Page 34 of The Tiger in the Sack

Coach Roper was just going to pop in at the very end, do his one shot, and that would be a wrap.

“Okay team, let’s do this.” The girls lined up on their marks and got ready for their passes.

Dev held up a hand and waved me over. “Clover, look at this.” They pointed to the camera screen.

Something was slightly... uneven. I did the geometry in about point four seconds.

“I see it. I’ll do a pass alongside Izzy. That should even it out,” I said.

Zahra’s eyebrow moved two millimeters. “You tumble?”

I’d have thought she’d at least Google me during the week. Guess she really did mean for me to literally prove myself. “Since I was seven.”

I set down my clipboard and went to stand at the left end of the formation and rolled my shoulders and shook out my hands and did not look at anyone in particular. Good thing I’d decided to wear my new Tiger’s logoed warm up suit and my orange Swishes.

Dev set the boys back up on their line, gave Kingman his bucket of balls to throw to Daws while Rutherford ran interference. Fox would say his line about tryouts for the new cheer team after the tumbling passes.

“Okay, everyone, This is a rehearsal, but I’m rolling the cameras in case we catch some good shots.” Dev counted everyone in. Kingman threw the ball to Daws, Rutherford tackled Kingman.

Shayla gave a little jump and started first. Zahra hit her pass coming from the opposite with perfect precision in every degree of rotation.

Izzy winked at me and gave me a nod, and we started our pass.

I ran, planted, and went. The round-off, the handspring, the layout. My body knew this the way it knew how to breathe. I landed, already thinking about the angle for the camera, already calculating whether we needed another take.

Silence.

Then Fox said “yo” in a voice that wasn’t his normal light tenor.

And Isak Kingman, lying on the ground, with the complete unfiltered sincerity of a man whose internal monologue had just walked directly out of his mouth said, “My god, cheerleaders with some junk in the trunk are fucking hot.”

The world around us went extremely quiet. I stared open-mouthed at Isak Kingman and he stared right back. There was a mix of... well lust, and also not exactly embarrassment, but perhaps chagrin on his face.

Had that been directed at me? By the shocked looks on everyone’s faces, all clearly waiting for me to say something, I was going to say yes. Yes, he’d said that about me and my junk in the trunk.

Dev lowered the camera approximately two inches. “I can bleep the fuck.”

“Honestly,” Fox said, “That’s a better line than what you wrote for me.”

Shayla put her hand over her mouth holding back a laugh. Izzy burst into giggles. Zahra turned her head very slowly toward Kingman and I watched the skepticism on her face do something it hadn’t done yet in our short acquaintance, which was to take a small involuntary step back from itself.

I blinked a few times and then remembered where I was and what I was doing. “Uh... yeah. I think that just might reach the kind of audience I’m hoping to attract.”

My voice came out completely normal, which was a personal achievement I was going to be proud of for years.

Coach Roper walked up, pointed at Dev and said. “I’m ready for my close up Dev Demille.”

Dev contained their own chuckles and raised their camera. Coach Roper looked straight at the camera with a scowl on his face. Then did the most astonishing sort of come hither smile and winked. Then he gave two thumbs up, which was all he was supposed to do.

“Did you get it?” He didn’t actually wait for the reply. “Good. Gotta run, kids. Kingman, Daws, Rutherford, get your asses back to practice.”

What in the world had just happened to my carefully planned video shoot? I watched Roper jog back to where the other coaches and players on the other side of the field.

I officially still had the guys for a good twenty more minutes, but I wasn’t even sure we needed them. “Dev, do we need to do another take or...”

“Clover.”

Isak Kingman’s voice sounded behind me. Lower. More careful. And every hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up on end. Not because I was scared.