Mr. Sportsball

by K. P. Haigh

  And I'm guessing he's someone who does like sports. Judging by the way his shoulders taper down to his waist, I get the sense that he's on first-name terms with his local gym.

  I lift my shoulders and scrunch my nose as if to say What are ya gonna do? I have no idea why I'm being so honest with a stranger in a sports bar. If I repeated what I just said loud enough, they might drag me to the back and shoot me. We are in one of the most fiercely loyal college towns in the Midwest—sports are life.

  "I had to know…what is a girl who doesn't like sports doing in the middle of a sports bar?"

  It finally registers. Ah, he came over to inspect the freak of nature. A tiny part of me is disappointed; he wasn't coming over to hit on me. "That's why you came over?"

  He nods.

  My openness shuts like a thickly bound book. "Well, I'm waiting for a friend who loves the wings here." I wonder if he'll walk away now that the case is closed. Something bristles in me. Silly me for thinking he came over for anything other than solving the mystery of the preoccupied nerd.

  Baron leans his bare forearms on the table, and I try not to stare. I can be uninterested in more than just this bar.

  "So, are you not into any sports, or just the ones that get a lot of airtime? Do you root for the underdog, like curling or archery or something?"

  Why is he still here? I don't really want to be the guppy in the fishbowl anymore. My tone takes on a sour bite. "Nope. I'm not really a fan of anything with points and a scoreboard."

  "Hmm." He smirks, and one of his eyes closes more than the other, as if he's slowly winking at me.

  It only makes me prickle more.

  "What don't you like about them?" Baron's poking a sleeping dragon.

  I've never been a fan of the world that pretty much everyone else goes stark-raving mad over. Something in me snaps. You want to understand the freak of nature? Fine. "What's your favorite sport?" I ask.

  "I have to pick one?"

  God, I bet this guy played all the sports in high school, was one of those who had a different set of teams every season. I bet his mom spent half her life in a minivan. Poor woman.

  "Yes, just one."

  "Okay. Football."

  I'm secretly pleased with his choice. I can rail on soccer players for their no-hands-but-heads-are-cool rule for a little while, but football? Football has a special place in the dark crevice of my disdain.

  "Football is a bunch of stupid, oversized beasts who just want to get their aggression out while being strapped down with enough protection to make it seem like running at each other at full force is a good idea."

  Baron chuckles softly, like he's heard that one before. I'm surprised he doesn't immediately try to refute my hatred with a long list of the wonderful things about the sport. His silence just eggs me on.

  "The whole system is rigged to make a bunch of money for universities by exploiting the physical talents of kids while pushing them so hard they can't actually focus on getting a decent education."

  That really gets me. I watched my own university make buckets of cash from its players, and I met a couple of them along the way. They could barely keep up with their coursework. It makes my blood boil.

  "There's no guarantee they'll be able to play after college, and if they do, they'll get so many concussions, their brain will be useless after they're retired."

  Baron's smile fades and his eyebrows are heavy in thought. He lets me continue, and now that I've started, my words are a runaway train.

  "And the fans? Ohmygod, if your team doesn't win—which, spoiler alert, you only have a fifty percent shot that they will—your whole day is ruined after you already wasted four hours watching big brutes chase after each other and a stupid ball that isn't even round. Come on, do something productive. Go outside for a hike instead of sitting inside and eating a plate of nachos."

  I stop, satisfied that I've played the freak show part, and I take a drink from my almost empty beer.

  Baron watches me closely, but he stays at the table.

  "Don't you want to leave now?" I ask. "I'm sure I've offended you."

  Baron's face lights up with a smile that could power a small city as he starts to laugh. "No—if anything, I really want to stay. Not many women are that honest. You're fascinating and sexy as hell when you get feisty."

  Oh.

  I don't see Andie walk up until she reaches the side of the table between Baron and me. She's staring at Baron like he's Tarzan plucked directly out of the jungle, a mixture of disbelief and holy-shit-he's-hot playing on her face.

