Page 59 of The Backup Plan
Avery
Any day. I’ll make it work.
I hope you and Mindy are doing okay.
Justin
We’re good, thanks.
Natasha nearly slammed the door to the dorm room and rushed to shake Avery in her chair. “Stop the homework,” she demanded. “Is your orange-hat-Cam the quarterback Cameron Porter?”
“Yes. So?”
“So, he’s gorgeous. Have you seen the school magazine this month?” She tossed her a thin, glossy magazine, crumpled at the edges from their tiny shared mailbox. “They go to the alumni, and to all of us. There’s a big football spread, and he’s in there. I cannot believe you didn’t tell me.”
Avery hadn’t told her roommate half of what went on with Cam, and for that exact reason. Natasha was still angling for an invite to a party at The Farm, preferably with a single friend of Justin’s—preferably Isaac. Avery had taken her to a handful of their weeknight dinners, and the resulting swoons led her to feign missing a lot of text messages.
Avery flipped idly through the wrinkled pages of the magazine and stopped.
In uniform aside from his helmet, Cameron faced her with the ball in his hands as if reading the field. Gone were the shy smile and studious gaze. The intensity in his eyes bore into hers, and for a moment she barely recognized the person she knew behind the model athlete with the sculpted forearms and beautiful curls.
She choked back a laugh.
“What?” Natasha asked.
“This hardly looks like him. He’s not wearing his glasses. Who’s he throwing the ball to, his right guard? It’s no wonder he hates this.”
“He hates that? Because I sure don’t.” Natasha sidled next to her and tapped the lower portion of the page, grinning. Avery gulped. She’d grown up around boys and men in football pants, and thought they were no different from gymnasts’ leotards. Bodies were bodies, and clothes were made for those bodies in sports.
Except Cam’s pants looked tight enough that her cheeks flushed, sending her mind spiraling. Maybe they were uncomfortable. Maybe he’d like to get out of them.
“Turn the page.”
Avery flipped past photos of two other players and found a page where the camera caught Cameron turned in quarter-profile, with a backward school cap and the familiar gunmetal-gray frames of his glasses. He held a football and pondered it like Rodin’s The Thinker, his right arm flexed. A banner across the bottom of the photo called him “Lucky Thirteen.”
He was her artist friend, amplified to mouth-watering gorgeousness with blue light and high contrast.
He would loathe it. He’d pull his hat over his face and yank at his hair in frustration when he saw the first photo, and make retching noises at the “Lucky Thirteen” gimmick.
“Oh, no,” Avery whispered. “Did you read the article?”
“Not his. Turn the page again. It’s all three of them. They look good.”
Avery shushed her and read. “Blah blah blah, listen…’After the sudden, unexplained departure of former quarterback Jordan Ackerman, the team scrambled at training camp to name his successor. Sophomore Cameron Porter led the team to a Star Bowl win last season as a red-shirt freshman and parlayed his lucky break this summer into a starting role under center. A former three-star prospect from central Tennessee, Porter is making a name for himself with his pass completion ratings, in addition to his unshakeable calm under pressure.’ Ugh.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“A lucky break? He hates that Jordan left. Everyone does. That wasn’t lucky at all for Cam, or anyone.”
Natasha, a public relations major, shook her head. “It’s just to have a little theme throughout the piece,” she said. “Look, they use it in the thing about Will Bennett, too.”
“He’s called Benny. He’s been one of my unofficial big brothers since Justin got here.”
“Show-off. I bet there’s something about luck in the blurb about the other guy. It’s not implying Cam didn’t earn his spot.”
“He won’t like it.”
“Then I guess he doesn’t have to read it.”