Page 36 of The Tiger in the Sack

I thought about the way she’d said I think that just might reach the kind of audience I’m hoping to attract without her voice moving at all.

The next one hit the turf.

Roper looked at me from across the field and I looked back at him and we reached a mutual understanding that this was not my afternoon.

Great fucking way to start the season that was supposed to be my year to lead the team to a winning god damned season.

After practice I gave myself a stern talking to about keeping my head in the game before I got in the Jeep with Fox. I’d made him drive me today because I didn’t want to risk getting the bike out before my ride with Clover.

But as my best friend, he took on the job of protecting me both on and off the field. Fox being Fox, which in this context meant he was going to sit there looking like a golden retriever until I talked would be pure torture on the ride home.

I needed a distraction or he’d deploy the best of his arsenal which was just existing near me until I cracked.

“You know my sweet baby sister is gonna be here tonight, right?”

“You really are shit at this game, man.” He was not talking about football. “You’ve never called her sweet. You can fool me, pookie.”

“I’m not trying to fool anyone. I’m just trying to warn you she’s...” a handful, a brat, a princess, my favorite co-conspirator in life, “probably going to give you the Jules-ish Inquisition. So be prepared.”

“Right, right, right.” He let it go, which he never did. That was either a good sign or a very bad one.

He kept looking over at me instead of the road, but not with concern, but like he had a secret he wasn’t supposed to tell.

“What?”

“I have tea.”

He didn’t mean Earl Grey. I recognized this as another distraction. “Fine, spill it.”

He practically giggled like a little kid first. “The infamous, recently divorced, younger sister team owner, Tiki Barbra was at the facility today. Tea. Key.”

“That’s not tea.”

“She came by the locker room, asked one of the equipment guys which one was yours.” He flipped on his turn signal, like it needed some flare. “By your first name. I’m quoting the quote that she said, “Where’s MY quarterback’s locker?” like it already had her name on it.”

“I don’t even know her.” Shit. I’d forgotten about Gabrielle’s email. “She was probably just looking for a signed jersey or something. It’s not like she’s going to wear an old one of Reggie Miller’s New York Pets jersey to one of our games.”

“She had two Chihuahuas in a purse, man. One had a tiara.” He glanced over, pleased with himself, because he knew exactly what he’d done, which was hand me a brand-new thing to be weird about so I’d stop being weird about the first thing. “You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t say thank you.”

“You will.”

We walked through the door of the penthouse and something in the air was different in the way that had been following me around my entire life, the way that meant my sister had arrived and made herself at home and the space was now, in some fundamental sense, hers.

She was on the couch with a bowl of popcorn that she had located and partially consumed in what had apparently been the thirty minutes since she’d texted me that she was in Cincinnati. Somehow she’d figured out the address, and let herself in, god only knows how, and already had Vito in her lap purring like a damn fool.

Traitor.

Fox stepped in behind me, looked at Jules, looked at me, looked back at Jules.

Jules looked up.

At Fox.

I had known my sister for her entire twenty-three years on earth. I had watched her face do a lot of things, righteous fury, academic intensity, the particular expression she got when she was about to say something that would end an argument in one sentence and she knew it. I had never watched it do this, a kind of brief total blankness, like a loading screen, before she caught herself and pulled it back and became Jules again.

Fast.