The goal line, p.6
The Goal Line, page 6
“Do you want to keep this a secret?”
“I just don’t want anyone on the team involved. Someone would tell Warren Wilde and I don’t want him to know.” I hadn’t spoken to my father in about three months, and I didn’t plan to start again in my lifetime.
“We’re not going to be able to hide it forever,” César said. He looked at my flat stomach. “Eventually, it’s going to show.”
A lot of things were going to happen eventually, but at the moment, I was going to eat whatever he was cooking and be content with that. It smelled even better than the s’more and pork chops that I had been dreaming about.
Chapter 4
“I don’t understand. What…”
“Ellie, it’s not a thing,” I told my sister impatiently. “I had to move out of my cottage because Kaya and Denny were forcing me to go with their disgusting sex sounds. I have a new address and a new roommate. Don’t freak out.”
“But Cam, César Hidalgo? You moved in with him? You and César, you know!”
“You’re also doing that activity now,” I told her. “You must be able to say it.”
“Fine. You and César Hidalgo had sex,” Ellie announced. I could picture her blushing and it made me smile. “Given that, do you think it’s a good idea to live with him?” she asked me.
“Really, it’s not a big deal. We’re roommates.” I still hadn’t told her about the baby, but Ellie was my best friend, and it was getting harder to keep it back. I needed to talk to someone besides César, but I knew how upset she would be to hear it. And if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t ready to deal with her disapproval. She’d never liked the way I dealt with the men in my life, and I wasn’t ready to hear an “I knew this was a bad idea” about my behavior, no matter how nicely she would phrase it.
There was a little silence. “Oh, I get it,” she said knowingly. “This is a thing where César is the new Lincoln.”
“No, César and Lincoln aren’t the same at all,” I said irritably. “It’s a totally different situation.”
“This is exactly the same situation! You’re with César, but it’s just like when Lincoln was your boyfriend. You wouldn’t ever admit to the fact that you were in a relationship with him, either.”
“No! That’s not right. Lincoln and I were not in a relationship, as you like to call it, and he wasn’t my boyfriend. It was a loose kind of connection.”
“A loose connection? You were together for five months, exclusively,” Ellie pointed out. “Most people would call that a relationship, and Lincoln certainly thought that he was your boyfriend. He broke up with you when you wouldn’t meet his family after almost half a year together. Five months, and you wouldn’t even make him a contact in your phone. You wouldn’t follow him on anything, you didn’t even want me to like his pictures…”
“Whatever,” I told her, even more irritated. She was always trying to force me into a romantic commitment. “I’m not sleeping with César again, anyway. We’re roommates and that’s it. Like me and Morgan at Kaya’s cottage.”
“Morgan has been in love with you since freshman year of high school,” she informed me.
“That’s ridiculous.” Ellie was always saying stuff like that, but she way, way overestimated everything about relationships and about love in general. I changed the subject. “Tell me about Florida! Are you finally tan?”
“No, I can still blend well with a blank piece of paper,” she answered, but at least we left off talking about César, and I had to hang up not too much later. I was heading out with some friends for a night of fun, which I needed more than ever.
I gave myself one last check in the mirror before I went downstairs. I was still pale myself, but in the middle of winter up here, that was a common problem. No one would jump to the conclusion that I lacked color in my cheeks due to constant nausea. I added a little more makeup, anyway. My hair was certainly darker than the picture that César had found of me as a kid, but it was blonde enough, and curly and shiny so I must have been getting some nutrition.
Not bad, I thought. It didn’t show on my face that I was pregnant. I turned to the side, checking the silhouette of my body in the tight black dress. Nope, didn’t show there, either.
“Wow,” César said when I walked into the kitchen. His eyes swept up and down, surveying me. “You look beautiful. Where are you headed?”
“Thank you.” The expression on his face was gratifying. It was like, “You’re good enough to eat, and I’m hungry.” I got a little hungry myself, looking back at him. “I’m meeting up with friends,” I explained. “What about you? Why are you so spiffy?”
He was dressed to the nines himself and totally gorgeous, but he always was. I had been conducting a secret survey of César at various points in the day and there hadn’t been one moment that I had come across him when he didn’t look yummy. Sleepy, hungry, grumpy, sweaty—he was delectable all the time. Especially, though, when he’d come downstairs to get his phone, right after a shower and wearing only a towel. I’d had to stop myself from drooling on the counter where I’d been eating a bowl of the high-protein grain mix he’d insisted I have for breakfast. I had put down the spoon and peeked around the corner so I could watch his butt flex under the terrycloth as he went back up the stairs. That towel hadn’t been as thin as a woman might have liked, but it had given away enough that I had taken a piece of ice out of the freezer to eat along with my nasty grain mix.
“I’m spiffy because I have a date,” he told me now. “Dinner with someone.”
“Oh. That’s nice.” I swallowed, then smiled. “That sounds fun.” I wondered what she was like and I wanted to see her, to see the two of them together. “What’s her name?” I asked, watching his face.
“Arielle.” His expression didn’t change as he messed with his cufflink. “We went out a few times before Christmas. She’s cool.” He held out his arm. “Can you help me with this?”
