“You weren’t gonna come?”
“No.” I gestured around us. “This isn’t my scene . . . alone. I mean, I would be turning up with the best of them if I was here with my bestie, Bryanna. But alone? I tend to be introverted and to myself.”
He studied me before speaking. “I’m pretty much the same. This isn’t my scene either. My godmother is married to the team’s GM. One of the players dropped out, so they were one short. She begged me to come as a favor.” He shook his head. “If I didn’t love that lady the way I do, I would be at the crib right now.”
I couldn’t fall for this dude. We had literally just met. I didn’t know anything about him . . . except that he was worried about me getting taco juice on my clothes, and he loved his godmother. My heart was ready to swoon, but my brain was not going. “Aww, it’s nice that you did that for her.”
“Yeah, she used to save me from whuppings as a kid.” He laughed, and I couldn’t help joining in. “You from Chicago, Sun? Your smile reminds me of the sun.”
I shook my head at his words, but they did make me blush again. “Born and raised. Where are you from?”
“Michigan. Right outside Detroit.”
“Did you always wanna play football?”
He chuckled lightly before answering. “Nah. I wanted to be Chris Brown. He got women.”
I cracked up as he continued.
“Hear me out. Hear me out. Chris Brown got women. The only people I ever saw football players around were other football players.”
I laughed some more.
“I mean, I can dance a little bit. I got rhythm. But I can’t sing worth a damn. Since I’m actually good at football, I figured I should stick with it.”
“I think that was for the best.”
“You always wanna do whatever you do for work?”
“Yeah, I always wanted to work with kids. I wanted to be a teacher from the time I was little. Got my bachelor’s in education from Hale-Williams. I taught for three years and found the classroom . . . oppressive. I went back to school and got my Master’s in Recreation Management and Administration. Now, I actually work for the Chicago Bison as their Youth Sports Coordinator.”
“Damn. You around professional athletes all the time, huh?”
“I am, but not casually. I mean, I make a request for a certain number of players, and whoever shows up, shows up. I direct them to where they need to be and what they need to do, and my time with them ends right there.”
He chuckled. “I’m familiar.”
“Of course you are. I’m so used to explaining my job to people. They think I’m at the stadium, playing pickup games or doing shoot-arounds with the players. They think I have some really close, really cool relationship with the players, when I don’t. Ninety-five percent of them wouldn’t recognize me if they ran into me at the grocery store.”
He looked dubious. “I don’t know about all that. You’re kinda hard to forget.”
“Stop making me blush.” I waved him off.
“Yeah, okay.”
The two of us gathered up the trash from our tacos and drinks and headed to the garbage can to toss them out. He took my hand in his, and a very real, very immediate awareness fell over me. We were headed toward the bonfire, and I didn’t ask any questions. That wasn’t like me. I was a girly who liked to know.Where are we going? What are we doing? Who are we meeting?I liked to know. For some reason, I felt confident in letting Spencer lead me to where he wanted us to be.
That’s odd, I thought to myself. I was with my last boyfriend, Tyson, for two years, and one of his biggest complaints was that I never let him lead. If he could see me now, he would probably piss on himself. I was letting a stranger lead me, maybe because Spencer was leading with confidence, like he actually had a destination in mind. He wasn’t aimlessly wandering like Tyson always seemed to be doing. I shook the thought from my mind. Nobody wanted to be thinking about Tyson’s lackluster ass while I was in paradise with a professional football-playing prince.
“Say, my bad for just dragging you along without telling you what’s up.”
“You’re good.”
“I have one last professional obligation tonight. Group picture at the bonfire.”
“Oh, that’s cool, because I wanted to go over by the bonfire. I feel like I saw somebody over there twirling fire batons or something. I wanna see that.”
He looked down at me with a grin as we closed the distance to the bonfire. “I like you.”
