Page 22 of The Backup Plan

Avery turned and followed his gaze, and her breath caught in her throat.

“Fields. It’s about time you got out a little bit. Who’s this?”

Isaac nudged her forward. “Avery, Cameron Porter. Cam, this is Avery Whitman.”

The embarrassed flush in her cheeks from their brief encounter in the kitchen heated again, and she clutched Isaac’s elbow instead of putting out a hand in greeting.

He scanned her from head to toe and stunned her with a shy smile. Cameron Porter. Justin’s friend, the reluctant rising star who retreated into a shell of himself and only came alive on the field, was the boy in the orange hat.

Isaac leaned toward Cam as if to continue a conversation, and Avery tugged his shirt. “We should go find Justin.” She whispered, keeping her lips close to his ear to hide the wobble in her voice. “The mystery lady should be here by now. And I need a… a…”

She couldn’t remember the word, and she had to get away from Cam before he smiled again and unwound her spine.

“I need a bubblegum popsicle,” she said, louder than intended.

Isaac nodded gravely and tightened his arm around her waist. “We are all about the popsicles.” He punched Cam’s shoulder and pulled Avery into the hall. “See you, buddy.”

SEVEN

Imaginary Football

CAMERON: WEEK 2 (2-0)

Cam chugged what was left of his beer and crushed the cup in his hand before he even pulled it away from his face.

Avery Whitman.

Avery Justin’s-little-sister Whitman.

Her name felt as familiar as her face—because it was. When she was accepted into the art program at UND, Justin cornered Cam in the locker room after practice and showed off photo after photo of her sketches, her paintings, and her gallery shows at her fine arts magnet school. Cam had seen corners of her soul on paper and canvas, in charcoal and watercolor. He remembered wondering if she was as obsessed with buildings as a subject matter as he was with flowers.

In recent weeks, lost in his own simmering hurt since Jordan’s defection, when he saw Justin at practice, he didn’t think to ask if his sister had moved in yet. He didn’t think to ask if she was settling in all right, or who her advisor was, or what her schedule looked like.

He didn’t think.

He mumbled thanks to Kenyon and Shay’s congratulations on another week of surviving Shelby, then shoved down the hallway and ignored everyone as he struggled to get to fresh air before his throat tightened too much. At the back of the house, he turned away from the crowd around the bonfire and the keg and leaned on a wall facing the parking area, and beyond it, a cornfield.

The sky had darkened while he was inside, and stars prickled the broad expanse. Deep breaths relaxed his lungs and throat, and his fingers curled around an imaginary football. He bobbled it between his hands.

He missed seeing her Friday because Shelby needed him to stare longingly at the uprights in the stadium while the sun was at a certain height. He was allowed to wear his school hat, but was ordered to remove his glasses because of the glare.

It put him in a foul mood for the rest of Friday, and he felt fouler still on Saturday when the team pulled off an overtime win and he nearly bludgeoned Pippa purely by reaction when she yanked off his glasses again. He stayed in the locker room after the press conference until Archie, his backup, pronounced the halls clear of people who wanted to talk to him.

Two weeks into the school year, he had already stopped wearing anything that said ‘football,’ and hid in his orange UT hat because only his real friends knew that one. Even the stadium didn’t feel familiar or safe, just the grass and the locker room—and thank God he at least had that. The media gauntlet would be even more painful if they lost.

When Justin suggested he come out to the party and blow off a little steam, Cam resolved to spend some low-key time with friends in person and not in a messaging app. Since there were no phones at The Farm, it was the perfect excuse. He wanted a bonfire and time with his boys.

Yet there she was. When every girl he’d spoken to in the previous twenty-four hours either irritated him or outright pissed him off by wanting him to be someone he wasn’t, there she was, wanting him to be anybody at all—not the quarterback or her brother’s friend—maybe just another artist who spoke in complete sentences.

He froze. His brain did, anyway, and it would have been better for everyone if his mouth had done the same.

That black dress wasn’t especially short or tight, but when she bent to pull the water bottles from the lower part of the refrigerator, it lifted up a little in back, and he nearly crushed the edge of the counter holding himself still. He saw her in shorts nearly every day. What the hell was wrong with him that a few inches of her thighs in that dress knocked him on his ass like an edge rusher?

As soon as she left the kitchen, he knew that if he didn’t find a bit of his old self in the next thirty seconds, he might never have another chance. With force of will scraped from the bottom of his exhausted heart, he pushed himself off the counter.

He followed her, and stopped just short of bumping into her as Isaac Fields cupped his fingers under her chin, tipping her face up for a kiss.

Cam took a seven-step drop and chucked the imaginary football over the cars and into the cornfield.