I stepped to him and it felt weird. We hadn’t often been this close together in the few days that I’d lived here, except when he’d insisted that I go down to his mega-gym in the basement. “This is why I moved,” he had explained, showing me around the huge room. “I don’t have to leave to work out.” He had given me a sheaf of papers with an exercise routine he’d drawn up for me and then stood very near, very close as I tried it out. He’d adjusted the machines and watched over me carefully. He was very interested in keeping the baby healthy, I reminded myself.
“Who are you meeting up with tonight?” he asked.
“Some guys I know. Derrick, Pierre, Carson,” I said, messing with the cufflink. For some reason, I didn’t mention that Julie and Sonia would also be there. My fingers brushed over the warm skin of his wrist, the soft hair.
“How do you know them?”
“From college. From when I transferred back up here to finish.” I stroked my fingertips against his skin again, mostly by accident. “You should already know that, since I believe that I completed the part about my education on your questionnaire.”
“You did,” he agreed. “That wasn’t one of the questions you left blank.”
“You said that you majored in ancient history with a minor in classical studies. How, exactly, does that blend with football?” I played with the cufflink.
“It didn’t, not very well. It was pretty hard to pull it all off but I wanted to graduate before I left school, and I wanted to do it with a real major.”
“And a useful one.”
He laughed. “Those were the subjects that interested me. You wrote that you spent three years downstate, one up here. Why did you transfer?”
“Soleil was sick,” I said. “My mom, I mean. I came home for the summer and saw that it was bad, so I transferred to be closer and help her. She died last spring. She had waited a long time before going to the doctor and they couldn’t do much to help.”
“I didn’t realize that happened so recently,” he said. “I’m sorry, Camdyn.” His voice was always kind of growly, but those words were soft.
“Are you trying to make me cry?” I looked up into his brown eyes and blinked away some stray tears. “We’re going out to have fun tonight, right?”
“Right.” He stepped back, and I realized that I had been holding on to his wrist. “Where are you heading?”
“Um…” I checked my phone for the plan. “Dinner and then drinks at the Silver Dollar, probably.”
“Drinks,” he repeated. “Drinks with three guys. They’re good friends?”
“Sure,” I answered off-handedly.
César took another step away. He looked again at my outfit. “What does that mean, ‘sure?’”
I saw by the clock on the microwave that I was a little late in meeting them and I started to leave. “It means, sure, they’re good friends,” I said over my shoulder.
César followed behind me. “More like, boyfriends?”
“No, not at all. Well, Derrick and I used to go out some, if that’s what you mean. Also, Carson, and I guess I went out a few times with Pierre, too.” We’d had a few casual dinners, but it had never gone farther than a little kissing with Derrick.
“So, all three of them are former boyfriends? Or are they current boyfriends?”
I turned and found him eyeing me. “They’re friends, I said.”
“Do they know that you’re pregnant with someone else’s baby?” César asked me.
I glared at him. “No. I told you that I wasn’t telling anyone.”
“Nothing to these guys tonight?”
“That’s right, not one single word. Are you telling your date?” César didn’t answer, but I rolled my eyes. He didn’t have to tell anyone. He would be able to keep going forever like nothing was happening. He’d be able to date Arielle for as long as he wanted, or marry her if she was dumb enough to fall for a ring. I hurried to go, my heels snapping angrily on the pink marble.
But he followed me to the door. “Do you plan to drink at the bar?”
“Jesus and Mary!” I exploded. “Am I under house arrest? I’m going out with some friends, something I haven’t done for the past few months because I’ve been busy hanging my head over the toilet. I’ll do what I want tonight.”
“You’re still pregnant,” he noted.
“I’m aware of that! I can have fun anyway. You should try that with your date, too. Put a sock on the front door if I need to be careful when I come home. If I come home,” I added, because I could see that I was making him mad and I couldn’t help pushing it farther.
“Wait a minute. Where do you plan to sleep tonight, if not here?” He had followed me out into the driveway, and when I skidded a little on a patch of ice, he put his hand around my arm.
“I can sleep wherever I want. I’m already knocked up, so it’s not like I need to worry about that, right?”
“What in the hell are you talking about? Seriously, where are you going to sleep tonight?” His grip tightened a little and my heart sped up.
I yanked away. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you touch me!”
“Camdyn,” he said, “calm down.”
“You calm down!” I backed away carefully, watching him. “Don’t ever put a hand on me again, do you hear me? Never again.” I watched him as I got into my car and I drove away quickly, but still sticking to the stupid speed limit. What had made him think that he could control me? What made him think he could get physical? Ok, he hadn’t really, but I knew where things could lead. I wondered if Arielle, his date, knew about that side of him. I wondered more about Arielle as I drove to the restaurant.
“Camdyn!” the table of my friends called when I got there. I took a deep breath and smiled as I went over to them. Tonight was about having fun, not worrying about anything else.
Julie stood up to give me a hug. “We had a pool going on how late you’d be. I win,” she announced. “I had half an hour.” Money changed hands as I sat down. It was great to see everyone, because it had been so long. I even forgot to be tired and nauseated and angry at César as we all talked and laughed.
