by J Santiago
She pushed his mouth open with her tongue, deepening the kiss. He felt one hand on the back of his neck and one slide down his ass into the pocket of his jeans. She pulled him closer and slid one leg between his, so they were one seamless being. He moaned deep in his throat, wanting her. When he felt her hand slide between them and rub the front of his jeans, he pulled back, putting distance between them. Resting his forehead against hers, he put his hands on her shoulders.
He knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him, so he leaned down to her ear. “Not here, okay?” he said. Then, he kissed her near her jawline, opposite her scar.
He felt her arms drop from around him. She pulled back and looked at him with an unreadable expression on her face. Then, she turned and walked away. He watched her in confusion. Thinking she wanted him to follow, he took off after her, but she didn’t go far. She merely moved over and began dancing with some random people. Unsure of what to do, he watched for a second and then left the dance floor, pissed.
Making his way to Keira and Tilly, he stood, wallowing in his anger.
Tilly looked at him curiously. “What’s up, bro?”
Tank glanced at him and then at Keira. “What the fuck’s up with your girl?”
“Bro!” Tilly said, surprised by the anger in Tank’s voice,
“I honestly don’t know. She doesn’t ever say. All I know is that I got a text to come pick her up from her grandparents’ house. No explanation,” Keira told him.
Tank waited for more. He knew she knew more. But she didn’t offer anything else.
He saw the platinum hair move closer to where they were standing. Amber looked up for a brief second, their eyes meeting. He watched her see him and then look away as she wrapped her arms around some punk-ass frat boy.
“This is bullshit!” he said. “I’m out.”
As he moved through the bar, careful not to show his irritation, he acknowledged to himself that he wasn’t sure what he was so irate about. He was pissed because she had blown him off., But he couldn’t say if it was because he liked her or if it was because he was Tank Howard. And whoever said no to him?
Tank didn’t know how long he had been asleep when his phone started going off. Picking it up, he saw that it was four thirty in the morning, way too late for a bootie call. The only things that happened at four thirty in the morning were bad things. Trying to stay as close to sleep as possible, he ignored it once. But it started again.
Coming fully awake, he reached for it, ran his finger across the screen. It wasn’t a number he recognized.
“Hello?”
“Tank?”
“Tilly? What the hell, man? It’s the middle of the fucking night.”
“And you know I wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency,” Tilly said.
“What happened?” Tank said.
“We’re at the jail. Got any cash?”
“What the fuck is going on? And, no, I don’t have cash for bail money. Are you kidding me?”
“Nah, man. I ain’t kidding.”
“Fuck. I’m on my way.”
Tank rolled out of bed and grabbed his team sweats. It probably wasn’t the most appropriate choice as he didn’t need to advertise Bears football at the police station, but he didn’t think he had time to dig out clothes. Out of the house in less than five minutes, Tank made his way to the jail, the whole time questioning what he should do. Should he call Coach? How much was bail money? How did you even post bail money?
The jail wasn’t a big building. He walked in and was surprised to find Tilly and Iman sitting in the waiting area, not languishing behind bars in a piss-permeated concrete jail cell. He caught their frantic looks and returned it with one of his own, not knowing what needed to be done. He wanted to talk to them but didn’t want to be disrespectful. So, he kind of waited for someone to say something.
One of the cops seemed to notice him standing there.
“Hey, Tank,” the cop said, as if knowing him. He walked over, holding his hand out to shake Tank’s. “Real pleasure to meet you.”
That was one of the funny things about being who he was. Everyone acted like they knew him but always acknowledged that they didn’t.
“Great game the other day. Well, the whole season really. How you feeling?”
“Good, sir. Thanks.”
“Can you get these guys home? They’re free to go.”
“Okay. Uh, thanks so much,” Tank said, glancing quickly at Tilly and Iman with a what-the-fuck expression on his face.
They got up hurriedly and moved toward the door before Tank could extract himself from the cop/fan.
“We’ll be cheering for you on Saturday. Glad to have a string of home games now. I mean, more work for us, but we all like to watch you play in person. You watch that Stanley kid. He’s gonna be real tough for your line.” At Tank’s nod, the cop reached his hand out again, not wanting the chance to shake Tank’s hand go by. “Good luck!”
Tank moved when the cop took a breath. “Thanks again,” he said as he made his way out the door to his car, which already held Tilly and Iman.
Jumping in the driver’s seat, he pulled out of the parking lot as fast as he could. He waited until he was a couple of miles away before he asked, “What the hell was that? What happened after I left?”
Tilly and Iman exchanged a look. Iman deferred to Tilly, as was his habit.
“Things got a bit crazy,” Tilly said without any elaboration.
Tank waited, but his patience was at an end. “I just had to wake up in the middle of the night to come get you from jail, but you weren’t even in jail. What’s going on?” After another Tilly-Iman mystery look, Tank got mad. “If you motherfuckers don’t tell me what happened, I’m gonna leave your asses on the side of the road.”
“See, what had happened was…” Tilly looked at Iman, shrugged, and plowed forward, “Your boy Iman here, the stupid fucking freshman, felt like he needed to defend your girl’s honor.”
