by Cherry Kay
“Hey, man! How’s it going?” Rick asked.
“Same thing, different night, but the party inside is crazy man!” the bouncer replied.
“Denise, I want you to meet a good friend of mine. This is Troy. He and I go way back,” Rick said.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Troy said taking Denise’s hand and laying a soft kiss on it.
Denise tried not to blush, but that was the cheesiest move in the world that made every woman melt no matter who did it.
“Always the charmer,” Rick said.
“Man, people will be talking about that crazy move you did on the field for years to come! That was like some Matrix meets Jedi stuff!”
Rick laughed. “It was a total accident. I don’t know how I did it and I’ll probably never be able to do it again.”
“Look at this guy, being all modest. I’m glad to know the fame ain’t going to your head,” Troy said.
Denise was too. It was good to see how Rick was not becoming like some cocky sports star. She had interviewed a lot of those and they were all super annoying. Rick was keeping it real and down to Earth—at least for now.
“Well, you guys have a great time. I got to tell all these people how most of them are not getting in tonight. We are almost at capacity. I guess its great business when you have to turn people away though.”
“That’s right. I’ll talk to you later, man,” Rick said.
Denise was amazed at the interior of the club. She had been to a lot of night clubs in her time, but she had never seen a party like this. Everywhere she turned she saw actors, directors, pop singers, and sports stars. It was like the place was built for the Hollywood crowd. She had not seen too many clubs like that.
There were three different levels to the club and each level had its own theme. The lower level looked like a city street, the middle level looked like a 1970’s disco, and the upper level looked like a European Techno club with a huge range of flashing lights and shiny objects flying around from the ceiling.
Denise had never been in a room with that many celebrities at one time before. She wasn’t the kind to get star struck, but even she was having a hard time restraining herself from running after a few of her favorite celebrities. She saw Channing Tatum dancing with his wife Jenna Dewan, she saw some soap actors doing body shots off of each other—taking turns alternating off some random blonde girl who appeared to have already drank her weight in shots. And there was Robert Downey Jr. chilling on a couch reading a book while people around him kept trying to get his attention while he tuned them out. The whole scene was surreal and bizarre. She loved it.
Rick was totally in his element though. He wasn’t able to take more than a few steps without someone begging for his autograph or wanting a picture. He was very nice and always obliged everyone. He loved the attention that was for sure, but she sensed that he cared about his fans even more. He actually engaged them in conversation and asked them questions about themselves. Denise was taking all of this in and she had to admit that she found herself experiencing an intense attraction to Rick.
It wasn’t the sort of attraction one has because they are in the presence of someone famous and you are just so in awe of what that person has and what they bring to the table that is profoundly different from other people. You would normally find yourself asking the question of “What’s so great about them? Why are they so admired?” You would ask these questions even though you yourself were asking them because you felt it. You wanted to be a part of their light and their presence. It was human nature.
But what she was feeling for Rick was different because the most attractive things about him had nothing to do with his fame. That was more of a backdrop. What she liked most about him was how down to Earth he was and how comfortable he was in his own skin. The man loved to be himself and he didn’t expect any admiration or praise from anyone. He just didn’t need that stroke to his ego. He was fine just being himself.
There were so many guys that she had met, and guys that she had dated, who ultimately didn’t work out simply because they were insecure. They were insecure of themselves and insecure of the relationship. It was so refreshing to find a man who was proud just being him and who expected nothing from her.
Rick eventually made his way to a table occupied by some friends of his. Denise recognized a few as players on his team. She felt slightly awkward while he made his presence known and slapped a few high fives and grabbed a beer someone handed him from the bucket on the table. He grabbed another one and handed it to Denise.
The people at the table automatically made room for them. A few men Denise didn’t recognize abandoned their seats to sit at a close by adjoining table. She found it odd, but the people who did it seemed more than happy to accommodate Rick.
She and Rick sat down. Denise felt a little bit awkward hanging out with a bunch of people she did not really know, but she tried to occupy her mind by focusing on the job at hand. Most of her interviews didn’t end up in a club partying with the subject, but she couldn’t turn down the opportunity. She wasn’t about to let that go.
“So, how’s it feel to be Mr. Superstar?” a woman asked from the side.
“Louise, that’s not even right. That play was a fluke; it won’t happen again. I’m just glad we won,” Rick replied, laughing off the acclaim.
Rick suddenly realized that he hadn’t introduced Denise to anybody at the table.
“Hey, everybody I want to introduce you to Denise. Denise this is Mark, Jackson, Mary, Louise, and Dan. You guys try to be polite,” Rick said before tossing back a swig of his beer.
Denise said hi to everybody and somehow she felt like they accepted her right off.
“So, Denise how did you meet Mr. Rick?” Louise asked.
Rick gave Louise the bird with a smile on his face.
“Well, I’m a reporter. I’m actually doing an interview on him.”
“Oh, so you came here to meet his friends so we can tell you what he’s really like?” Mark said.