  Baron finally breaks his eye contact with me, and I realize I haven't taken a full, deep breath since he sat down. My heart is working like I just ran a seven-minute mile.

  "This must be your friend." He gives Andie an appreciative smile. "Thanks for letting me borrow your seat."

  Andie just stands there, her eyes wide. I don't remember the last time I've seen her shell-shocked.

  Baron's attractive, but we live in a college town. It's not like we're at a loss for attractive young guys around here. A new batch gets delivered every fall.

  Baron stands up and takes a step toward me. He reaches into his back pocket and presses a napkin in front of me on the table. "I really hope you'll use this. I'd love to see you again."

  I look down and see ten numbers scrawled across the white, Halftime-branded napkin. When I look back up, Baron is two steps away from the front door. I almost chase after him to clarify. Is this your phone number? Did you just ask me out?

  Andie sits down across from me and starts hyperventilating. "What. Just. Happened?"

  "What?" That's twice now in a matter of seconds that I feel like I'm missing something.

  "Don't you know who that was?"

  "Some guy at a bar? He said his name was Baron."

  "Monty. That was Bear Richards." Andie's eyes are serious, but I swear she said the word “bear”—she can't be serious.

  "What are you talking about? Who's Bear Richards? He said his name was Baron."

  Andie sighs like she has to re-explain the quadratic equation to me.

  "Baron 'Bear' Richards is one of the star players on Detroit's football team. He's a beast on the field and sex-on-a-friggin-goalpost off it, and he just gave you his number."

  It takes me a few seconds to process this new information, probably because I'm scrambling to replay the conversation I just had with Baron while my brain is in a beer haze.

  My face runs the whole gamut of the Valentine's Day color spectrum. I just told a professional football player he was a big doofus who was likely to end his career with a horrific injury and no education to actually make anything of himself afterward.

  Lovely.

  The way I see it, I have two options: massive embarrassment or blind denial.

  "Um, can we just forget about this for now?" Yup, I'm taking the blissfully ignorant route.

  I can tell Andie wants to get the very detailed play-by-play of this encounter, but there's a reason why we're best friends; she knows when I get backed into an emotional corner, I curl up and try to pretend I don't exist. So, she nods and picks up a menu.

  I slip the napkin into my purse and chug the last three gulps of beer from my glass.

  I have no idea what I'm going to do with the number, but I do know I'm going to try to forget about it for now.

  For the first time in my life, I'm grateful for the two dozen television screens lining the walls of Halftime. I'll take any distraction I can get.

  Andie comes back to my apartment after we eat a bucket of wings and down three more beers—each. I'm toeing the line between blissfully tipsy and haphazardly drunk. Okay, maybe I am violently swaying, but still.

  At least drinking has dulled my senses enough that I don't implode from lust every time I think about Baron. Although…it has lowered my inhibitions, so I might just start humping a pillow like a puppy.

  You win some, you lose some.

  When I throw my purse onto the bed, it
hits the edge and tumbles to the ground, dumping all the contents out on the floor. Andie and I both bend down to pick up the various vital accouterments—lip balm, wallet, keys…professional football player's cell number.

  Andie picks up the napkin and stares at it. "You really didn't know who he was?"

  "Nope," I say, followed by a hiccup. Hmm. I think I'm veering onto the wrong side of the inebriation line.

  "You didn't recognize his face?"

  "Why would I recognize his face if I don't follow football?"

  "I don't know. He's had like a million sponsorship deals, and he’s only like twenty-seven or something. He was good enough to stand out in college, and when he got drafted by Detroit, he took it to a whole new level. It helps that he looks like a freaking Adonis. He shows up everywhere now. I wouldn't be surprised if he was on one of those cereal boxes."

  "I'm more of an oatmeal fan, myself. Besides, I've never idolized the .001 percent of people who are genetically gifted enough to play professional sports."

  "You don't have to watch the sport to appreciate the physique."

