“Not really. Just Landon and I play. Connor’s always been all about soccer. Though he’s probably going to be done with it after college.”
He shifts again, and all of a sudden, histhingray sweatpants are doing the gray sweatpants thing. I try not to stare at the outline of…well,it.
Okay, seriously, Aves, why didn’t you make this a FaceTime?
This man isdistracting. God, I really need to find a guy like Jack here, something casual. It’s been more than a month since our last hookup, and I’m feeling it.
That guy is definitely not going to be Mr. Bulge-y McBulge over there, fake boyfriend or not.
Aves, get back on track.
“Do you want to head to the living room?”
He nods and we take our seats on the pale blue sofa. Several feet away from each other.
“Let’s talk through how this would work, if we agree to move forward.”
He raises a brow. “Did Aiden not tell you already? I texted him that I was in if you were.”
Okay, good to know.
“Well, let’s flesh out what it would look like. I have three or so games a week right now, and obviously half are away. Usually road trips involve two or three games every other day until we head home. That’s the general rhythm until the playoffs start in mid-September.”
He processes the info before adding his half of the schedule. “Yeah, and by then our season will have started. This summer is kind of all over the place. In the next month, I have three OTAs,which are like mini–training camps, sort of. My sister Grace, she runs competitively, and I like to go watch her race when I can.”
“I didn’t know she did that. Cool.”
Rawley pulls a pillow on his lap and starts playing with the edges.
“I’ll head out west for a few days to watch her compete in June. I’m supposed to go to New York to visit a friend after that too. Our training camp starts in mid-July, and I won’t be able to leave the team hotel much for three weeks. And then we start the preseason.”
“Wow.” I can’t help laughing a little bit. “Finding time for a ‘fake’ date night could be a struggle in itself.”
His brow creases. “Yeah, it’s kind of overwhelming to think about. Maybe we would be better off just taking it one date at a time.”
I like that. For all we know, we’ll hit our expiration date before the end of the summer.
“Is the schedule the only thing you’re worried about? I mean, what about your whole thing against dating athletes?”
“I’m not breaking my rule. This is a fake dating workaround.”
He laughs.
“I feel like the rest of the ground rules are pretty intuitive. This wouldn’t be real, so nothing physical would happen.”
He cocks his head. “I mean, we’re going to have to touch each othersometimesin public. You know, hug, hold hands maybe. I could see myself kissing you on the cheek or the top of your head sometimes.”
Suddenly, an image of Rawley surrounding me with his arms and dropping a kiss in my hair flashes in my mind.
I intuitively melt into the couch a little before catching myself.Rein it in, Avery.
“I can see that being necessary in some cases. But nothing beyond what you described, okay?
“Yeah, okay.” He looks down at the pillow, chewing on his bottom lip.
“What, something else on your mind?”
“Not about the touching stuff, no. But I’m wondering why you’re doing this exactly? Aiden mentioned something about your contracts?”
