Page 106 of The Backup Plan

“Justin and I clicked in camp. I was never paired with him when I came down here for clinics, but by day three or four, it was like I’d known him forever. We’ve both had some serious brotherly pain, and it helped to have someone understand that. I’ve been a big brother since I was fourteen months old, and it helped to be the little brother for once. The thing that sucks the most right now is feeling like I hardly knew him at all.”

“The thing with the twins? But that just happened.”

He scooped the last of the dip onto a chip. “Other stuff. Never mind. Is it weird to say I don’t care if Justin makes a big apology? I just want him to be okay. He apologized to both of us a million times while he was barfing up that tequila. I’m fine with that.”

“I want him to be okay, too. And I don’t need him to apologize anymore.”

“Then I guess we’re back to plotting what to do about an obstinate man. Are you ever going to tell Cam? I think it worked out okay to just let our little story fade into the background, and right now, I am all about pretending things never happened.”

Avery choked on a sip of ice water. “Me too,” she wheezed, patting her chest. “Me too.”

THIRTY-ONE

Trois Saisons

CAMERON

Avery stared while Cam counted footballs in the media room. “This is like the jar of jellybeans guessing game,” he said, twirling gold pens in his hands. “One hundred.”

“Seventy-five. Loser buys snacks tomorrow.”

He slapped her hand to make the bet. “How can we set this up? I need to sign it and then have you check it, and then you need someplace to keep the ones I’ve done so they don’t smear.”

“You need me to make sure you spelled your name right?”

“I’ve already screwed up more than one piece of gear when I sign a million things and get lost in my thoughts, and suddenly something random ends up scribbled on a T-shirt. I need you to catch the mistakes before I let them take these to whatever charity I give to now. Children’s hospital, I think.”

“You don’t even get a say in that?” Avery dragged chairs around the conference table, pushing them under so their backs touched the table’s edge and formed a wall to stop footballs from rolling away. Scooting the three boxes of footballs to the opposite end of the table, she surveyed her setup.

“I asked Shay and Pippa to figure that out for me. I like my work-life balance to include some time for my girl.”

Avery kissed his cheek. “I like being your girl. There’s nowhere I’d rather be than with you and your balls.”

He plucked one from a box and gripped it for a throw, then held it against her chest. “I like the shape of a football,” he said, rolling it slowly over her breasts and down to her stomach. She scooted her hips onto the table. Standing between her knees, he turned the ball in her lap so the end pressed into her thighs. “A prolate spheroid. It can slice through the air in a perfect spiral and bounce like a caffeinated ferret when it hits the ground. A well-thrown football goes farther than the same attempt with a baseball or tennis ball. The arc. The drop. It’s so fucking beautiful.”

“We’ll draw it for your next lesson.”

Avery’s chest heaved as he nudged the football between her legs. “Then I’ll get all dreamy and distracted,” he said.

“I like you all dreamy and distracted.”

“I’ll draw dreamy, distracted parabolas. I love letting off that long ball, because for a second, time freezes, and anything could happen. There are guys in the league who throw sidearm spirals. I’ll never be that good.”

“Come on.”

“If I wanted to play professionally, I’d be working on that already.”

“You don’t want to? Even for a little while?”

“Not for a minute.” He leaned forward and kissed her. “It’s part of what makes all this media shit torture. I don’t mind signing footballs for little kids. But some guy out there is hungry for all this. He wants his name simmering in scouts’ ears for the next three draft cycles, not mine. And I’m doing this for the scholarship and the payday so I can be a starving artist when I grow up.”

She twisted a lock of his hair in her fingers. “The scholarship’s no joke, Cam. I wouldn’t be here without mine. The amount of loans I’d need for an art degree here is just not workable when you consider the career path.”

“Exactly.” He pressed the ball harder between her legs, uncapped a gold pen, and drew a heart on it. “I think this one’s yours.”

They fell into an easy assembly line, with Avery catching the footballs where he forgot to write “#13” or where the “P” in his last name looked like a “D.” She lined up the signed balls to let the ink dry before rolling them to the end of the table and the fence of conference room chairs.

“What do you want to do after college then, since it’s not football?” she asked. “We know all this backstory stuff about each other. What’s next?”