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“We were only talking about her wedding,” I explained. “Bowie was one of the guests.”
“Tell us more about the catering,” Pressley requested. She had just gotten engaged and wanted to mine previous weddings for ideas for her own.
“Let’s not get into it again,” Ani said, and shot her a look. They all knew what had happened, what I had done to ruin the day. Everyone had heard about it or watched one of the videos circulating. At least these girls didn’t seem to blame me for it, because Press nodded back and Quinn changed the subject.
“I wonder who Bowie is with,” she mused.
“He broke up with his girlfriend at the beginning of last season. She was a cheerleader at the college they both went to,” Malina answered. “I follow her.” She took out her phone and scrolled. “Look,” she told us. “Her name is Cierra and she’s really cool.”
I did look at the influencer ex-girlfriend, smiling in a picture that showed off a bikini that was perfect on her. Probably, most clothes would have looked just as good because she had a body that rivaled Aubin’s. “Wow,” I said. “She was his girlfriend?”
“Don’t worry, I think he broke up with her and not the other way around,” Malina encouraged.
“How do you know that?” Quinn asked.
“Because her posts about it were all weird, like she was trying too hard to prove that it was mutual. That was what everyone said in the comments and then she got really mad and told them to shut up and that she was taking a break from social media for a while. It lasted for less than a day before she was back again.” Malina shoved her phone back into her bag. “Are you interested in him, Sissy?”
“No, of course not!” I answered. “I know better than to trot after a player.”
“You’re not a horse,” Ani scolded. “We wouldn’t tell the coaches on you if you did decide to go for him. We’re not like that.”
No, they weren’t, but we did all suspect that someone was reporting on us to team officials, and I didn’t actually have my money on spy gnomes. “I’m with Ward. I have been for six years!” I protested. There was nothing to tell anyone. Well, nothing except that I’d invited a football player over to my house…good Lord. “I have to get home,” I said.
“How is your dad doing?” Pressley asked sympathetically.
“A lot better.” I smiled at her, glad she cared enough to ask and extra glad that no one knew why he’d actually been “sick” in the weeks after my sister’s wedding. “See you ladies tomorrow.”
Quinn hugged me. “We’re so happy that you’re back. Go Woodsmen!”
I was going to see a particular Woodsmen right at the moment and I hurried over to my car. As I drove, I wondered if my dad would be home to join us. He wasn’t supposed to be there because he’d been scheduled for the afternoon shift at the country club today, but that didn’t mean that he’d shown up for it. If I weren’t around keeping track, sometimes he fell asleep or got busy with other things and forgot work entirely.
I hoped the whole way home that I wouldn’t see his car, and I sighed with relief when the driveway was empty. I ran inside and quickly straightened up the living room, then hopped into the shower to straighten up myself. I wasn’t trying to impress Bowie, of course not—as I’d told the girls from my squad, I had a boyfriend. But I had also just come from outdoor practice, so I was sweaty and dirty, and that wasn’t the way to entertain people. Not that I was entertaining him! He was only coming over to eat food and swim.
I grimaced as I got out and wrapped a towel around my body. Great, no entertainment for the Woodsmen star, no fun at all. Other girls would have entertained him and made sure he had a great time in their company. Then again, I wasn’t even supposed to be eating with him, not according to the Woodsmen Family Handbook of rules that all the Wonderwomen had agreed to abide by when we’d signed contracts to cheer. There was not supposed to be any contact between cheerleaders and football players except what they called “incidental and/or unavoidable.” This contact would be neither of those things.
I brushed my hair and thought of how Bowie had told me that he’d also had a hard workout, but he hadn’t appeared half as gross as I had been when we’d walked together. But the players had access to a lot of things we Wonderwomen didn’t, like fully staffed training rooms, showers with built in shampoo, a cafeteria (with good stuff, too, because I’d been in there once with Coach Sam), and a parking lot right next to the stadium where once upon a time, cheerleaders had been able to park too until there’d been some kind of accident. But that made me remember how he had come with me all the way to my car, even after making that remark about the hard workout. It was funny, odd.
By the time I’d put on clothes, a big truck was pulling up in my driveway, filling the gravel space from one side to the other. I went to the door and then stepped back, waiting for him to knock instead of following my instinct and jerking it open to greet him on the threshold. This wasn’t a big deal, after all, just eating food together. There was no reason to get excited or feel anticipation or worry about what my boyfriend might say if he found out. Ward wouldn’t find out. But if he did…yeah, it would be a big problem. What would I do? I ran through a scenario in my mind of him asking me if I’d had a Woodsmen player over for dinner and then instead of responding, I started twirling and lifted off like a tornado into the sky, and—
“Hey there, Lissa,” a voice said, and I looked up. Bowie’s head went above the door so that he could see through the transom window at the top of it, and he had been watching as I stood against the wall, lost in thought.
“Oh!” I jumped and let him enter. “Hello.”
“You don’t keep this locked,” he mentioned, swinging the door on its hinges. “That was how I grew up, too.”
“Next time you can open it and come in,” I said.
“Next time, I will,” he answered, and smiled at me. He held up a bag. “I have food. The edible kind.”
I nodded. “That will be better for dinner than the fake stuff.” The contents of his bag smelled so good, spicy and different from what I was able to make. “Thank you for bringing all that,” I told him. “We can eat outside. The wind is up so there won’t be many bugs.” And also, I was noticing that he might not have fit at our kitchen table, not even in the chair that my dad usually took that stuck out into the room and from which the cans in the fridge were within reach. Bowie might have actually collided with the fridge. He was just so big, and my house was not.
But he seemed to like it. “This is a great place,” he said as he took only three steps that brought him right through the living room and to our patio in the back. It was overgrown but you could still get glimpses of the water. “Is this where you grew up?”
I nodded again. “My family built this cottage. They all lived downstate and they used to come up here every summer. My dad decided to live here permanently.”
“Then he gave it to you?”
“No, he still lives here, too. Come on,” I said, and ushered him through the back door, holding it carefully because the hinges weren’t so strong anymore and I was a little afraid that it would fall off. “Be careful, because that trellis is kind of shaky,” I warned as Bowie walked to the edge of the flagstones and put his hand just above his head on the old boards.
