My knees—which are being driven straight toward the plastic grass by some hippo in Tetherman white and silver.
Shit.
I thrust the ball away from my chest and reach for the green beyond the white line. The ball’s point touches andI have a split second to smile before the freaking hippo crashes down, crushing my knees into the turf so hard I’m sure I tag China.
The crowd roars, and somewhere in the storm there’s the shrill of a whistle. Through the corner of my eye I glimpse one of the refs, arms up.
Oh, thank God.
Touchdown.
The hippo peels away, but not before grinding his shoulder into the outside of my top knee one final time before the refs run over to break it up. When I can stand, a pair of arms immediately hooks me under the shoulders and flings me around in a rough circle.
“O-Rod!!!!” Topps’s cheeks are rosy with glee as he winds up for another revolution. Gentle giant that he is, he sets me down as if I’m landing on a flower petal, my other teammates approaching for high fives. It’s only as I’m walking away from them to the sidelines as special teams set up for a field goal that I feel it.
Mixed in with elation and realization that I should’ve spiked the ball—because when else am I going to get to do that?—is a twinge in my left knee.
It doesn’t hurt, not with the white-hot certainty of a true injury, but it doesn’t feel right either. There’s a hitch on the outside of the joint, like a violin string that’s skipped the bridge.
“Rodinsky,” Coach Lee yells from down the line, “you’rea sorry excuse for a running back, but at least you managed not to get caught.”
My heart rises. That almost feels like a compliment.
I stick my head under the hand dryer for just long enough that my hair won’t paint wet streaks on my shirt before grabbing my bag and checking my phone.
Addie:Have Nick. Meet you at Pat’s. We might be late.
I text back:Don’t miss curfew, Adeline.
Addie immediately answers:I don’t miss anything and you know it.
I laugh. Kill, block, shot, catch—she’s right. She doesn’t miss.
I step out of the locker room with a smile on my face.
Like the past couple of weeks, Grey is there. Again, he’s pushed up against the building, smelling of boy soap, the curling pieces of his hair catching the dying stadium brights.
But this time, he’s not alone.
A girl in a dress is there, too, blond hair shimmering in the same light. She’s pressed into Grey, one palm flat against his chest, the other hand in his hair, sweeping the curls off his temples.
I’m so stunned, I stand there for a second, the locker room door open, wedged against my backside.
“Look—don’t.” Grey’s voice is insistent. I could just beimagining it, but it almost looks as if he’s trying to jerk his head away from her hands but not getting anywhere. “Stacey, don’t,” I hear him say.
Stacey.
ThatStacey?
I stiffen and my butt loses its leverage as a doorstop and the heavy metal door slams shut behind me. Grey stumbles off the wall and out of the girl’s grasp.
“Liv,” he says, eyes wide and hands out, defensive. “It’s not what it looks like.”
For a moment, I believe him—he didn’t look like he was encouraging her or enjoying her touch. But Grey Worthington knows how to evade the grasp of a two-hundred-pound linebacker. Surely he could escape a scant one hundred pounds of teenage girl.
Then the girl turns and itisher. She’s not at school in Arizona. Stacey’shere.
Touching my boyfriend.
