Blur: A Sports Romance

by Piper Page

  “Okay men, it’s time to pull up those boot straps, grab your big boy britches, and get your asses off your momma’s laps and into the game.” Coach’s pep talks were a thing of legend. He never left us without a laugh. We respected him and trusted him, but he was always the butt of our jokes after a sincere, post-practice pep lecture. “The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight, let’s reach up and grab it.” His hand shot up in the air and grabbed at some invisible object. Coach stood there holding emptiness in his fist, and we all tried or hardest not to laugh. “Now get the fuck back out there and let’s run it again.”

  The team clapped with a “hoorah” and we ran back to our given positions.

  “Your flowers get delivered, man?”

  I looked across the tops of the heads of the offensive line at the defense. Emmet Dawson was looking at me. He was one of my closest friends, a man of integrity that I had grown up with. Even though he was a few years older, it didn’t make a difference. We had a brotherly bond, so to speak.

  I let my mind drift back to Mallory. “It was amazing, dude, just amazing. All good.”

  The ball snapped back to me and caught me off guard. My hands fumbled, and I was chasing after it to regain control when Emmet snagged me around the waist and put me to the ground.

  “Damn it.” I cursed as I got up and shook it off. “You trying to distract me on purpose, bro?”

  Emmet patted my shoulder and gave it a good squeeze. “Nah, but it feels good to make you look bad, Maxwell,” he gloated.

  I knew it wasn’t him that had really been distracting me, but I threw him the bone anyway. We got back into formation, and this time, I kept my mind in the game. The ball flew to me with speed, and I leapt and caught it with solid, sticky fingers, bringing it in close to my chest, just like I planned to do to win the Super Bowl. My feet were like the wind across the cliffs, fast and strong. If Mallory were in the stands right now, she’d be in awe. Women fell over themselves for athletes of my caliber. I knew it. I witnessed it on a daily basis, used it to my advantage, and I’d been rewarded in every way a man could be. But to have Mallory? That would be the last notch on my bed post I’d ever scratch in.

  My body slammed to the turf, and my chest felt crushed as four burly men fell on top of me, knocking the breath out of my lungs and making me see stars.

  “For crying in the goddamn kitchen sink, Maxwell, what the hell are you doing out there, knitting a sweater for your great granny? Get your head in the game,” yelled Coach from the sidelines.

  I cursed under my breath. We changed positions, and I watched as Emmet ran the same play as I did, but his success was monumentally better. I knew why: he didn’t have access to the fantasies of Mallory that were plaguing my brain and wreaking havoc on my abilities. I couldn’t help it, her face and curves were tattooed behind my eyelids, and every time I dared to close my eyes, her sweet, pouty, powder sugared lips were there teasing me into worthless frustration. I scrubbed at my face and shook my muscles, jumping up and down in place. “Get it together Adrian,” I chided myself out loud.

  “You know, Maxwell, I’d be happy to play your position in the Super Bowl. I think I can mange those fancy end zone dances too.” Emmett said, mocking my dance moves in the middle of the defensive line.

  “In your dreams, Emmett.”

  “You’re not my dream type,” he countered. “I prefer blondes with legs for days and a nice set of ta-tas.” Emmett’s hands gestured in front of him to indicate the size of breasts he meant.

  I rolled my eyes with no comeback. I was fully aware of Emmett’s type. I’d seen him pick up pretty much the same version of girl at every bar we ever drank at, exactly as he had described, blonde, leggy and big in the chest. I wondered what type of bars Mallory frequented. Did she even go to bars? Maybe she wasn’t old enough to drink yet. No matter, I’d wait for her. She would be worth any wait—not only was she sexy and cute, she was talented. The arrangement she designed was perfect. I’d need to let her know that next time I saw her. I wondered when that would be.

  A crunch of padding, helmets, and bones met my ears before I realized I had been pummeled once more. Coach was going to have my ass in a sling. I needed to get this girl out of my head, but how do you get rid of something you are already addicted to?

  “Maxwell!”