Tank felt his hands tighten on the steering wheel. “She ain’t my girl.”
He saw the look exchanged again but decided not to comment on it.
“Aight. The girl you’ve been”—Iman paused before qualifying—“wanting to bang. She was dancing with this frat boy, and when she decided she was done dancing, she tried to walk away. He didn’t like that too much. Tried to hold on to her wrist.” Then, Iman smiled wide, his white teeth flashing in the dark of the car. “I ain’t gonna lie. She’s pretty much a badass and probably didn’t need my help. But I felt some sorta way about him holding on to her arm. And maybe a bit of a brawl broke out.”
Tilly picked up the story. “There were some of us and some of them. It was mostly harmless. Some words—mostly. But I think the owner of the bar was afraid it was gonna blow up. So, he called the cops, and we all got paddy-wagoned.”
Tank shook his head. He wanted to ask, and he knew they knew he wanted to ask, but he stayed purposely quiet.
“Don’t worry about your girl. We made sure she and Keira were all right.”
“She’s not my girl, and I really don’t give a shit.”
“Mmhmm,” Iman muttered at the same time as Tilly’s, “Uh-huh.”
Tank ran his free hand over his head. “That girl’s nothing but trouble.”
Eighteen
It had been a week and a day. Eight days since Amber’s dad had berated her. Eight days since she’d pushed Tank away. Eight days since Iman had valiantly tried to come to her defense. And she’d done nothing. She hadn’t tried to fix things with her father, she hadn’t called or texted Tank, she hadn’t thanked Iman. That was the thing about her life in the last couple of years. She’d done a lot of nothing.
For some reason, this Monday, that mattered to her. It hadn’t come upon her gradually. It hit her like a freight train. All of a sudden, she wanted to do something about the wrongs.
So, here she was, after her shift on Monday night, pulling into the stadium where she’d met Tank two weeks ago. She wasn’t eve
n sure if he’d be there, but the thought that he wouldn’t, that she might have to go looking for him, left her feeling shaky. She’d been strong enough to come up with the plan to show up here, but she hadn’t thought any further than that. If he happened not to be there, she’d have to try to find him. She had to talk to him.
Moving through the tunnel, she smiled as she got her first glimpse of the field and saw a sweaty Tank Howard working through his plays with one of the minions, just like he had the last time she’d come to the stadium. She watched for a long time, enjoying the view. She’d caught some of the game on Saturday, and once again, she’d been impressed with his play. His stats were amazing, and he was quickly becoming everyone’s number one for the Heisman.
Ogling him for as long as she could without feeling like a creeper, she moved forward onto the field, coming up behind him. The minion immediately noticed her. She saw him glance her way and follow her progress up the sideline. Tank seemed oblivious or just so focused on what he was doing that he didn’t take note.
But then the minion stopped and nodded his head in her direction. Tank turned. He didn’t appear surprised, merely resigned. He turned back, and she felt her strength falter. Pausing mid step, she stumbled a little, her bum leg not enough to pull her from a stutter step. Righting herself, she continued to walk forward. She’d wanted him to be happy or shocked to see her but not indifferent.
He kept his back to her so that she had to walk right up beside him to draw his attention.
“Hey,” she said as she pulled up next to him.
He looked at her sideways but didn’t say anything.
Drawing a deep breath, she tried again. “Hey.”
“What are you doing here?” He sounded pissed, something like impatience coming through.
“I came to apologize.”
“Humph,” he muttered, sounding like he’d been punched in the gut. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“Going to make this as difficult as possible, huh?” she said. “I get it. I’d definitely do the same thing.”
“You did do the same thing—made everything as difficult as possible, that is.”
She missed the joking, cajoling guy she’d known briefly, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get him back. He’d been locked away by her shitty behavior.
“Did Iman and Tilly get into a lot of trouble?”
He looked at her fleetingly before rolling his eyes. “You could have texted me to ask that question. Or asked Keira. I know Tilly’s been hanging out with her a lot.”
“Yeah, I haven’t been at Keira’s in a while.”
“Shut her down, too, huh?”
Amber took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what you are so mad about. I told you from the beginning that I was not a good gamble, that I wasn’t a good idea. I never lied about that. You were the one who kept pursuing me even though you could see how fucked up my life was. So, you shouldn’t be acting like the injured party when you should have never gotten involved with me in the first place.”
Tank turned to look at her. “This is your idea of an apology?” he asked, mystified.
Their eyes met for the first time and held. The tension between them was palpable. What she wanted to do and what she knew she had to do were at odds with each other. But, looking at him now, she admitted to herself that she wanted to reach out to him, to be surrounded by him, to melt into him. They continued to stare at each other, challenge in each other’s eyes.
Take a chance on me, they both seemed to be saying.
But then he looked away, and she tried to pretend like the moment hadn’t happened.
