That was, up until today. I wasn’t a popular and, given my whole opinion on the matter, having that ridiculous crown on my head and wand thingy stuffed in my back pocket just felt wrong.
“I know you had something to do with this, Jude Ryder.” I turned my most powerful glare on him. “And don’t expect this to be something I forgive and forget.”
He was fighting a losing battle to keep his smile contained. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t help it if Southpointe High has elected you their newest ‘it’ girl.”
I was tempted to tear the crown off and break it in two in front of him when Taylor waved back at me, her own crown proudly sparkling on top of her wet poodle hairdo.
“Hey, Pinocchio,” I said, inspecting his face. “Your nose just grew like five inches.”
“Whatever, princess.”
Turning an impressive glower on him, the crowd showered another string of curses and garbage down on the field. Then, whether someone with poor aim—or dead on accuracy—behind us threw a half empty bottle of orange soda, it cartwheeled right into my temple.
It surprised me more than anything, but Jude’s face did the Mr. Hyde thing. Veins were already bulging when he spun around on the bleacher, glaring up and down the bleachers before his eyes latched onto someone.
“Hey, asshole!” he hollered, shoving through the row behind us. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Shaking my head, I turned my attention back down at the game, trying to drown out Jude’s curses and threats as he shouldered through the crowd. Right then, the quarterback was sacked, sacked hard, and the ball went flying into the opposing team’s hands.
Another touchdown and our quarterback wasn’t getting up. The crowd went quiet as a couple of khaki slack wearing guys ran out onto the field. They crouched down beside him, moving and rotating a few things until they sat him up. The injured player pulled his helmet off before slinging an arm over each of their shoulders.
It was Sawyer. More like, of course it was Sawyer.
He was such the stereotypical quarterback. I almost wanted to cheer for the other team until he started limping across the field, using the guys beside him as crutches. I told myself to be nice, he couldn’t help it if he was a jackass. That degree of it was born into a man.
“OMG, Lucy,” Taylor squealed, appearing from out of nowhere beside me. Her red and gold cheerleading outfit, shimmery pom-poms, topped off with a tiara and wand thingamajig, was an embodiment of everything that was wrong with high school popularity contests.
“Please, Taylor, for the love of functional acronyms everywhere,” I smiled angelically over at her, “don’t ever say OMG again.”
Steamrolling right past my request, she repeated, “OMG, Sawyer is out. Like, possibly out for the season from what Coach Arcadia just said to Jason, who told Jackson, who told me.”
“Wait,” I said, grabbing her arms. “Coach Arcadia? As in Bill Arcadia?” From the back, I couldn’t tell if that was Coach A down there on the sidelines, but I didn’t think it was likely there would be another Arcadia who coached football in the area.
“Yeah, I think that’s his first name,” Taylor replied, looking at me like she was hoping some scandalous news was to follow. “He transferred a few years back from some yuppy private school. Apparently there’s some juicy reason why, but I haven’t gotten the intel on that one yet. You know him?”
I sighed again. That seemed to be the appropriate response whenever Taylor was around. “He was the coach at my old school. Everyone knew Coach A,” I explained, but that’s all the explaining I’d be doing. Taylor and I were casual friends, but I’d never trust her with a piece of information I wasn’t cool with the whole school finding out about.
“You went to that school?” She appraised me like it was positively impossible.
“Yep.”
“And you transferred to Southpointe why?”
Keeping a straight face, I answered, “For the academics.”
Not getting the irony in this, or maybe Jude was right and I was impossible when it came to the dry humor department, she grabbed hold of my arm again, frowning down at the sidelines. “With Sawyer out of the game and Lucas on academic probation, we are screwed.”
I stared at the scoreboard.
“We’re screwed even more,” Taylor replied, grimacing at the scoreboard.
Looking over my shoulder, I really wished Jude would get his manhunt done with and come rescue me from Taylor and her nonstop drama-thon. I found him marching up the concrete stairs, aiming an empty water bottle at a boy who was scrambling as fast as he could go up the stairs. Jude arched his arm back and spiraled that bottle straight into the back of the guy’s head. From a good thirty yards away.
I had an answer to everyone’s problems.
“Excuse me, Taylor,” I said, walking around her. “I’ve got to do something.”
“Don’t be gone long!” she shouted after me. “Homecoming royalty makes their debut during halftime.”
I shot her a thumbs up and jogged down the stairs. The game was still in time out while Southpointe’s coaching staff scrambled to figure out which bench warmer they’d make a quarterback when I leapt over the fence. Shoving my way through nut and head scratching football players, I came up behind Coach A and tapped on his shoulder.
He didn’t turn around at first; he was caught up in intense decision making with the rest of his coaching staff. So I tapped him again.
“Coach A!” I yelled over the noise.
“What?!” he hollered, spinning around. The look of irritation on his face melted as soon as he saw me. “Lucy?”
“Hey, Coach A,” I greeted, feeling like I should give him a hug, except that would only start a new rumor about me being some sort of teacher seducer or some crazy ass shit like that. Coach A had been my brother’s football coach since the seventh grade—he’d been like unofficial family.
