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Bowie had lost the smile. His face looked very stern without it, his blue eyes without any sparkle of the humor he’d had earlier. “You didn’t just fall,” he said. “He pushed you down and broke bones.”
“It was an accident,” I repeated, and walked faster even though my foot was aching because I’d worked it harder this evening than I had in weeks. It had taken a lot longer to heal than I’d expected and surgery had actually been an option for a while. But the incident when I’d hurt it hadn’t gone like Bowie was remembering and anyway, I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
“Lissa, could you slow down? I had a hard workout.”
His voice sounded calm again, and I reduced my speed immediately. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to walk with me.”
“It’s more fun to go with someone,” he mentioned, which made me think that I should try to be entertaining. That was how any other girl would have acted if a football player had been talking to her: she would have flirted and smiled and kept his attention. Of course, Wonderwomen weren’t actually allowed to be with the players, not like dating, and even seeing them socially was something that could get us called into the office to talk to Sam and Rylah.
It had happened last season when a group of cheerleaders had gone to a party and a few of the Woodsmen had shown up, and then pictures of them talking and dancing had landed in the possession of team personnel. Either there was a spy in the squad who had squealed about it or there were undercover gnomes following us to collect information. I pictured tiny humanoids in trench coats and suddenly, when I looked up, we were at the parking lot. Not where the players parked, but where I was allowed to go.
“Oh,” I said, startled. So much for being fun and entertaining—instead I’d been totally silent and thinking about gnomes as we’d walked. Why had we come here, anyway? “Where is your truck?” I asked him.
“On the other side of the stadium. It was nice to see you again.”
Had it been? I doubted that, but I made a final effort. “It was nice to see you, too. And thank you again for helping me that night.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled at me one last time and then turned to go.
“Wait!” I burst out.
Bowie stopped. “What’s up?”
I’d also heard the word come from my mouth, but it had been like a spasm or something. I hadn’t meant to speak but now here we were, him doing as I’d yelled and waiting for me to continue.
“Oh. Um…” What could I say now? I looked at my car, freshly painted “Ocean Depths Blue” after the last accident, and I thought of water. “Well, I was going to ask, to suggest, actually, that maybe you’d want to come over to swim. Because we live on Laurel Lake and it’s shallow and a lot warmer than Lake Michigan, so it’s good for cooling down after a hard workout like you said you had today, or if you have injuries that need stretching and relaxing…anyway.” I stopped. “It was an idea I had.” I thought that it sounded stupid out loud, but he was back to smiling at me.
“That sounds great,” he agreed. “I’m done for the day. I could come over and bring dinner.”
“Oh.”
“I’m only suggesting it because I’m starving, personally,” he explained.
I was, too, and I wasn’t looking forward to creating something out of what was in our refrigerator. “But this wouldn’t be like any kind of dinner for real,” I said, to clarify.
He seemed puzzled. “It would be actual food, the kind for eating.”
“I meant that it wouldn’t be…” I’d meant that it wouldn’t mean anything. It wasn’t like a dinner date or even a dinner between friends. “It’s just actual food, not anything else.”
“I might want a fork, too.” He grinned. “I know what you mean. It would just be us eating, nothing more than that.”
Ok, good. Just two hungry people, one being a professional football player and the other being me, Sissy. Wait, what? I blinked at him, wondering how it was that I had invited Garrett Bowman to my house.
“Do you have your phone?” he asked, and when I found it in my dance bag, he asked me to send my address and rattled off his number. Then he waved and walked off again and I watched him go.
“Sissy!” someone called. I looked over and spotted several of my fellow Wonderwomen loitering at the edge of the parking lot. They moved in fast.
“What were you and Bowie talking about?” Malina demanded. “Why was he smiling like that? Did you give him your number?” The other three girls clustered closer, waiting to hear my response.
“We were talking about—about my sister.” That was true, since we’d discussed something that had happened at her wedding.
“Aubin?” Quinn asked. “What about her?”
“He’s way too late,” Ani said, and laughed. “She just got married!”
“They would have made a cute couple, though,” Malina commented, and they all nodded.
It was true, but that was also true of Aubin and any other man. She was just so gorgeous that she made the guys she was with look good, too. But yes, she was taken now and off the market.
