Page 8 of Play the Last Card
This almost pulls a laugh from him. I can tell by the twitch in his lips and the tiniest shake of his shoulders. And his eyes shine, the green shifting shades the slightest bit. I will crack him. I’m determined.
“Because of the apartment I live in?” he asks.
“It’s brand new. And I remember the walk through. They were selling for millions. Right near the stadium, a building with a rooftop pool, a gym, and a theatre. This whole area is going to be developed. Or so says Doug, I guess.” I shrug.
“Right. Well, it kind of came with the job.”
“They’re paying for you to live there?” Now it’s his turn to shrug. “Woah. That’s a pretty decent perk.”
“I was a tough sell,” he says slowly.
“Because you don’t like Boston?” He nods, fingers twitching before they start the same out-of-rhythm tapping that he’d done the day we met.
Silence falls between us. A comfortable, easy silence. He continues his tapping and the glass continues to roll between my fingers. Our eyes meet, catching a few times as I sneak glances at him, and every time they do my stomach does somersaults.
The third time it happens, I hold his gaze. Curiosity rises in me again. “You just look so familiar. I just don’t know where it’s from.”
“Do you like football?” he says as if to answer the question.
My shoulders tense. Eyes dropping as I set the glass upright. He stops tapping, sitting a little straighter in his chair. I let out a breath. “Uh, no. I don’t. I’m not really a fan of it. At all.”
“You … youhatefootball?”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, nodding. “Well, hate is a strong word but I guess, yes? Ihatefootball,” I reply, holding two fingers on each hand up to emphasize the wordhate.
“Have you always hated it?”
This catches me off guard. I cock my head to the side. “No. I guess not. My Pops took me to games as a kid, when I was five or six maybe. But …”
He waits for me to continue on my own but when I don’t he presses on, eagerness slipping between the neutrality of his voice. Hewantsto know. He’s interested. Interested inme.
“But?”
“I dunno … I guess overtime I just lost my enthusiasm for it and as I grew up I realized that maybe if football hadn’t been a thing, my—'' I stop myself, pulling my bottom lip back between my teeth and chewing. I was about to unload my family history on this guy. On a guy I’ve met twice. On a guy whose last name I don’t even know.
“It’s just not my thing.” I finish, lifting a shoulder.
He nods, expression guarded and unreadable. Damn, I was making progress and now it’s all gone to shit.
The football talk definitely ruined it.
I swallow hard, trying to clear the lump forming in my throat like it did whenever football is up as the topic of discussion. “I guess working for a team, you must like it?”
He hesitates for the briefest moment before answering. “I love the game. It’s … it’s a safe space for a lot of players and I respect that.”
“Are you a psychologist?” I ask, throwing out a guess at his job.
His lips twitch. That hint of laughter is back and my heart soars at the small victory. “I majored in psych in college, yeah.”
“You must know a few players then?”
“A handful.” He studies me before asking, “Do they ever come into the bar? Have you met any?”
“Me? No. I would run the other way,” I say shaking my head.
“You don’t even like the players?”
“The game is …” I pause, rolling the right words on my tongue before saying them aloud. “Intense. The people that play it, the rules, the fans. You get involved, even just a toe dip, and you're thrown into this world where between September and February, everything revolves around which team plays when and who wins and why didn’t they win and the ref is blind and it’s always the other players fault …” I smile, a memory churning in my mind. “I went through a stage in high school where I got back into it, sort of.”