“I swear I just met these people this morning,” Rick said with a smile on his face. “They don’t know me at all!”
“You are such a liar Rick! We’ll try not to embarrass you too much,” Dan said.
Denise actually recognized Dan. He and Rick seemed to be the best friends on the field and now outside of that realm they still seemed to be pretty tight. It was just a vibe she had by the way they sat and interacted with one another. It was like they were brothers. She was hoping to garner some interview time with Dan too. It might make a good sidebar for the story that she was doing on Rick. Dan was his mentor on the team after all.
“You guys embarrass me by just opening your mouths!” Rick said.
“So, Denise what do you want to know about Rick?” Mark asked.
Denise took this as a great opportunity even as Rick cringed. He knew that his friends were going to give him junk about all sorts of stupid things and it was probably going to end up in the article, but she was glad to learn these nuggets from his life because that was going to make him appear most human in the article. The fact that he was thinking the worst was just funny.
“Is he always so smooth and together? Or are there times when he lets his guard down?” Denise asked.
The table erupted in laughter.
“Dude, she knows you too well already!” Mark said.
“Rick is one of those guys that you love to hate because he doesn’t seem to have a fragile spot in him anywhere. I have never seen him lose his cool in any way. I would love to sit here and tell you that he’s temperamental and that he blows his stack sometimes in the locker room or during practice, but he always seems to have it together,” Louise said.
“Wow that’s interesting. Rick, how do you account for that?”
“I think these guys are all crazy. I’m human and I have good days and bad too,” Rick replied as he quietly drank his beer. He seemed totally relaxed and calm right then as if he didn’t really care what any of his
friends said. If they had told an out-and-out lie, he would probably have just laughed it off.
“You see? The guy just doesn’t get rattled by anything. I’m tempted to tell you about how he listens to Hanson in the locker room before every game,” Dan said.
“Hey, Hanson is like The Beatles of the nineties!” Rick said.
The table erupted with laughter.
Denise was having a blast watching how Rick interacted with the rest of his friends.
“I’m getting some more beers,” Rick said.
“Get me one will you?” Louise asked.
“Fine I’ll get two buckets,” Rick replied walking away.
Denise suddenly felt a bit alone with Rick gone. He was the catalyst that helped her merge into this group of people since she wasn’t really one of them. Now that he was gone it was feeling a bit odd to her. So she did what she always did when she felt the pesky nerves flair up—she began to talk to the person closest to her, which turned out to be Dan.
“So, have you ever wondered how Rick is so good at such an early age?” Denise asked.
Dan laughed. “I wonder that every day I see him on the field. I mean, we are all good, or we wouldn’t be on that team, but he makes the rest of us look bad without even trying most of the time. He does things that just make you shake your head.”
“That must be difficult to live with sometimes. I know you’re a captain and you were the best player before he arrived on the scene. Do you ever resent him for eclipsing you so fast?” Denise asked.
Her heart was racing in her chest. She had basically just kicked the elephant in the room and demanded that it wake up, but she knew that her boss and the readers would all be dying to know the answer to the question she just asked.
She expected Dan to get mad or to yell at her. She even half-expected him to get up and leave. He stared at her coldly for maybe five seconds and then a goofy grin rose up on his face followed by a hearty chuckle.
“No, I don’t feel like that. I’m all about what makes the team great. Rick is a powerful asset to the team, but he still couldn’t do it all by himself. Neither could I or any of the rest of the guys. The sport is a team sport and there isn’t any time on the field for heroes. All that media junk comes out after the game is played. That’s where people like you come in and hand pick who you think the celebrity should be.”
“Well, we don’t really hand pick them; I think the public does that.”
Dan smiled. He had a sexy smile, Denise noticed, even if it was filled with derision.
“Don’t you? It is a popularity contest with the media pulling all the strings. It is like that in all facets of entertainment and politics—the media stands back and puts this person everywhere and says they are amazing and that other people think so too. The next thing you know, you think so and your friend thinks so. It’s all a fun game. I don’t play that game; I play soccer.”
Denise was taken aback a bit and as she listened to Dan’s rant, she realized that he may be on to something, or he might have been jealous but would never admit to it. It might be both things. She was tempted to put that in the article, but if she did she would probably water it down a bit or alter it altogether. There had to be some guidelines and some rules. Her boss would skin her alive if she wasn’t careful.
Maybe Dan was right.
“So, tell me about yourself,” Dan said.
Denise was caught a bit off guard, but she humored him anyway.
“What do you want to know?”
“Where you are from, what you do for fun, do you have a boyfriend… the typical stuff really.”
Denise had to smile. Dan was charming.
“I’m from upstate, I love to dance, and I don’t have a boyfriend currently,” Denise responded.
“Good to know,” Dan replied, shoving onion rings into his mouth.
“So, same questions for you.”
“I’m from Phoenix Arizona, besides soccer I love to drive fast, and I don’t have a boyfriend either,” Dan joked.
Denise couldn’t hold back the snicker.
