Chasing Jillian: A Love and Football Novel

by Julie Brannagh

  “Whatever it is, I can’t afford it. Plus, I know you don’t need the money. I saw your contract information.”

  “Don’t be a hater,” he said.

  She couldn’t stop the laughter that rolled out of her.

  “Forty-five million dollars for four years, twenty-seven guaranteed? It’s like Monopoly money. I can’t imagine it.” She stifled a sigh. “You really want me to show you around? I hope you’re not expecting the same level of expertise in my tour guide skills,” she said. “I’ve lived here all my life and I still get lost.”

  “There’s GPS on my phone. We’ll figure it out,” he said.

  He reached out to take her elbow in his fingertips as they approached a busy intersection. Exercise had never been her favorite pastime, but she had to admit it wasn’t so terrible right now. They walked in silence for a few minutes after crossing the street. Jillian noted he’d slowed his steps to keep up with her, and he hadn’t dropped her arm. She wanted to know more about him. Maybe she should ask him some questions about himself.

  “You said your family lives here?” she blurted out.

  “They do. My parents live in Issaquah, and my kid sister is at the University of Washington.”

  “Did they come to your games when you played in San Diego?”

  “You’re turning into a regular chatterbox, aren’t you?” He did a few more lunges as they paused. “Sometimes they did. My sister hung out at my house for most of last summer. She took care of things while I was in training camp.” He waited for the signal to change at another crosswalk and glanced at his watch. “They liked it when we’d play the Sharks. Now I’ll be in the stadium all season, so they don’t have to fly so often to see me.” He glanced over at her. “How are you doing?”

  “Huh?”

  “You okay? Want to turn around?”

  “Maybe a few minutes more,” she said.

  “Gotcha. So, Jillian . . . ” She laughed at the exaggerated expression on his face. “More about you. How long have you lived here? What do you like to do when you’re not at work? Who’s your favorite pro football player?”

  “Seriously? Weren’t you just objecting to all of my questions?”

  “I have to answer questions as part of my job. Let’s see how you do with it,” he said.

  She slowed down a little so she could catch her breath, and he slowed his steps to match hers. “I’m a native.”

  “Does your family live here too?”

  She really didn’t want to answer that question. Maybe she could get him talking about something else. “Let me answer the questions you asked first,” she said.

  “Nice,” he said. “I’ll have to remember that the next time a reporter asks me fifteen questions and keeps asking more as I’m trying to answer the first set. So, go on.”

  “When I’m not at work, I do stuff like read, go to the movies, or hang around with my friend Kari. I also have a kitten. She’s fun to play with.” She pulled in some breath. “I do the same stuff everyone else does.”

  They walked through the parking lot in front of the facility, and he opened the door for her as they stepped inside.

  “Not necessarily the same stuff, Jill. I don’t have a kitty,” he said.

  “You could get one,” she teased.

  He let out a loud laugh. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m more of a dog guy. Maybe I should visit with yours instead.”

  JILLIAN SLUMPED INTO a chair at her desk a few minutes after she and Seth arrived back at the facility. Her face was sweaty, her hair was matted to her head, her clothes were a mess, and her feet were aching too. Next time, she’d make sure she was better prepared. Right now, though, she wondered how she’d get through the rest of the afternoon. She pulled her lunch sack out of the drawer and dropped it on her desk.

  “What happened to you?” Vivian called across the room.

  “I went for a walk, remember?”

  She was exhausted, but she had too much work to do to dwell on how she felt—or what she looked like—at the moment. She tried to wipe the sweat from her forehead with a tissue or two. Her office clothes would need laundering ASAP.

  Seth reappeared with a plastic shopping bag and set it down on her desk. “Here’s the swag I mentioned earlier. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “That would be nice,” she said. “Thanks for the stuff.” She would have preferred flowers or fine jewelry, but it was kind of cute he’d thought about her.

  “Happy to help.” He winked at her and moved away, calling out to Vivian, “So, gorgeous, want to have lunch with me? There’s a hole in my schedule.” Jillian saw him wink at her. “It’s split-pea soup day. You know I love that stuff.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Vivian was blushing again.

  “Oh, I am. Come on. Think how jealous the other guys will be that I have a date and they don’t.”

  “Seth, does your mother know you’re flirting with me?”

  “Oh, she’d want me to.” The two of them walked away, and Jillian took a bite of her reheated leftovers. The phones were quiet. Hopefully, she could eat before she had to start in on the afternoon’s work.

  Vivian arrived back at her desk an hour later, glowing with happiness.

  “Did you have fun?” Jillian called out.

  “Absolutely. Those boys are good for my self-esteem. What a bunch of flirts!” She fanned herself. “That Deion wants to take me out for a drink. I had to tell him no. Wait until I tell my husband about this. He won’t let me out of the house by myself!” She patted her hair and laughed. “Did you know that Seth just broke up with his girlfriend?”

  “He did?” Jillian was not going to bring up her Friday night Google search. Nope. Not going to bring that up.