“Lucy?” he said again, looking at me like I couldn’t possibly be here. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m a student,” I said, feeling the scar I liked to keep sutured closed rip open again. “I transferred this year.”
“That’s great,” he said, waving off one of his assistant coaches. “But I meant, what are you doing here?” He motioned to the football field I was toeing.
“Oh,” I said, looking over at Sawyer, who had his foot elevated. He was watching me, smiling his Sawyer smile, and waved. I didn’t reciprocate, injured player or not. “I come bearing a solution to your lack of quarterback situation.”
Coach A grinned a smile of amusement. “Of course you have, Lucy. Still trying to save the world?”
“Always,” I said, “and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s working. The world is still here.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “So what’s your solution to my quarterback problem?”
“You know Jude Ryder?” I looked up into the stands, where Jude was back in our spot and looking around for me.
“Everyone does,” he replied, surveying me like I’d gone bonkers. “How does Jude Ryder solve my problems?”
I didn’t even pause. “Let him play QB,” I said. I didn’t let Coach A’s choking on his own breath stop me. “He’s stronger than your two best guys put together, he’s got an arm the Mannings would envy, and he’s accurate as a sniper.”
Coach A’s expression didn’t change.
“I’ve seen him, Coach. He’s the real deal.”
He stayed quiet for a while, appraising me. He knew from experience I wasn’t a putz when it came to football. I’d been to at least twenty games a year since I was a toddler—that wasn’t what he was struggling with. It was the Jude part he was all bent out of shape about.
“Give him a shot,” I said, not above begging. “It’s not like you can lose any more than we already are.”
Coach A muttered something under his breath.
“I’m going to lose my license over this, but what the hell?” he said, slid
ing his hat off. Looking over at me, he raised a brow. “So, where is Southpointe High’s newest quarterback?”
I shot him a grin which he mirrored. “Right,” I began, spinning to survey the stands. However, a broad chest was blocking my line of sight. “Here,” I finished, that warm, melty feeling picking up right where it left off.
“I turn my back on you for two seconds and you disappear on me,” Jude said, his brow furled. “How can I look after you if I don’t know where you are?”
“Look after me? Jude, we’re at a high school football game.” This whole protective thing had just taken on a whole new level.
“Exactly. There are at least three dozen ways a girl like you could get hurt at one of these things. If you want to go somewhere else, next time just wait for me and I’ll go with you.” His face was lined with worry, which worried me. This kind of territorial was a bit much. I was all for protecting your woman and all that credo, but I wasn’t for you can’t go anywhere, do anything, or think your own thoughts without my approval.
“Jude,” I grabbed the side of his arm, “chill. I was just catching up with Coach A.”
“Now probably isn’t the time to be shooting the breeze with Coach Arcadia, Luce,” Jude said, glancing down at Sawyer, who was still watching us. Jude smiled like the devil where Sawyer was propped up on the bench. “It looks like the man’s got to take care of some problems.”
“His problems are taken care of now,” I said, crossing my blanketed arms one over the other.
Coach A glanced up from his clipboard, appraising Jude and likely second guessing his decision. “Suit up, son,” he commanded, nodding towards the locker rooms. “I think I can stall the refs a few more minutes, but not much longer than that. They want to go home and get dry just as badly as the rest of us.”
“Hold up, Coach.” Jude raised his hand. “Why are you ordering me to go suit up? I’m not one of your ass slapping players.”
Coach A looked at me. “You are now.”
Jude was quick. “Luce?”
One word and he might have well have asked a dozen questions. The man had mastered the art of inflection.
Arching a brow, I waved an imaginary pom-pom. “Go, Southpointe.”
CHAPTER NINE
There was nothing but an inch and a half of free space on the first bleacher. It would work. There was no way I was missing out on Jude jogging out of that locker room.
If he did.
I wasn’t sure just how pissed he was with me for my latest bout of solve the world’s problems-itis, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was somewhere between ragin’ cajun and a rabid badger.
Squeezing in between two guys with bare chests and Go Spartans painted in blood red across their stomachs, I sucked in everything that could be sucked and hoped I could hold my breath for two and half more quarters.
“Lucy!” a voice shouted over at me. “Lucy!” and again.
Try as I might, I could not escape the suffocating fog that was Taylor Donovan. “Get down here!” she motioned at me, waving at a space where she and her apostles stood clapping, kicking, and ra-ra-ra’ing.
Being front and center in a cheerleader sandwich wasn’t my first choice, but it was better than my current situation. Half naked boy to my right threw his arms into the air, yelling, “Go, Spartans!” and it was immediately clear he didn’t believe in, own, or use enough deodorant.
Paint me crimson and gold and call me Go, Fight, Win Wendy—I couldn’t get to those cheerleaders fast enough.
“What were you doing up there sandwiched between Dumb and Dumber?” Taylor asked, weaving her arm through mine. “You do realize you probably just made their night because I’m certain that was the first time either of them had gotten anywhere near copping a feel.”
“Eww.” I shuddered. “Taylor, please check the visuals at the door. I’m totally creeping out right now.”