  She's had a front row seat for my disdain for sports—particularly football—for years, yet it still throws her that I wouldn't at least keep up on the eligible players.

  "I saw the way you looked at Baron. You'd let him lift you up and press you up against a wall any day of the week."

  I don't care about eligibility or body fat percentage; the main point is still the same. "But he is a football player. You know how well that worked out for me last time."

  Andie rolls her eyes. "Yeah, but we're not in high school any more. Bear seemed really nice."

  "Hey, you were wrong last time, and I have the emotionally scarring humiliation to prove it." I swear if you lifted up my shirt, you’d see the embarrassment tattooed somewhere on my body.

  "I'm sorry I told you that cheerleader girl was nice. To be fair, I was thinking of the wrong cheerleader. Besides, I was drunk on a diet of Top 40 radio, Friday Night Lights, and teenage hormones. Everything was the beginning of an epic love story," she reasoned with a casual shrug.

  "And now you're just drunk."

  Andie looks at me with a sneaky little grin. "Then you won't mind if I call him."

  She's trying to call my bluff, but I'm not going to take the bait. "Nope."

  Her grin only grows wider. She swipes her thumb across the phone in her hand and starts pressing the numbers written on the napkin into the keypad.

  Wait. The case on her phone looks different. She presses the last button and moves it up to her ear. Ohmygod, that's my phone. I reach out for it, but considering Andie is two beers shy of my five, she dodges my advance easily.

  I hear the line ringing. Please don't pick up. I take another step toward Andie and reach for her shirt. I catch the edge of the hem and tug. She trips and I lose my grip, sending us both down to the floor. My phone flies out of her hand and lands two inches in front of me.

  Aha! I grab it, scrambling to hit the red ‘end’ button. It takes about four flailing jabs, but it finally stops ringing.

  "What were you thinking?" I'm livid.

  Andie is unfazed. "I was thinking that a hot guy gave you his number and you should go out with him."

  "You're a psycho."

  "I'm a psycho who loves you."

  I take a deep breath. Andie and I are wildly different people, but she's my people. Even though she drives me crazy sometimes, I love her too.

  At least the call didn't connect.

  I take a deep breath, and my world starts to spin with a beer-bubbled hue. I decide to drop it and get ready for bed instead.

  I walk over to the bathroom to brush my teeth. "You're crashing here tonight, right?"

  "Yup. I'm not walking all the way back to my apartment now. I need to wake up early and get more work done, so I'll be out before you wake up."

  I look back and see Andie pulling some sweatpants off the chair by my desk. Yup, she loves me. She knows the pile of clothes by my desk is always the clean pile. She's going to have to roll them up about ten times in order for them to fit.

  It reminds me of what it was like sitting across from Baron. I felt tiny compared to him, which doesn't happen very often.

  I need to snap out of it. He's not a date, he’s just someone who gave me his number…which I'm not going to use…ever.

  I start to brush my teeth and try to piece together how two very different people could be best friends. A little neon Baron sign lights up in my brain, but I'm not with it enough to process the thought.

  Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and this will all seem like a funny story I’ll talk about when I'm old and senile. When I was younger, this big-shot Mr. Sportsball gave me his number.

  They'll never believe me.

  Ohmygod, make those bells stop. Somebody, please.

  It's as if they're clanging together an inch away from my ear. I lift my hand and try to swat whatever stupid thing is making that sound.

  I hit my bedside table with a loud and painful thump, and something falls to the floor.

  The bells stop. Finally.

  I hear a muffled "Hello?" coming from the floor.

  Oh shit. I jolt up, and it feels like I just stepped off a moving walkway. Even though I've stopped, my body feels as if it's still moving right along.

  "Hello…Monty?"

  Ohmygod. My brain feels like it got dunked in a bucket of thick sap. All my thoughts are sticking together.

  I reach down, grab my phone off the floor, and press the screen to the side of my face.

  "Hi." My voice sounds as if it's being pulled against sandpaper.

