Page 71
King keeps talking as we head inside, his argument with Tuck somehow surviving the entire walk from the practice field. I’ve stopped following which one of them supposedly violated the rules of speaker ownership when we reach the hallway leading toward the locker room, and I find myself looking down the corridor toward the conference rooms instead.
Calliope has spent most afternoons in the same room for the last few weeks, usually surrounded by enough flashcards and practice questions to make the table look like she’s preparing for war. I have no clue if she’s even at the facility today, but my eyes stay on the hallway long enough that I nearly miss JJ falling into step beside me.
“You want to go through Baltimore’s third-down pressures again tomorrow?”
His voice pulls my attention away from the hallway, and I look over to find him walking beside me with his helmet tucked beneath his arm. “Yeah. Before the walkthrough?”
“That works. I want another look at what they do when they show six and only bring four.”
“They like dropping the weak-side linebacker into the window and making you think you have the slant. We’ll go through it.”
He nods before peeling off toward the training room, and I keep going with Sullivan and King, who has somehow managed to continue his argument with Tuck. By the time we reach the locker room, King is loudly informing anyone willing to listen that control of the speaker should belong to someone with an appreciation for music produced after he was born.
I leave King to make his case and drop my helmet into my locker before working my fingers beneath the tape around my wrist. Practice ran long, but that’s never meant much to Calliope when she’s studying. She was already buried in biology when I brought her coffee and breakfast this morning, glaring at me when I moved two of her books to make room for the food.
The tape comes free as I glance toward the locker room entrance, expecting to see her coming down the hall. When she isn’t there, I start on my other wrist and remember the purple block for biology on the study schedule she left sitting out earlier this week. She loses track of time when she gets frustrated with it and forgets to eat until somebody puts food in front of her, which means she could still be upstairs without realizing how late it’s gotten.
My eyes drift toward the doorway again.
“Are you expecting somebody?” Sullivan questions from across the aisle, and I turn to find him working one of his cleats loose.
“No.”
His gaze flicks toward the doorway I’ve now checked twice before returning to his cleat. “Okay.”
“Why’d you ask?”
“You keep looking at the door.”
“I looked twice.”
His eyebrows lift, and it occurs to me that knowing exactly how many times I’ve looked probably isn’t helping.
“You got something else you want to say?”
“Not particularly.”
Before I can decide whether throwing something at him would prove his point, King comes around the end of the lockers carrying the speaker against his chest like a trophy.
“Good news, I have the speaker.”
Tuck’s voice carries in from the hallway before King can start connecting his phone. “You touch my playlist, and I’m breaking your fingers.”
King turns toward the open doorway. “The people have spoken.”
“You’re the only person who voted.”
Their argument spreads almost immediately, pulling in two lockers’ worth of opinions nobody asked for, and I reach into my locker for a towel just as Calliope’s voice carries in from the hallway.
“Easton Kinkade, I swear to God—”
My hand stills against the towel as she appears in the doorway with her laptop hugged against her chest and a pencil shoved through the knot piled on top of her head. Her glasses have slipped low enough on her nose that she’s looking over the frames, and whatever King did has put murder in her eyes.
Calliope’s gaze sweeps across the room, searching for the man she apparently intends to kill, but it catches on me instead. Her eyes soften behind her glasses, and the small curve that touches her mouth feels like an answer to something I hadn’t realized I’d been waiting for since I walked off the field.
“Hey, Pea.”
Her smile lasts another second before her eyes narrow again, and she marches toward me. Behind my shoulder, King goes suspiciously quiet.
