Most Likely to Score
“Exactly. They didn’t go over the top and send me to Chinese school and all that, but they found little ways to bring it into their lives.” A smile crosses her face, and her eyes twinkle. “Like, they gave me dollar bills in little red envelopes during Chinese New Year. I liked that a lot.”
I chuckle. “That is a most excellent cultural celebration. Another good luck symbol?”
“It is. My people love their luck.”
“Hey, my people love their luck, too.”
“You mean the Becketts?”
“Yeah, but mostly me. I love hearing about all your lucky symbols, since I’m the most superstitious guy around. I’m going to have to eat a pomelo a day during the season now that you’ve hooked me on them,” I tell her, and she smiles in a way that makes my heart thump harder.
“Were your parents superstitious?”
“Not really. But my dad has his own theory about luck. He’s very much of the mindset that luck means sometimes you lose and sometimes you win. Growing up, he tried to teach me to keep an even head about winning or losing, to remind me that success on the field is about talent and effort, but also luck. The way the ball falls, how a foot lands, how the wind blows.”
“Do you believe that?”
I lean back and rub a hand over my jaw. “I want to. But I also think if I’m not out there busting my ass every second, then I’m not serving my team or my fans or myself. That’s probably why I follow different superstitions about the game. I give a hundred and ten percent on the field—that I can control. But I can’t control the wind, and I can’t control the refs, so I have my little rituals.”
“You do serve the team every day. You give it your all. I love watching you play. I can tell football feeds your soul.”
She’s right on the last count. The game absolutely commands my heart and my head. But I like the other thing she said, too. I raise an eyebrow. “You like watching me play?”
She nods.
I take a deep, satisfied breath. “That makes me want to make a big circus catch for you. To be on the field and raise my hands in a J so you’ll know when I dive for a ball, I’m doing it for you.” I bring her fingers to my lips and kiss them. “Still can’t believe you didn’t know I wanted you.”
“I didn’t think I was your type.”
I scoop my hands under her waist and tug her on top of me, meeting her gaze. “Jillian, my type is you. If we didn’t work together, I would be doing everything possible to get you to keep seeing me every night.”
“You would?” Her cheeks seem to glow.
“I would.”
“Stay the night?”
“You want to sleep on me again, don’t you?”
“I do.”
After we brush our teeth, since the hotel has extra toothbrushes in each room, and slide under the covers, she whispers something to me that makes me wish this wasn’t ending. “I like you so much. I have for so long.”
And I wish I could have her completely.
As dawn rises, she stirs in my arms. I kiss her cheek, run my fingers down her arm, and breathe her in. This is what I will miss most.
Waking up with her.
19
Jillian
Twin shrieks of ten-year-old glee echo in the cavernous indoor pool area. Fourth-grader Charlie splashes vigorously as his classmate Emma raises her arms up high. “Me, me, me!” the girl squeals.
The man of the hour lifts a beach ball high above his head from several feet away in the deeper water. Taking aim, Jones tosses it toward the kids. Emma catches it and shouts once more in excitement as she splashes onto her back. When she pops up, she turns to the deck and waves at her mom, who stands next to me.
The trim, tired woman in a haggard ponytail smiles at her young daughter, snapping a picture of her playing in the pool at the end of the day.
“Okay to post online?” the mom asks me.
“Absolutely.”
Emma dolphins her way to the side of the pool. “Mom! This is the best day ever.” The girl dunks her head underwater, pushes off, and swims to find another ball, presumably to launch at Jones.
“She wants to be a kicker,” her mom says, gazing admiringly at the young girl. “Crazy dream, I’m sure.”
“You never know. Perhaps she can be the first female kicker in the NFL someday.”
The mom nods, a dreamy look in her eyes but a disbelieving note in her voice. “Maybe someday.”
It’s unlikely, but you never know what might happen.
“Thank you again for all this.” She waves at the pool and behind her to the rest of the rec center.
“It was all Jones,” I say, giving credit where credit is due.
This was his brilliant idea. After I called Andre last night, he put things in motion to make this day happen, but Jones is the one behind it with his generosity. He rented out an entire rec center and invited the kids at the shuttered elementary school summer program to spend the day here playing board games, shooting hoops, and cavorting in the indoor pool. We arrived as soon as the morning’s calendar shoot ended, since he had free time during the day. Jones has joined in on most of the activities, including a rousing game of Candyland, in which a group of fourth-grade girls banded together to utterly destroy him as they reached Candy Castle well before he did.
“This was a godsend, I tell you,” the woman says, adjusting the strands of hair that have fallen from her elastic band. “I answer phones at an auto-repair shop, and I had no more time off. When I heard about the problem with the school being closed, I was completely backed into a corner. I needed this”—she pauses, as if hunting for the right word—“gift.”
“I’m glad it feels that way.”
That was Jones’s hope, but he did more than simply let the quandary tug on his heartstrings. He solved the problem. I’ve spent the day here with him, hanging out with the kids, joining in as well—my hoops game is strong, and I led the girls to a victory over the boys, thank you very much—and making sure the kids had food and snacks, courtesy of Jones’s pizza party order.
The day is winding down, and most of the parents have picked up their kids, snapping photos of them with the athlete. Though I could have invited local press today, I chose not to, in part because we’d have needed release waivers from the parents. Even so, one of the keys in publicity is to know when to turn on the cameras and when to shut them down. Press wasn’t the point of this effort, nor did I want to turn this into a photo frenzy. But at the same time, we decided the kids and parents were welcome to take photos. In the age of social media, everything eventually ends up online, but I did want the photos from today to come from the parents rather than from reporters.
Though I’m pretty sure a few of the kids have Instagram and Snapchat, too, since I saw an Instagram pic of Jones, filtered so he was wearing a pair of panda ears as he languished by Gumdrop Mountain. Next to him in the shot were Malcolm and Connor, who fought valiantly to buy Park Place from a pair of industrious boys in a heated game of Monopoly, since Jones convinced his Mavericks buddies to stop by for a few hours. But mostly, it’s been the former party-boy Renegade entertaining the kids on an unexpected day off.
When I see him like this, it’s hard to imagine he ever had a questionable rep.
As I watch Jones swim to the steps of the pool with Charlie, the last kid to be picked up, I’m reminded again of what’s at stake if we were to be found out. So very much. Even though part of me is deliciously tempted to carry on clandestinely with him, to invite him over for a midnight tryst at my home back in San Francisco, to ask him if he wants to meet up somewhere, someplace, maybe out of town in another chichi hotel—that all feels like an illicit affair.