  “Oh yes. They were together for two years. He said that she’s very jealous, and he’d finally had enough. He also said his younger sister is relieved. Can you imagine?”

  “His sister didn’t like the girlfriend?”

  “Oh no. Seth says he’s single again, so of course the other guys at the table were insisting they’d ‘hook him up.’ There was some name-calling, and I had to threaten to wash someone’s mouth out with soap.”

  Jillian heard the telephone ring, and Vivian picked it up.

  Just the thought that the guys were going to “hook up” Seth with anyone else made Jillian want to smash her coffee mug against her desk. He wasn’t a possibility for her by any stretch of the imagination, but she could still dream, couldn’t she?

  Chapter Three

  JILLIAN’S WEEK SPED by after another lunchtime walk with Seth. She’d given him her number during their last walk, and he was going to text her when he could do another. She pretended like giving her number to a guy she was insanely attracted to happened every day of the week, but when she got home from work that night, she danced around her living room with glee.

  The team wasn’t playing until Monday night, which meant Seth was getting ready for the team’s flight to San Francisco today.

  She pulled up to the back door of a warehouse in Seattle on Saturday morning. The warehouse was part of the headquarters of Treehouse, a local charity that helped foster children have a childhood. Jillian had been volunteering with them for many years. She was digging into the pile of kids’ hats and mittens she’d bought a few days ago at Costco. She’d bought as much as she could afford. They’d go great with the five kids’ winter coats she’d bought last month. She made a good salary with the Sharks, but after paying her bills and putting money in savings and donations, there wasn’t a lot of room for frills.

  She kept coming back to Treehouse because she felt needed. After all, she wanted to be like everyone else, and that was tough to do when others found out the thing they took for granted—a loving family—was something completely foreign to her. She did her best to keep her chin up every day, but it was a relief to be anywhere that there were others who had the same problems in life.

  A staff member hurried past the doorway but doubled
back when he saw her.

  “Hey, Jillian. You bought more stuff? Do you spend any of your paycheck on yourself?” he joked.

  “I found a sale.” She held up one of the winter coats. “These are great, aren’t they?”

  “They are. I really like the white hat and gloves set with the sparkly pony on the side,” he said.

  “I’m kind of into the pink one with the flowers myself,” she said.

  “Need some help?”

  “Nope, I’m good,” she said.

  He gave her a nod and vanished into the building. Everyone here was busy and sometimes overwhelmed, but they did it because they loved the fact they could make a difference.

  Jillian gathered up her donations in both arms, snagged her purse, and hip-checked her car door to shut it.

  Most single women spent their weekends with friends, dancing at clubs, or out on dates. Jillian’s weekends were typically spent supervising other volunteers or chatting with teens who were ready to age out of the system when they visited headquarters. She did whatever she could to be helpful. Some days were heartbreaking. She knew from experience that one person could make the difference between a teenager who believed his or her life could be different and one who just gave up.

  Her former foster parents weren’t the warmest, but they kept her housed, fed, and clothed. Instead of getting a part-time job when she was in school, they’d urged her to study. Jillian’s excellent grades translated into a scholarship to the University of Washington. It took her almost ten years to pay off her student loans when she graduated with a business degree, but even the ability to make the payments was a cause of pride to her. She’d beaten the odds. She was one of the 3 percent of former foster children who graduated from college.

  She didn’t see her foster parents anymore. She sent them a Christmas card each year, but she didn’t receive any invitations to their holiday celebrations in return. Her foster parents had done their best to make sure she had the tools she needed to succeed on her own when she was out of foster care. Unfortunately, their biological children were hostile to her, at best. She wasn’t sure how to salvage a relationship that never happened in the first place. But she was still thankful for the family’s help.

  Everything was quiet so far. It would get a lot crazier at ten AM, when children and their foster parents were allowed into the donations area for “shopping.” Most people had no idea that foster kids received $150 per year from the state of Washington for all grooming needs. It wasn’t enough. Clothing could eat up that $150 in one shopping trip. There were so many things foster children struggled with, even if they had loving and supportive foster parents. Mostly, they wanted to fit in and belong.

  Jillian hung up the five winter coats on a department store rack donated to Treehouse for clothing display. She piled the hats and mittens on another table covered in additional winter wear. After that, she hurried to a multipurpose room where she knew her latest “client” would be waiting. Treehouse had staff members with appropriate training who worked with the kids who were going to college. Jillian didn’t have that training, but she could act as a mentor. She enjoyed any opportunity to help with filling out scholarship and college applications or talking about the future plans of the teens she met. Plus, sometimes the most important skill she possessed was the ability to listen.

  A young woman named Chastity sat at one of the long folding tables shoved up against a wall. She glanced around and grinned as Jillian hurried in.

  “Hey. Sorry, I’m late,” Jillian called out. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” Chastity brushed long black curls out of her eyes. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Good to see you too.”

  Jillian poured herself coffee, splashed in a little nondairy creamer, and took a seat next to Chastity. Chastity was one of the lucky ones—she lived in her cousin’s house. She wouldn’t be asked to leave on her eighteenth birthday when the money stopped coming. She’d have to get a job and earn her way, but she had a roof over her head. At the same time, she longed to go to school, but there wasn’t any money for that right now.

