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He looked away first, but only to focus on me. “Hello, Lissa. I’m Danilo Coelho and I’m the Woodsmen team vice-president in charge of…who is this?”
He was looking at the doors behind me and I turned too, to see them opening again.
“Hey there,” Bowie said as he walked in. “Good to see you again, Danilo. Hi, Aubin.” Then, to my absolute shock, he bent down and kissed me.
On the mouth.
“Hi, honey. Everything going ok?” he asked.
I seemed to have lost the power to move the lips he’d just kissed in order to form words and respond.
“Uh, hello, Bowie. We’re just getting started,” Mr. Coelho said. He seemed slightly shaken and surprised, but he was much better at hiding his emotions than my coaches were. Both Sam and Rylah were fully gawking at us as Bowie picked up my hand, linked our fingers, and rested them on the table top.
“We weren’t aware that you were going to attend,” Mr. Coelho remarked to him.
“No, we weren’t,” my sister said. “Good afternoon, Bowie.” Out of the people at this meeting, only the two of them seemed relaxed and normal. Maybe he was for real, but I knew that Aubin was good at pretending. I also knew that she was going to grill me about this later, but I had no idea what I would say in response to her questions. I had no idea what was going on and why he’d shown up—and why he was kissing me. Kissing me?
“I wanted to be here to support my fiancée,” Bowie announced to everyone. “We’re partners in crime in this situation, if you would call falling in love a crime.” He put my hand to his lips and kissed that, too.
My brain froze. I heard a gasp from Rylah and Sam swore. Even Aubin lost it momentarily. “She’s your what?” she asked him. “What did you just call Sissy?”
He leaned around me to look at her. “Lissa and I are getting married,” he answered. “So anything that affects her also affects me. If she were to get fired today, I would have a major, major problem with the team and my presence as a player on it.”
And at that point, the conference room door opened again. “Sorry I’m late,” another man said, and I recognized him immediately as Jim Roberts, the Woodsmen head coach. “I’ve asked Dan to attend as well,” he continued as he pulled out a chair, and here was the team CEO, Mr. Dorbeek.
Bowie turned to me. “I texted you,” he whispered.
“I…I…” I was still in a state of brain melt.
The football coach was talking. “I understand there’s an issue about the relationship between one of my players and a cheerleader.”
“Lissa,” Bowie said. “Coach, this is Lissa Frazier.”
He acknowledged me with a nod. “I’m a believer in rules,” he told Mr. Coelho, “but we will need to have this resolved. Obviously, we can’t threaten the success of the football team.”
“Jim, no one’s letting that happen,” Dan Dorbeek put in. I’d seen him before, speaking to the entire organization, but never close up like this. “We’ll work it out.”
“Good,” Bowie told them. “That’s what I’d expect from this organization. Lissa and I are a team and while the Woodsmen matter a lot to me, she matters more.” He smiled at me and I closed my mouth, because it was getting dry in there from my jaw hanging open for so long.
They all talked about me and about my future and my head swiveled and my eyes stared as each person spoke. Mr. Coelho tried to argue that no matter if we were engaged or not—and we were not—that I was still in violation of my contract, and that fact needed to be addressed. Rylah and Sam put in their two cents, which was that they were enforcing the rules that were meant for everyone. They were concerned about the message this sent and their future control of the team. Mr. Dorbeek looked at his phone a lot and frowned and said that if they had any problems with any other Wonderwomen, he could deal with it. Coach Roberts said that he needed Bowie on the field and that we were a football organization, after all, not just a cheerleading squad or matchmaking outfit.
“It looks like this is bigger than Sissy at this point,” Sam concluded. “It also seems to me that this is above my pay grade. What are we going to do about it, Mr. Dorbeek? What’s the answer here?”
We all turned to look at the Woodsmen CEO at the head of the conference table and I held my breath.
“I don’t think there’s an issue.” Mr. Dorbeek checked his phone again. “Bowie plays, and…”
He stared at me and Aubin supplied, “Sissy Frazier.”
“Sissy will be on the sidelines,” he concluded. “We’ll all be happy to celebrate a marriage and two young people in love. This will go out to the media as soon as possible and they’ll grab onto the story.” He stood up. “Keep me informed,” he told Coach Roberts, who nodded back and also stood.
I guessed the meeting was over, for them, anyway. They strolled out and left the rest of us staring at each other like dead fish—all of us except for Bowie, who still seemed perfectly at ease. He was leaned back in the chair and smiling, and when I looked over at him with my dead-fish face he picked up my hand, still clasped in his, and kissed it again. Then he leaned forward and kissed my mouth. “Hey there, Lissa,” he murmured against my ear, nosing my hair. His lips brushed against my neck and I almost leapt out of my chair, except that my knees had jellified.
Aubin recovered her composure first, because she was a business rock star. “Ok!” she said. “Problem solved.”
“Problem not solved!” Sam barked out, and glared at her. “What in the hell is going on, Sissy? Why didn’t you tell us this? Why didn’t you?” he asked my sister.
I glanced at her to my right and Bowie to my left. “Uh, well, the thing is…” I started to explain, and then realized that I had no idea what that thing was.