  I cringed. Coach looked like his head was about to explode all over the field. A young man in a tailored, gray, three-piece suit and silk tie was standing next to him by the team bench. I took my helmet off, ran my fingers through my hair out of habit, and jogged over to the waiting pair.

  “Yeah, Coach?” My head nodded to the man at his side. “Hey.’

  “Hey there yourself, Adrian, I’m Mike Richardson,” the man in the suit held his hand out to me. It was well manicured and looked soft like silk. Obviously, he was not into hard labor.

  I glanced down at it and took it, shaking it with a hard grasp. “Nice to meet you. You a Mavericks fan?”

  Coach cleared his throat.

  “Actually yes, a big fan—so much so that I now own this team.”

  Coach was shaking his head and giving me the look of death. “Adrian Maxwell, meet Mike Richardson, the new owner of the New York Mavericks.

  “I apologize,” I said reflexively. I was sure my face showed my embarrassment. “I had no idea we were being bought by someone new. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” I shook his hand again.

  “No need for all that. Coach here says you’re the best of the best, and maybe I’m an ignorant son of a bitch when it comes to how you play during practice, but looked like you were getting the snot beat out of you out there. I’d like that to improve. I’m setting you up for double time at my personal gym. I need you in tip-top condition, Maxwell.”

  “Sorry, my head was somewhere else. Won’t happen again, sir.” I shuffled my cleats in the turf. I didn’t need double time in the gym. Who did this guy think he was? I could bench press his ass and not give it second thought. I tried to hide my disdain.

  “No more of the ‘sir’ crap, Maxwell. I’m probably the same age as you. What are you, twenty-three?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Okay, so right the same age as you. Call me Mike. my father can be ’sir.’”

  Coach wasn’t saying a word.

  “Listen,” Mike continued, “I want to meet the full team. You finish up here Coach. I’m going to go order dinner for everyone. You can bring them on up to my personal box when you have them showered and rested. I’d like to see what it’s going to cost me to get them up to par.” He slapped Coach on the back, and we stood there, watching him strut away like a full-fledged peacock.

  I looked at Coach, wondering if the man that had walked away was real or a terrible joke. “I know I sucked today, Coach. I promise you I’ll be back one hundred percent tomorrow.”

  Coach wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “I know, kid.” He looked back over his shoulder. “But what the hell was that all about? Up to par, what does he think, we got where we are with some magic damn genie juice in a bottle? Holy hell.”

  I shrugged and jogged back to my teammates. As hard as it was for me to admit, Coach and Mike Richardson were right. I had to straighten up and fly right, and the only way I was going to be able to do that was to put a rest to the crush I was drowning in. In order to do that, there was one solution. I had to turn the fantasy into reality, and that meant getting Mallory to go out with me.

  Chapter Three

  Mallory

  “One iced mocha black, one hot cream and sugar, and one Neapolitan milkshake. Robbie, how can you drink these everyday and not gain a single pound?” Leslie handed me my iced coffee and walked back to the shop office to give Mr. Alika his order. Robbie sucked on the long, striped straw, watching Leslie’s denim clad derriere.

  “Seriously?” I eyed him with a look that conveyed how offended I was.

  “What, I can’t look?”

  “Robbie, that was not looking, that was boring a h
ole through her pants with your eyes.”

  Robbie shrugged and continued to suck down his shake. He had his feet perched up on the back counter and was tilted back on two legs of a wooden chair, blocking the aisle from the backroom to the front of the shop. Leslie waltzed out with her own drink in one hand and a stack of new orders in the other. She stood beside Robbie and waited for him to drop his feet. The silent interaction between their glares was enough to make my stomach turn. I watched as a devilish grin turned up at the corners of his mouth, and Leslie bit her lip to hide her own flirtatious smile. Her hip jutted forward and touched his knees, sending his legs sailing off to the side and his chair spinning on a lone leg, making him to stumble up to his feet to save himself from falling on his butt and dumping his shake everywhere. A sight I would have loved to see.

