Page 66 of The Tiger in the Sack

And there it was. The thing I’d come into the room not thinking about and was now, suddenly, thinking about with my whole brain. Not just my head between her legs… which I fully admit, I had thought about before. But the idea of the two of us together.

Last week she’d put her hand on my chest and turned me into her fake boyfriend in real time to get rid of Warner. This week I’d folded myself under her desk to get away from Tiki, and she’d lied for me without being asked.

We were doing a thing. We had done the thing twice now, fast, both directions, like a play we’d run in practice for years instead of a play neither of us had ever called before.

“You hid me from Tiki,” I said.

“You hid from Tiki. I just pretended I didn’t know.”

“And the other day you⁠—”

“I know what I did.” She didn’t look up. The pen behind her ear had not moved. “Don’t make it a thing.”

“I’m not making it a thing.” I sat down in the actual chair this time, the one across from her desk, the one for humans. “I’m noticing a thing. There’s a difference. Noticing is very low-key.”

“Your low-key is very loud.”

She wasn’t wrong. I let it sit. Outside the one window the practice fields were going gold the way they did at the end of the afternoon, and somewhere out there was a defensive lineman named Warner who wanted my girl back, and somewhere in this building was a woman with a dog purse who’d decided I was her next husband, and the two of us were in here, hidden, both of us, from two different people who would not take no for an answer.

“Can I say the thing,” I said, “or is the thing off the table?”

Clover put the pen down.

“You’re being hunted,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “By Tiki.”

“She just waltzed into the locker room the other day, and I swear to god she knew we were all just fresh out of the showers. I barely got my towel tied around my waist.” I had no problem with naked bodies, but at this point, I was afraid she’d want her own dick pics, since I wasn’t going to send any to her. “Marched right up to me and in front of Coach and everybody asked what time she should be ready for our date on Friday.”

Clover drew her head back and down, frowning before she said, “You asked her out?”

“No.” I threw my hands up and screeched.

But now everyone thinks I had. The guys were taking bets on when we were getting married. The pool was up to ten grand. And Fox was the fucking bookie.

Clover did not laugh at me, which somehow made it worse and better at the same time.

“And Warner,” I said. “Is pursuing you, isn’t he?”

Her jaw did a small thing. “Warner is not pursuing me. Warner is — relocating near me. With intent.”

“That’s pursuit.”

“Fine,” she agreed, after a second, like the word cost her something to hand over. “You aren’t wrong. He called my parents, who love him by the way, and they’re coming out for the first pre-season game to give him a big welcome. They want to do dinner, and are practically ready to move him into my apartment.”

“I feel like your landlord would not approve that.”

“He’s not moving in.”

“Good.”

So there we were. Two people who did not lose at things, sitting in a tiny office, both of us losing, slowly, to people who’d simply decided not to hear the word no.

Jules would eviscerate them both if she knew. In fact, maybe I should sic my sassy little sister on them.

“Warner needs to see me with somebody,” she said. “Before he talks himself into a story where I’m waiting for him. And Tiki needs to see you with somebody. We’ve done it twice now and nobody had to teach us.” She turned the pen around, pointed it at me, then herself, drawing a line in the air I could suddenly see. “That’s data.”

“Yes,” I said. Immediately. Too fast. I heard how fast it was and could not make myself care.

“I haven’t,” She blinked. “I haven’t proposed anything yet.”