“No. My apology goes something like this.” Again, with the pause and the deep breath, she tried to gather her thoughts to do, at least this, the right way. “I’m sorry for the way I walked away from you last week. And I am really sorry about Iman and Tilly. Although, in my defense, I had the situation under control, and I didn’t need anyone’s help. Then, all of a sudden, Iman jumped into the fray. It was kind of a mess.” She stopped herself before she rambled any more. “So, that’s what I came to say.”
She wanted to walk away, to make it look good, like, Hey, I came, I saw, I apologized. But she lingered for a moment, hoping for his acceptance.
When he didn’t say anything for a while, she started to turn and walk away. She made the spin successfully before his hand reached out and gently caught her wrist. They stood, looking in opposite directions, caught in the uncertainty of a feeling. She knew he didn’t want to be in this with her, and she knew she couldn’t be in this with him, but for some reason, they were both in it.
“Can you at least tell me what was wrong that night?” he asked softly, as if saying it at a normal pitch would somehow cause the world to tilt incorrectly on its axis.
She didn’t want to tell him much, but it was difficult to always hold back from him. She struggled with telling him because, every time she mentioned her father to him, she felt like a liar. But she continued to step forward into shit with him. “I got into a fight with my dad.”
He squeezed her wrist softly, as if telling her that he understood what that was like.
And, somehow, her mouth opened again. “Things with us have been rough since the accident. There were some things that happened before it that we never really talked about. And I just can’t take the way his eyes cloud with pity every time he sees my scar. I mean, it’s just a scar. It doesn’t change who I am.”
Tank’s thumb rubbed the inside of her wrist, like he was settling a scared animal. She felt it and wanted to resent it, but her whole body soothed out and heated up at the same time.
“Really? You’re the same girl you were before the accident?” His voice remained a degree below a normal octave.
Wounded animal, she thought.
“Not the same,” she murmured. “But I’m not all that proud of the girl I was before the accident.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Huh?”
“You enjoy being a sarcastic, prickly-ass, stubborn female. I’d forgotten,” he said, his voice returning to normal, like he was done trying to pull stuff out of her.
She pulled her wrist from his hand and pushed him in the arm. She could tell she’d taken him off guard because he stumbled a little to the side. She began walking away from him while he righted himself, but he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back into him. His arms snaked around her middle, and then his hands landed on her hips and held on. He leaned down, around her right side, and kissed his way up her scar, making her shudder in his arms.
“I would imagine,” he whispered by her ear in between kisses, “that it would be hard”—his thumbs moved up and down, lightly on her back, right above her jeans—“for any parent to see their kids hurt.”
He softened the blow of his words with his kisses, so she barely knew that she was acknowledging that he was right even though she did. For the first time, she somehow knew he was right.
“What are you doing, Tank?” she managed to ask as he continued to mess with her scar, pulling the burn away.
“Somehow, I don’t think I need to explain,” he said.
She could hear the smile in his voice and couldn’t help but smile, too.
“This is so not good for you,” she reminded him.
He pulled away from her neck and rested his chin on the top of her head. His hands came around the front of her and joined, resting on her stomach. “Let me worry about what’s good for me.”
Neither one of them said anything for a while. They just stood together on the twenty-yard line, lost in their own separate thoughts.
“Where have you been staying if you aren’t at Keira’s?” he asked suddenly.
“I went back to my dad’s. He works a lot, and it’s easy to avoid him.”
Tank pulled away from her and turned her in his arms so that she had to look at him. “Why go home if you’re just avoiding him?”
That was a question Keira had asked her last
Monday morning when Amber had packed up her stuff before leaving. She hadn’t wanted to explain to Keira that avoiding her father at home would be easier than avoiding Tilly and potentially Tank at her apartment. And it wasn’t something she would admit to now.
“You’ve filled your quota of questions tonight. And you even got some answers. Let’s leave it at that,” she said flippantly.
His eyes narrowed on her face. He studied her for a minute before he leaned in and kissed her. It was a quick, hard kiss. “Okay,” he conceded. “Come home with me.”
Even though she shouldn’t have been, she was surprised. Being with him wasn’t why she had come here. But, now, getting lost in his pretty, green eyes, she wanted to go home with him. Her conscience warred with her body. She wanted him, wanted the calm he brought her, yet there were so many complications between them already.
She continued to watch him, trying to find a way to prolong their time without getting any closer to him. She started to shake her head, knowing that walking away was the only option, when he reached down and picked her up, throwing her over his shoulder. The move forced her rusty laugh from her lungs.
“Tank, what are you doing?” she asked between giggles. She was actually giggling.
“You thought that was a question,” he said as he walked toward the tunnel, shouldering her weight like it was nothing. “It wasn’t a question or even a suggestion. You’re coming home with me, Sunshine,” he said as she continued to laugh.
Neither one of them noticed that they were being watched.
Nineteen
Tank opened his door and put her in the passenger seat of his car. Walking around to the other side, he quickly sent a text as he slid into the driver’s seat.
“Wait! I can’t leave my car here.”
“Give me your keys,” he said.
She looked at him, as if he were high, but she reached into her front pocket and extracted her keys. They drove around toward the player entrance and waited. The kid who’d been with Tank earlier walked out of the locker room and up to Tank’s door.
