hi.”
I lean against the front of my car, a smile slipping over my lips. “How was practice today?”
“About the same. How was school?”
“My advanced American Lit class started Hemingway today. Should be an interesting few weeks.”
“Hemingway? Lucky kids.”
“My thoughts, too. But they don’t seem to think so.”
“Kids never appreciate anything until years later.”
“True.” I can see a couple of those students through the window of the pizza place. They were joking and laughing with each other in one of the booths, oblivious of my observation of them. “So, Amelia found out about the donation. She’s pretty excited over the generosity of the donor’s directions for her program.”
“Is she?”
“She’s already making plans.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am. This program is very important to the students. And to Amelia.”
“I’m glad I could do something to make you happy.”
He sounds genuine and that makes my smile widen. “Thank you,” I say softly.
I drive myself home a while later, my thoughts not on Amelia and the drama program as it probably should be, but on Magnus. When I think about him, my insides seem to turn to Jell-O, all quivering and unsettled. I feel like one of my students, like I’ve developed a crush on the captain of the football team or something. But there’s this little voice in the back of my head that keeps reminding me who Magnus is.
Once at home, I curl up in bed with my laptop and begin my little search of Magnus again. It started as an attempt to satisfy curiosity, but it was becoming something more. There were so many rumors about Magnus, so many articles that suggest he’s a brilliant athlete, but a conceited, uncaring individual. There are still stories involving my accident that run Magnus down, with fans and reporters suggesting the Giants refuse to renegotiate his contract at the end of the season. But there are also little nuggets here and there that suggest he’s more than the rumors.
