She blinked. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
He waved off her sympathy, having long ago grown accustomed to it. “It’s fine. I was raised by a single mom and my grandfather. Gramps loves dogs but he would never go against my mother when it came to me. He’s the guy who taught me football.”
She looked at him warmly. “You must be close.”
“Not as close as I would like.” Jake sipped his coffee. He stared off into space. Gramps had been so disappointed when he quit playing.
“Did something happen?”
“You could say that.” He placed the mug down onto the table, and finished the last of the sausage on his plate. “I got myself injured at a game senior year, and blew my shot of playing professional football.”
Her jaw dropped. “How could he possibly be mad at that? It was an accident.”
“Eh, it was kinda my fault. But Gramps doesn’t know the whole story.” He’d always been told, don’t let anything distract you from the game. And that’s exactly what he’d done. Silence stretched between them, and he found himself opening up for the first time about the whole ordeal. It just burst out of him, like he’d held it inside too long. Something about Olivia told him he could trust her.
“I was seeing this girl, and I thought we were serious. The night before our big game with our rival team, I went to see her in her dorm. But she wasn’t alone.”
In fact, he’d heard her moaning the minute he stepped off the elevator, but decided to leave that part out. Although the experience happened years ago, he could still taste that rage. She had a single dorm, no roommate. A daddy’s girl from Des Moines, he should have realized she’d know guys that went to Iowa State. He stood outside her door in shock for several minutes before coming to his senses and pounding on it. He wasn’t proud of what happened next, but he’d been young and reckless; come to think of it, going into a situation half-cocked had been his M.O. until recently. “She tried to tell me no one was in there with her, but I knew better.” When the door finally cracked open, she tried to tell him that he’d heard her with a toy. But he hadn’t heard any vibrations. “I found her with Colt Grabowski, the quarterback for Iowa State. Which was the big rival team we were playing the next day.” The asshole had still been zipping up his pants, and Kristen was wrapped in a white sheet. The room had reeked of sex. Honestly, it was a miracle he hadn’t thrown Colt out a window. Part of him wished he had, because then what happened next wouldn’t have transpired.
“Maybe things would have been different if Colt hadn’tsharedthe fact he’d fucked Kristen… in front of both our teams. On the field. The things he was saying …” Taunting him, baiting him at the game …
He ran a hand through his hair. “The second the whistle blew, I lunged for him and took him straight down in a highly illegal tackle. My teammates had to grab me under the arms and pull me off him.” Jake could still remember the fury on Coach’s face turning to concern when Jake couldn’t put weight on his left leg. He and Colt had both been examined by the team doctors in the same room with nothing but a curtain between them.
“I lied to both Gramps and Coach, saying that he had been taunting me about the rivalry and the game. And while Coach knew I was full of shit, since he heard the truth from my teammates, Gramps believed me. What’s worse, I blew out my knee, tore a major tendon, and ended my career before it began. But the absolute worst was when Kristen showed up to comfort Colt, dripping in Iowa State black and yellow.”
Olivia laid a hand over his at some point during his story. When she squeezed it, he finally had the courage to look at her. Her face was a mix of warm and defensive. “She was an idiot.”
“Thanks.” He squeezed back, and found her presence soothed the raw nerve endings he’d exposed. He felt … lighter, almost, now that someone else knew. And she wasn’t looking at him like some kind of monster, or with pity. She looked at him like she’d have done the same damn thing.
He motioned to the server for the check. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Okay, my turn is over, so the Ring moves!” Olivia set down her miniature plastic elf figures and grabbed the die. “Let’s see if the Fellowship can make it out!” She rolled, and when the die stopped spinning, raised her arms in the air. “Yes! Finally!”
Jade laid an adventure card down. “A Balrog has come! The Ring stays.”
A collective groan went around the table.
“What? It’s accurate. You guys that eager to get home?” Jade sipped at her wine, and Olivia shook her head.
“It’s notthat, it’s that it took three turns to get them out,andyou’re kicking our asses!”
Jade shrugged, looking over her red Orc figures that covered the bottom half of the Middle-Earth map of theLord of the Rings Riskboard. Rosie was working the night shift, so the rest of the squad was embroiled in the four-player game. The game recreated Frodo and Sam’s journey through Middle-Earth, and generally took less time than an actualRiskgame, since the Ring moving created a timer of sorts. Olivia and Nadia had claimed the side of good, with Olivia playing the yellow elves and Nadia playing green. Mia was barely left on the board with three territories for her black Orcs.
But Olivia had an ace up her sleeve. Not literally. She had just got a set of three cards that were worth ten extra reinforcements; as long as she held onto the continent of Arnor, she’d get enough troops to wreck Jade’s hold on the southern continents.
Patiently, she waited for her turn to come around again. During her turn, Jade went after Mia, who barely managed to hang in the game with some lucky dice rolls. Nadia and Mia just strengthened their defenses. When Olivia’s time came, she laid down her cards.
“Read ‘em and weep!” Grinning, she collected her figures and plunked them down in South Mirkwood, right on the edge of Jade’s territory.
Jade groaned as she grabbed the defensive dice. “So much for my reign of terror.”
Olivia decimated Jade’s troops, driving a well defended stripe through her two continents.
Jade pouted, but when the points were tallied at the end of the game, Olivia was left hanging her head. She’d lost, barely.
The girls started cleaning up the game when the conversation changed to Olivia’s love life. “How’re things with Tuxedo Mask?”
“His name is Jake, Nad.” Olivia rolled her eyes, but couldn’t stop the silly grin from spreading across her face.