  “So did you hear from him?” Leslie was talking to me, but her eyes kept darting towards Robbie.

  “From who?” My mind was on work already as I thumbed through the new online orders, taking stock of what I had to work with, the time and the difficulty each order required. I was looking for the most challenging order and then would work down through them from there,

  “Umm, your brother.” She gave me an incredulous look.

  “Right.” I shook my head and brought it back to our earlier conversation. “No, he hasn’t returned my messages. I hate it when the guy goes MIA for days at a time.”

  “Yeah, it seems like that’s getting more frequent these days.” Leslie picked up a stack of the easier orders to begin.

  “It has,” I sighed. “He hardly ever comes over to the house anymore, and when he does, he looks like he’s been running on fumes. I think,” I dropped my voice low so Robbie couldn’t hear me, “I think he might be in over his head this time.”

  Leslie gave me a sympathetic, worried expression. She knew my brother well. She had known my whole family well. We had grown up together, and she was my dearest and longest lasting friend. So her knowledge let her to understand the extent of my very real fears.

  “Robbie, why’re you no working? Go, put your eyes in you fruity head and go!” Mr. Alika came out from the back room, waving his hands at Robbie to shoo him away from us for the day. “Mallory, you have requested order.” He handed me a late online order.

  I scanned the printed form. My jaw dropped. “Leslie, listen to this.”

  Her fingers kept moving as she used floral tape and bundled up an array of buttoners for a wedding request, but her eyes were on me as I read the order.

  “Create a bouquet that represents delicate, raw, exquisite beauty. Please use lilies, baby’s breath, and bleeding hearts.” I looked over the edge of the paper, “Who requests bleeding hearts?” I tried to envision the flowers together, bleeding hearts were not something we routinely carried, but I knew I could get some before the scheduled pick up time. If I used whites and lavenders in the other flowers, the fuchsia and purple hearts would pop in an amazing way. “It says, ‘must be beautiful enough to make the most beautiful woman in the world agree to a date.’ Wow, either a total loser or the most romantic man on earth,” I mused.

  Leslie shook her head. “I put my money on loser.”

  I smirked. She was probably right, but I must have been feeling a tinge of romance in the air. I threw my full creativity into the bouquet. Even if he was a less-than-attractive guy, he was making an effort, and everyone should have someone that holds them on a pedestal, like the woman who was going to get this bouquet.

  When my work on the arrangement was done, I held it up and admired it. I thought it was some of my best work. “Les, take a picture of this, would you?” I handed her my cell phone.

  “Mallory, that’s amazing! How are you so good at this?” She snapped the photo with my phone and handed it back.

  I shrugged. “I love what I do.”

  The bells above the door drew our attention from our conversation.

  “Good afternoon, welcome to Push…” my greeting was cut short.

  “Yeah, nice place.” A short, bald man with wire-rim glasses and a suit that looked like it was from the fifties, complete with handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket, walked up to the counter. He couldn’t have stood at more than five foot three.

  “Can I help you?” I watched as he shuffled from foot to foot, uneasy, or maybe short on time.

  He sighed with a breath of heavy frustration, “I hope so. There’s an order to be picked up.” He handed me a slip of paper with the online order confirmation number.

  I felt my mouth drop open, but I quickly snapped it shut.

  “You do have it, right? I mean it’s five minutes after the scheduled time.” He looked at his watch to emphasize his point.

  Suddenly my heart went cold, and I set it up in my head that I didn’t care for this man at all. “I’ll get it form the back for you right away.” My tone lacked any of my usual friendly customer service flair.

  Leslie was hidden by the back wall of the hallway and the work counter. When I turned to her, she had her hand over her mouth, stifling her laughter. I picked up the bouquet and shot her a look that told her to behave.

  “Here we are, sir” I handed him the bouquet, waiting for a reaction of any sort to some of my best work.

  He handed me his credit card.

  After the bill was signed, he turned to walk out without a single word.

  “I hope she likes them.” I called after him. He walked out with nothing more than the sound of the bells.

