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“If I stand really straight, I am.”
“Christ, I’m six foot three.” He shook his head. “You’re so small.”
“Exactly.” I pulled a face. “Stunted.”
“Jaysus, no wonder you folded like a lawn chair when the ball hit you,” Johnny muttered, rubbing his jaw again as his eyes traveled over me. “I could have broken you in half.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I replied, scrunching my nose up at the analogy.
“Is your mother still raging with me?”
“My mother?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “She looked like she was two seconds away from ripping my head off that day.”
“My mother just got a fright,” I mumbled. “She saw that I was hurt and jumped to the first conclusion.”
“And the first conclusion was that I battered you?”
I shrugged uncomfortably but gave nothing away. “It happens.”
“Not from me, it doesn’t,” he pointed out, tone a little thicker now, eyes locked on mine. “Never from me.”
“Hey now, don’t be so quick to deny.” I attempted humor. “I just witnessed you threaten to cut off Ronan’s penis.”
“That little eejit doesn’t count,” was his grunted response. “I can’t fucking stand that kid, but his uncle’s the school trainer so I have no choice than to tolerate him. He’s always pushing my buttons and acting out on the pitch, pulling reckless stunts and causing unnecessary drama. It’s like babysitting a fucking toddler during matches. I swear, it’s a daily test to my self-restraint not to throttle the little bollox.”
I smirked. “So, you’re not friends then?”
Johnny scoffed at the notion. “Definitely not friends.”
“Well, he’s still young,” I offered optimistically. “So maybe he’ll mature with time.”
“Like you?”
“Huh?”
“I mean you’re in the same year as him,” he hurried to explain. “But you don’t act like you’re fifteen.”
“I don’t?”
He shook his head. “You come across as a lot older.”
“That’s because I’m a ninety-year-old woman disguised as a teenager,” I quipped.
“That’s”—Johnny scrunched his nose up—“A disturbing concept.”
“Yep,” I mumbled, embarrassed at my crappy banter. “It is.”
“So, what do you do?” he surprised me by asking.
“What do I do?” I’d been half expecting him to end the conversation there.
“Yeah.” He nodded encouragingly. “In your free time.”
I paused and thought about his question. “I don’t really do anything,” I finally said. “I guess I watch television and listen to music in my free time—oh, and I read a lot.” Shrugging, I added, “As you can tell, I’m not very interesting.”
Johnny tilted his head to one side, studying me with intense blue eyes. “What types of books?”