“Well, you’re lucky I saved you,” she said, motioning at a few other cheerleaders. No big surprise they were the girls that sat at our lunch table, but the only names I could remember were Lexie and Samantha. “Besides, a girl like you belongs down here. I saw your tumbling routine in gym this week and you’ve obviously done this before.”
Of course Taylor would be the one person to catch a glimpse of my improv dance routine on the mats while I was waiting for everyone else to suit up. “I cheered at my last school,” I said. “But only because they didn’t have a dance team.”
“Well, we have a dance team here, but that’s just where the girls who are too fat or ugly to cheer go.” Not even a smidgen of remorse in her delivery. “You don’t want to join the dance team. You belong with us.”
A few of the other girls circled around us and nodded their heads.
“Since Holly didn’t come back this year, we’ve got an extra uniform and we just can’t form a proper pyramid without a tenth team mate.”
“Thanks for the offer, Taylor, but really, I’m more the dance team type of girl. Plus, I heard Southpointe’s has won some state champion—”
She lifted her hand to cut me off. “You’re cheerleader material. You’re gorg, you have experience, and ninety percent of the male student body is already jacking off to you.” Another visual I really could have done without. “The other ten percent is still undeclared in the sexuality department,” she whispered.
“There’s a potpourri of reasons to join if I’ve ever heard some,” I muttered, wondering if I was better off sniffing rancid armpits and getting “accidentally” felt up all night.
And that’s when Jude came jogging out onto the field. I forgot about Taylor, and armpits, and the whole damn world. There was nothing but him. And gold spandex forming over parts that flexed and stretched and pulled and made me forget how to blink.
“Who, in all God’s gracious green earth,” Taylor said, leaning over the fence, “is that?”
Just then, he looked over, meeting my eyes, and the smile that broke over his face couldn’t be disguised by the helmet’s face guard. Extending his arm, he pointed at me all the way to where the rest of Southpointe’s football team huddled at the twenty yard line.
“That, Taylor,” I said, weaving my fingers through the fence, “is Jude Ryder.”
“I knew there was a God,” she breathed.
“Yes,” I agreed, smiling as he squirmed in his spandex, “there most certainly is.”
“So are you guys . . .”
“Taylor,” I warned, spinning on her.
“What?” she said, adjusting the crown on her head. “Something is definitely going on with you two, and the only thing I’m more certain about than that is it’s not just a friend relationship.”
“We’re friends,” I said because I didn’t have any other title for what we were. We’d kissed in ways that were illegal in forty-nine states, spent every free moment at school together, he looked after me, I watched over him, but we were, as far as I knew, in no way exclusive. I didn’t have a claim to him, although I wanted that. But did he want the same?
“Honey, a girl can’t keep a man like that as a friend. He’s a lover or an ex-lover, but never a friend. Men like that weren’t created to be a woman’s friend—they were created to make a woman hit high C three times in a row.”
Another colorful visual by Taylor Donovan, although this one I didn’t mind as much. “Sorry, Taylor. I don’t know what to tell you. I care about him. He cares about me. If that doesn’t make us friends in your book, go ahead and label us whatever you like.”
Her eyebrows went sky high.
“Except for that,” I clarified.
The buzzer sounded and the two teams lined up, Jude in the QB spot looking like a giant playing a game with a bunch of munchkins. Snatching a pom-pom from Taylor, I lifted it in the air and shook the hell out of it. “Go, Spartans!” I hollered. “Come on, Ryder! Let’s see what you’ve got!”
It was a long way off, and he was crouched in position, but I would have bet my worn-in pointe shoes a smug smile appea
red.
“Hut. Hut. Hike!” the center shouted, hiking the ball back to Jude. You could feel the collective breath every single Southpointe fan in the bleachers took.
Jude caught it easily and, instead of throwing it a respectable twenty-five yards to get us a first down, he cradled that football into his side and ran. In fact, he sprinted, sprinted like he was running from the cops. I grinned, realizing his speed work likely had something to do with evading the cops.
It was a long shot, hoping to run the football into the end zone when we were eighty yards back, but the only person who didn’t seem concerned with that was Jude. He ran like he couldn’t not finish in the end zone. He ran like no one could stop him.
And no one could.
Player after player from Cascade High tried to block him or tackle him, a few even tried to trip him or take him down by grabbing his face mask. None of them were successful. The ones who missed Jude’s stiff arm were just swatted off like they weren’t varsity grade high school football players.
At the fifty, the crowd busted into a roar. Everyone was hooting and hollering and swinging their arms in the direction of the end zone. Beyond every law of physics, Jude’s pace picked up.
By the time he hit the twenty, there were no more Cascade High players to stop him. They all decorated the astroturf like a box of fallen toothpicks. Jude danced the last few yards into the end zone, shaking and shimmying in those gold spandex pants, eliciting an uptick in the female hollering.
Once in the end zone, he spiked the ball and then turned to face the crowd. Everyone was going crazy, like they’d just witnessed the birth of Jesus and the invention of electricity at the same time. Jude was a rock star, their savior, and they were paying him homage.
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