A few things were hard, though. I had to make up a lot of lies about family issues and work keeping me occupied so no one got suspicious about why I had been absent from the social circuit. Also, I hadn’t realized how difficult the booze situation would be. Not that I needed to drink to have fun, because I hadn’t been drinking for months—of course, I hadn’t really been having fun, either, I realized. But sitting at this table with bottles of wine steadily disappearing, it was hard to disguise that my glass was always full. Every once in a while, I caught Sonia’s eyes on it and I didn’t want her to start asking why I wasn’t having alcohol anymore.
I waited until they were generally distracted by laughing at another of Pierre’s penis stories before switching my glass with Carson’s almost empty one. The next time I spotted Sonia looking at me, I casually swirled and sniffed Carson’s wine.
“Great vintage,” I announced, smiling at her.
Sonia shrugged and said she didn’t care as long as it worked to get her drunk, and everyone else was mostly at that point already. I quickly put down the glass because the smell was making me sick. After dinner, we split up into cars to go to the Silver Dollar, a downtown bar, and Julie rode with me. “Seriously, it’s been weird without seeing you around, Camdyn. We all missed you so much!” she told me. She pulled down the mirror to check her makeup.
“I missed you guys, too. Like I said, I was so busy with my family and with work.”
“Nicky said she set you up with a really hot guy on New Year’s Eve,” she commented. “Are you seeing him?”
“No, I’m not with anyone right now. No one specific,” I answered vaguely.
She laughed. “Totally a Camdyn move. Why pick just one guy when the world is filled with so many, isn’t that what you say? But that’s good that you’re free, because Derrick wants to hook up with you,” she told me. “We can all pair off tonight.”
“Oh, me with Derrick?” I thought about how he’d acted at dinner, laughing loudly at the penis stories which I hadn’t found funny at all. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Maybe?” Julie asked. She smacked her lips together, spreading the gloss she had applied. “What’s your hesitation?”
“I don’t know,” I said, not able to verbalize a good reason.
“Maybe there will be someone better at the Silver Dollar, right?” She looked out the window. “Why are we going so slow? Everyone else passed us like three miles ago. Are you running out of gas or something?”
“We’ll get there soon,” I said, also annoyed at our lack of progress along the road due to my new, careful driving habits. Julie went on chatting, which helped me to relax again. Why not me and Derrick? There was nothing really wrong with him, besides being a little on the short side, a little on the loud side, a little on the immature side. We’d had fun when we’d been out together before. Sure, Derrick would be good for me for tonight, because that was all it would be—just tonight.
The Silver Dollar was packed, but it always was on a Saturday. Since I had driven so slowly, our other friends were already there, standing in a tight group at the far corner of the bar top. Julie waved and shoved through the crowd to get to them, and I went more slowly. I kept my purse over my stomach, feeling protective about people bumping me there. And it was really loud in here, too. Could the baby hear that? Would it be bad for her little ears? She was so tiny.
I elbowed in next to everyone, wishing there was a chair so I could sit down because I was starting to get tired. God, it was nine o’clock, and I wanted to go to bed. I forced myself to rally.
“What do you want to drink?” Derrick asked me, leaning over and speaking directly into my ear.
“Gin and tonic,” I said automatically.
“Coming right up,” he said. Before he left, he leaned over again and kissed my cheek, nuzzling my neck. Julie must have told him I was a go for tonight—she had been whispering to him when I finally made it over to their spot. I pulled away and shook my head. Julie was already cuddled up to Pierre, and Sonia was draped on Carson, but I didn’t want to drape on anyone, and I didn’t want Derrick’s lips on me again.
“Oh, no way!” Sonia suddenly squealed. She let go of Carson and jumped up on the footrest of someone’s barstool to peer across the room. “Jules, look! We’re so lucky!”
“What?” I turned to look in that direction, too.
“There are Woodsmen players here!” Sonia shrieked. “That’s Gunnar Christensen, Darius Rieser, and Jory Morin. And César Hidalgo!” She bounced on her toes. “OMG, he’s gorgeous.”
What? I twisted around again, standing on my tiptoes, and the moment I did, my eyes locked on César’s. Had he followed me here? He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me.
The crowd parted as the four players walked through the bar. Right over to where we stood.
“Hey, Camdyn,” César said casually, as if this was not any kind of big deal. “How was your dinner?”
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, but he shook his head and pointed to his ear, not able to hear me. “What are you doing here?” I yelled instead. “How dare—”
“Come outside and talk to me for a minute.”
I shook my head hard, no. No way was I going anywhere with César, the guy apparently tracking my every move. What in the hell had I gotten myself into with him? I put my hand over my stomach again, slightly terrified.
“Go get a table,” he called to his friends, and the other Woodsmen nodded and walked off. “Cam, I just want to talk to you. Will you come sit with me instead?”
“There are no tables…” I started to say, then watched as the Silver Dollar waitstaff carried in four chairs and a table top, smushing regular patrons out of the way to set it all up. The other football players sat down.
César held up his finger. “One minute,” he mouthed to me. “Please?”