  “How are you doing?” Jillian asked.

  “I’m okay. I filled out the scholarship paperwork and applications for school. There’s just one problem.” Chastity tried to peel off some chipped nail polish with her thumbnail.

  “What’s that?”

  “Application fees,” Charity said. “I hope I’ll get at least one scholarship. My grades are good, but . . . ” She studied the ceiling. “I wonder if I should go to a voc-tech instead.”

  “Why?”

  “The programs are shorter. I’ll get out with a skill.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you wanted to be a clothing designer?” Jillian said.

  “Yeah, but it . . . I want something I can find a job at right away. Maybe I can work on that in my spare time.” She wasn’t looking at Jillian. It was hard to look into someone else’s eyes and know you were failing, and you hadn’t even had a chance to try.

  “What would you like to do instead?”

  Chastity folded her arms over her chest. “I was thinking about the food service program.”

  “Do you like food service?”

  “It’s okay.” She looked at the floor and bit her lower lip. “I could do it.”

  “But you’d hate it.”

  “I’d be making money.”

  Jillian took a sip of coffee. Chastity had shown her some of the designs she’d done and a few of the outfits she’d made on an old sewing machine her foster mother had bought at a thrift shop for twenty dollars. Jillian was amazed at what seemed to be a surprising amount of talent. Chastity dressed herself out of donations and thrift-store finds; she seemed to know what went with what and why. She made other people’s castoffs look fresh and new.

  “Okay. If you really want to apply to the voc-tech, I believe Treehouse can cover the application fee. I want you to apply to the School of Apparel Design and Development at Seattle Central Community College, though. If you’ll apply, I’ll pay your application fee.”

  Chastity’s eyebrows shot up. “You would?”

  “Yeah. When you’re a famous designer, you can pay someone else’s fee.”

  Chastity seemed like she didn’t know what to say but then blurted out, “Absolutely. Thank you.”

  Jillian pulled her checkbook out of her purse, wrote a check for the amount payable to the community college, and handed it to Chastity. “That should cover it, but if you need additional application fees, please let me know.” Jillian noted the check and the amount in her check register and glanced up at Chastity again. “How’s everything else going?”

  “My cousin has a new boyfriend.” She wrapped her arms around her midsection. “He wants me to move out.”

  “What does your cousin say?”

  “She says I can stay, but she’s not going to let me stay if he says he’ll leave.”

  This was the hardest part of the work for Jillian. She couldn’t take anyone else into her five-hundred-square-foot apartment. She knew she couldn’t offer everyone a home, everything they needed, or even a sense of belonging, but that didn’t prevent her from wanting to. The worst thing about being a foster child wasn’t the fact that you didn’t have a lot. You got used to that. It was the fact that no matter how hard you tried, every bit of security you’d worked so hard for could be ripped away in a matter of moments.

  To this day, Jillian had a change of clothing and some emergency money in a backpack in her bedroom closet, just in case. She realized a therapist would have a field day with her reasons for doing this, and she wondered how long it would be before she could unpack that change of clothes and put the money back in her checking account. Other people had someone to rely on—a family member, a friend, a spouse. She had nobody but herself. Well, she had her friend, Kari, who would try to help if Jillian needed her. Ultimately, though, Jillian was on her own.

  Chastity wrapped her arms more tightly around he
rself, and Jillian felt her own stomach knot in fear. If Chastity could stay at her cousin’s for a while longer, she could go to school. Her chances for a somewhat successful adulthood would only increase with education and a stable living environment. Jillian pulled in a breath, despite wondering if her lungs would let her do so.

  “Your cousin knows you need a place to live. She wouldn’t kick you out over some guy,” Jillian reassured her.

  They both knew the truth, but sometimes it was easier to lie—Chastity’s cousin wouldn’t kick her out. Nobody’s family member would ever decline to take them in or steal what little any foster kids had or abuse them. They’d all grow up to be healthy and successful adults. It was the lie they told themselves to get through another day, another foster home, another reminder that they didn’t fit in.

  Jillian patted Chastity’s upper arm. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Chastity glanced up from a long examination of her chipped fingernail polish. “Yeah.”

  Jillian picked up the forms. “Let’s get these into some envelopes, and I’ll mail them on my way home. Want a cookie or something?”

  “I’d like that.” Chastity and Jillian headed off down another long hallway to the office area.

  Chapter Four

  THE EARLY SEPTEMBER sun was sinking on the horizon as Seth walked through the front door of his parents’ house a day after he arrived home from San Francisco. The Sharks had annihilated the Miners in their season opener, so he had today off.

  He liked not grabbing for his keys when he stopped by to visit, but he wasn’t so sure his mom’s front-door-unlocked policy was a great idea these days. The vast majority of Sharks fans were nice people. There was always a small percentage, though, who would think it was cool to pay an uninvited visit to one of his family members. Hopefully, those individuals had no idea where his parents lived.