  "Rough night?" The voice on the other end sounds like the strings of a bass guitar being pulled back and released, filling the room with warm, rich vibration. It hits me—I know that voice.

  I'm going to kill Andie.

  "Baron?"

  "Yeah. You called me last night…?"

  Oh Andie, when my brain stops sticking to itself, I'm going to figure out an elaborate plan of revenge.

  Right now, I don't think I can put multiple sentences together. I can't explain that it was my phone but not me that called. I keep it simple. "Yup."

  "I'm glad you did. I thought I had a fifty-fifty shot."

  He thought he had a fifty-fifty shot? I'm pretty sure if I Google his exes, it's going to give me a composite image result of some of the most eligible ladies in America—hell, in the world.

  I don't know how to form a coherent reply.

  "So…" Baron presses the conversation along. "Can I take you out on a date? Maybe this Friday?"

  I don't need to pull up my calendar to know my schedule is wide open. The problem is, I don't know how to say no. My brain isn't firing fast enough to come up with an excuse that won't have him just offering up another day instead.

  I'm awful at saying no even in the best of circumstances, and this is the worst-case scenario.

  My only option is a yes that I can beg off of later. "That sounds good."

  I'll come up with my way out when I'm not hungover. Better yet, I'll make Andie figure it out.

  "Cool." His word choice is casual, but even on the phone, I can tell he's smiling. "Want to meet downtown at Halftime at 8? I promise I won't actually make you go in."

  I appreciate that he's not trying to pick me up at my place. Halftime is common ground.

  "Sure."

  "Okay, I'll let you get back to it. I'm excited for Friday."

  "Me too." It comes out flat, but saying Good for you doesn't really have the same effect when you're both theoretically supposed to be excited.

  The call ends, and I immediately open my calendar app and set an event for Friday at 8: Date I need to cancel.

  I turn my phone on silent and drop my head back onto the pillow. I don't care if the president calls asking for my advice about how to stop global warming; my brainpower is maxed out, and I think I need about a Sleeping Beauty's curse worth of rest to recuperate.

  I walk
into work on Monday with jittery nerves and a flash drive of my best photos from Friday's donor event. I updated my portfolio and sent it to Irene Collins first thing this morning, and I think I've pressed refresh on my inbox about two thousand times already.

  How long does it take for one of the richest women in the world to pass along a resume?

  I wish there was email tracking so I could see that I sent the package, it was picked up by the carrier, it arrived at its final destination, and the recipient signed for it.

  Instead, I just have to wait. And wait. And wait.

  At least I have work to distract me.

  The Ann Arbor Daily office looks impressive from the outside—all columns, arches, and big windows—but inside, it's one wood-paneled wall away from being a 1970s time capsule. Even the air smells like it's just been recycled over and over for the last forty-plus years.

  I have a weekly meeting with my boss, Olive, at 9:30AM to go over what she needs for the week. It's only a ten-minute appointment sandwiched between dozens of other meetings with the writers, photographers, and editors she manages. I'm a cog in the wheel. I think if she could cut our time down to five minutes, she would.

  I walk up to Olive's office door and look through the window next to it to see her leaning back in her chair, looking at something on her computer. Her face is unreadable, but if I'm waiting for Olive to look blatantly happy, I'll be waiting for a really, really long time.

  This is my job—hopefully not forever, but it is right now.

  I rap my knuckles lightly on the door frame, and Olive looks up and lifts her hand to wave me in.

  We start with the obvious business: how Friday went, where she needs me this week, what freelancers are going on vacation that I need to cover for.

  She stops after the last event request on her list and takes off her black-rimmed glasses. She closes her eyes for longer than a blink. She opens them, but she doesn't look straight at me. It's as if there's a poster of diminishing letters behind me and she's trying to test how far down she can read.

  "Later this month, we'd like you to take a long vacation."

  My heart stops. Is that like suspension for grownups? Did Donna in accounting report me when I accidentally ran into her and grabbed her boob? I swear it wasn’t on purpose. I lost my balance and reached out without looking where my arms were headed.