“Are you always this funny?” Denise asked.
“Oh, I’m just getting warmed up. Wait until I tell you the one about the Carney and the Nunnery,” Dan said.
The man was hysterical. She was wondering why Rick was taking so long with the beers, but it was a packed house. He might be gone for a while.
“So, you mentioned that you like to dance—being that we are in a dance club, shall we cut a rug?” Dan asked.
Denise wanted to say yes, but she needed to remain focused on the work.
“Well, Rick is going to be back in a minute. I do need to finish the research for this story. I have a big deadline looming in front of me,” Denise replied.
Dan smiled and seemed to shrug the rejection off easily. Denise loved it when men did that and didn’t take a rejection so personally.
“That’s no problem. We should get together another night then,” Dan said. He pulled up his phone contacts and handed her his phone. “Go ahead and type in your digits and we will go out soon.”
Denise grabbed his phone and typed in her info. She felt weird giving her number to a guy she just met, but she knew quite a bit about Dan and he was a friend of Rick’s. She trusted that for some reason. The whole thing happened so fast that she didn’t have a chance to really think about it until after she handed the phone back to him. She was interested to see if he would even call. Dan didn’t strike her as the kind of guy who actually made plans at all.
Rick came back with two buckets of beers and sat them on the table. He took his seat and began to indulge in the onion rings as well.
“So, what did I miss? Do I need to get out of the country and change my name or anything now?” Rick asked.
“Not quite that bad,” Denise said.
“Good. That’s a huge relief,” Rick said.
“We were going to tell her about your lucky pair of female undies that you wear during every match, but we figured we had to let you have some semblance of a private life,” Mark said.
“Oh, well that’s fine. I mean that is now common knowledge. It has been for quite some time,” Rick quipped back.
Denise loved the way that he played off anything that someone threw at him. She had a feeling that he would rip apart anyone in the media who tried to take shots at him or get him to meltdown. She hated that it happened, but there were those in the media who were in it solely for their own fame which usually came about by humiliating other people.
“How do you do that?” Denise asked.
“How do I do what?” Rick replied innocently.
“How are you able to just let things roll off your back that way?”
“What? You don’t take things like that seriously do you?” Rick asked.
“Well, I understand these are your friends and teammates and they aren’t really talking down to you, but I have a feeling that you would respond the same way to anybody really.”
Rick smiled.
His smile was magnetic and the confidence that it radiated was intense. She found herself blushing and she was suddenly very aware of herself and what her body was doing. She wanted to fight the urge to pose just right as if just being was no longer good enough. She hadn’t been in the presence of a man who had that kind of power over her emotions and her physicality since she was in middle school. She had to fight the urge to giggle like a little schoolgirl and she didn’t understand why.
Her face was feeling hot. How did Rick have that kind of control over her? Denise had always prided herself on being a strong and independent woman who didn’t allow men to play games with her or have any kind of control over her in any way.
But when she was in his presence, there was something inside of her that just snapped and she found herself unable to fully focus on what she was doing. It was like her whole brain became cloudy and she just had to surrender to the feeling.
“Come on,” Rick said.
He grabbed her hand and
began making the way through the crowd of people. He nodded to all of the people who were saying hi and trying to pat him just so they could say they had laid a hand on Rick Thompson.
“What are we doing?” Denise shouted above the noise.
Rick didn’t hear her—or he pretended not to.
Suddenly they were in the middle of the dance floor. Rick flipped around and pulled her close, moving to the sensual beat of the R&B that pounded out of the speakers. Denise couldn’t help but fall right into the rhythm, syncing up with Rick and the movements of his body.
Pressed up against him, she could feel the tight muscles of his body. He was so hard and fit and she could practically trace every single nuance of his muscles through the threads of his tight, spandex shirt. Rick smiled as he saw the look in her eyes. She felt it. She could see outside of herself and she knew what she would have seen if she were watching this scene unfold. The music was getting inside of her and taking over, giving way to the whole experience.
Rick was a great dancer. He had beautiful rhythm and instincts. The way he moved to the beat was similar to the way he moved up and down the field. His whole body was poetry moving along creating endless art. She was starting to wonder if there was anything this man did not do well.
Denise was vaguely aware of the fact that the crowded dance floor had moved back a bit to give her and Rick all the space they needed and they were now watching them out of the corners of their eyes. It was a strange new experience for her and she wondered how any celebrity could ever get used to something like this. She definitely saw how it could be fun at first, but after a while of having no privacy when you were in public she would have gone mad. But she looked at Rick who handled it so well. It wasn’t like he enjoyed the fame, but he was able to ignore it easily.
She wasn’t sure if she ever could have done that. Right at that moment, she was experiencing fame by association. That was a whole different level of celebrity when you were so famous that you made the people around you famous. She could see people snapping pictures of their dance with their cell phones and she wondered how many Facebook posts and blogs she would be a part of tomorrow. Would people even know who she was? Or would people even wonder if she was going to be around Rick long enough to be worth mentioning?