  Leslie let her laughter go, and it filled the space behind me. “All that wonderful work, and the poor guy is going to get dropped on his ass. I don’t care how pretty those flowers were, no girl is ever going to agree to a date with ‘Flat Stanley,’” she teased.

  I rolled my eyes but couldn’t hide my smile. “Serves him right.” My ego was bruised. “He could have at least said they were adequate.”

  “Oh my god, Mallory, that arrangement was head-and-shoulders above adequate, he was just a rude, old, blind bat,” she comforted.

  I shrugged, let it go, and got back to my other orders, although my motivation and creativity was now diminished to the point that I was creating average arrangements for the rest of the afternoon and worrying about my brother.

  An hour and a half before closing, we were all fairly tired, and our coffee buzz had faded hours ago. My brain managed to let go of the disappointment earlier, and my spirits were back on my normal, even keel. The bells jingled, and I heard and audible, over exaggerated gasp as Leslie went out front to greet the late customer. There was a bit of shuffling around, but my feet were aching too much to get up from the stool I was sitting on. I’d let her handle this sale.

  “Mal! Mallory, can you come out here please?” Leslie yelled.

  I sighed and got up. “Les, you know how unprofessional…” My tongue glued itself to the roof of my mouth as I stepped out.

  In front of the shop was tall, long legs, trim hips, and flat abs, and then my bouquet of lilies and bleeding hearts in his hands. It was a breathtaking arrangement. At first, my mind thought the bald, rude man was back to complain, but then I realized the body behind the bouquet was not the same short, weirdly dressed customer.

  The flowers slid downward, and a perfectly quaffed arrangement of dark hair appeared followed by the unmistakable emerald eyes of Adrian Maxwell. I could feel the confusion fuse with the shock and embarrassment that was coursing through my bloodstream. This boy had an effect on me, I could not understand and really never dealt with before. It was as if my rational mind was pushed aside while my sexual side illuminated and made my desire and want for this particular man go into overdrive stealing all my sensibility away from me.

  “Mallory, these are for you.” He handed me back my lovely bouquet. “Now, the florist promised me this arrangement would win me a date with the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever met. We’re they, right or should I get my money refunded?”

  I was speechless. He was just standing there with a devil-may-care grin o
n his face. He was smug, and if I was listening to my sensible side, I’d say no thank you, but instead, I took the flowers and said nothing.

  Adrian laughed at my tongue-tied silence. “Is that at least a maybe?”

  “It’s a yes!” chimed in Leslie from somewhere behind me.

  I spun around on my heels and gave her the death stare. She smiled her innocent smile and gave me a shrug of her shoulders.

  “Okay then, it seems your chaperone here has agreed,” he teased, joining in with Leslie’s antics. “If it’s okay with you, I made reservations for tonight at eight—Giorgio’s?”

  I still hadn’t found my voice, so I nodded, my nose hitting the top of the bouquet. What an idiot I was. What else could I do to embarrass myself? He already thought I was a mute child.

  Leslie walked up beside me and nudged my shoulder. “I think that would be fine, right Mallory?”

  “Fine,” I managed to utter, but my voice was an unrecognizable squeak.

  Adrian’s laugh melted my insides to pure desire.

  “Would it be okay to pick you up at your place, or maybe you’d be more comfortable with me picking you up here at the floral shop?”

  I jolted forward when Leslie’s elbow shoved into my lower back. I coughed out a response, “You can pick me up at my house. 1420 Sullivan Avenue. Do you know the area?”

  Adrian beamed. “I have a GPS, I can figure it out. I’ll see you at seven thirty on the nose.”

  Great, he was a punctually precise person too. Why couldn’t he just say “ish” like every normal guy? I nodded mutely as he walked back out of the shop.

  “I cannot believe what just happened! Adrian Maxwell is taking you out on a real freaking date!” Leslie’s voice was laced with dramatic enthusiasm. “What are you going to wear? He’s so good looking and romantic. I won’t say I’m not jealous,” she was babbling.