Breaking Tackles: A Taking Flight Novel (18 page)

Adam

After our win over the Chiefs, Courtney and I go out with the team to celebrate.

What I didn’t know was that our PR team scheduled the after party and invited photographers to come to the nightclub. Not that I care so much about photographers, but Courtney is none too pleased.

A flash goes off near us and she grimaces. “I really wish they’d stop taking candid shots.”

“They want photos of the guys being themselves. Acting natural.”

“I know,” Courtney says with a sigh. “But when I’m being myself and acting natural alongside you guys, I have no idea if I am making a face that creates a double chin or not.”

I look over at my fiancée, who looks incredibly hot in a black dress with a neckline that shows off more of her cleavage than I want other dudes looking at, and can’t imagine her ever looking bad, let alone having a double chin.

“Courtney, you’re hot and you know it.”

“I assure you, I don’t.”

“Well, I’m telling you that you’re hot. So at least one of us knows it.”

She rolls her eyes and I step closer to her, lowering my head so that my mouth is near her ear and say, “And you know you felt hot last night.”

Her body stiffens against mine and she says, “Please don’t bring that up in public.”

“No one can hear me but you,” I say before softly taking her earlobe between my teeth.

She whirls around and says, “Adam. Seriously. Cut it out,” before walking over to talk with Melissa.

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Deeks asks.

“I have no idea,” I say.

“Women,” Deeks says.

A photographer walks over to the ladies standing together and asks to take a picture. I watch as they all quickly fluff their hair and pose, making sure the photographer gets the best possible angle.

“I don’t understand all of
that
,” I say, gesturing to them. “Courtney is always concerned that she looks fat in photos. She’s never looked fat a day in her life.”

“Are you going to punch me if I say something about your woman?”

“Depends on what it is,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him.

“Fair enough,” Deeks says, laughing. “But she is damn fine. A lot of these guys want those rail-thin girls who are walking skeletons. You, my friend, have better taste. Classic taste.”

I continue watching her, and compared to the overly made-up stick figures some of the guys are dating or are married to, Courtney looks amazing—voluptuous and healthy and sexy. Even though I know she’s lost some weight, it’s accentuated her curves, giving her even more of an hourglass figure.

“I’m guessing you aren’t going to punch me,” Deeks says.

“Nah,” I say. “It’s not fair to punch someone who is stating facts.”

Deeks laughs at that and as I finish my beer he motions to it and says, “Another?”

I nod and he says, “For Courtney, too?”

“Yeah,” I say, knowing she’d rather have a beer than some fruity cocktail.

“Good job out there tonight, rookie,” one of the linemen says to me as he passes by while being dragged to the dance floor by his date.

“Thanks, man,” I yell after him, laughing when he gives me a thumbs-up.

We’ve won all of our games so far, and even though it’s only preseason, the team is in a collectively great mood. We killed the Chiefs tonight, winning by more than twenty points, and we’re all making sure we properly celebrate tonight.

Deeks comes back from the bar, handing me the beers and says, “Want to go infiltrate the ladies?”

“Sure,” I say. “Does the feeling of being an awkward seventh grader when approaching a group of girls ever go away?”

“Nope,” he says. “You just have to pretend that you’re smooth and confident. Watch and learn, my friend.”

He saunters over and says, “Well aren’t you all looking particularly fine tonight.”

“Watch yourself, Jeremiah,” Melissa says. “My husband is right over there.”

Everyone laughs and I squeeze in beside Courtney, handing her the fresh beer.

“Oh,” she says, sounding surprised at its presence. “Thanks for this.”

She takes it but doesn’t drink it. Which is odd for her. But she’s been acting weird all day. I’m shrugging it off as a bad mood or something.

“We can get out of here if you want,” I say before kissing the top of her shoulder.

I’m hoping that’s what she wants to hear, because I made sure to have the concierge discreetly purchase condoms and leave them in the room so that we’ll have them when we get back.

“I don’t want to keep you from hanging out with the team,” she says.

“I’m with them all the time. It’s you I want to spend time with.”

She smiles, seeming more like herself, and says, “Okay. Yeah. Let me just say bye to everyone and we can head out.”

After we’ve said our good-byes and posed for one last photo, we head outside and get in a cab back to the hotel. It’s a short drive and we’re back in the room within ten minutes. Courtney kicks off her heels and turns away from me to change out of her dress and into an oversized shirt and a pair of pajama shorts.

“So what do you want to do?” she asks. “Watch a movie or something?”

“Or something.”

Courtney narrows her eyes at me and, if I’m not mistaken, her skin pales a bit. Which is the opposite of the flush I’d like to see on her.

“Adam, I’m not feeling it today.”

“Well not right now,” I say. “Give me fifteen minutes and I’m sure I can change your mind. Maybe I’ll start off with that thing you liked so much last night?”

She blushes a deep red and it’s adorable. I take a couple steps toward her, putting my arms around her waist and kissing her, trying to communicate with my kiss exactly how much I love her.

Things heat up quickly, and as I’m starting to pull the shorts down her legs she says, “Adam. I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

She covers her face with her hands and says, “I’m just not ready yet.”

“But you were ready last night,” I say before thinking about it.

“Well tonight isn’t last night,” she says, her voice escalating. “And tonight I’m saying no.”

“Okay,” I say, literally holding my hands up in the air. I want to tell her that if she’ll just relax, if she’ll let me do what I did last night, that she’ll feel the same way she did last night. But she’s saying no. And I’m not an idiot.

She sighs and says, “I know that this seems crazy. I’m sorry I’m so up and down.”

“It’s okay. You’ll be ready again when you’re ready.”

She nods and says, “Thanks for understanding.”

“Of course,” I say. “So, do you want to watch a movie?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Something funny.”

I flip on the TV and we settle on a 90s movie we both loved as kids.

“Hey,” I say a little while later. “When did you know that you loved me?”

She looks up at me and says, “I don’t know. Maybe I always knew. Why?”

“Is that why you never really dated in high school?”

She snorts and says, “That’s the more romantic version of the explanation. It was never my choice not to date in high school. All the guys were terrified of my brothers. And you. And your brothers. So no one ever bothered to ask.”

“No one ever asked you on a date?”

“Not one time.”

Fucking unbelievable.

“That’s insane.”

“It used to really upset me. Especially around homecoming and prom. But, then again, all of the guys I went to school with sucked. So it really wasn’t that big of a loss.”

I laugh and say, “If I had known, I would have asked you out.”

“No you wouldn’t have,” she says. “You were off dating tall, leggy volleyball players, remember?”

“But I wanted to be with you.”

“What?” she exclaims more than asks.

“It’s always been you for me, Court. I was just too much of an idiot to really see it at the time.”

“Because of the tall, leggy volleyball players.”

“You’re never going to let that go.”

“Nope.”

I laugh and she says, “What brought that question up?”

“Deeks asked if we’d been in love since we were in diapers and I couldn’t pinpoint the time that I knew, for the first time, that I loved you. Now that I’m with you—I think I always knew. It was always just you, even when I was dating other people. I never took them seriously because they weren’t you.”

“You’re trying to get in my pants again, aren’t you?”

“Is it working?”

“Not the way you want it to,” she says. “But I think my heart grew one size bigger.”

I smile and say, “I love you. So much.”

“I love you, too,” she says. “Now stop proclaiming your love so we can watch the movie.”

Courtney

This week has been a nightmare.

First, my friends all wanted to know how things went with Adam. But instead of waiting to ask me until we were all together, they decided to ask me separately. Kate asked point-blank if I still I had my V-card, Sophie asked if Adam and I had a conversation about my sex hang-ups, and Willa asked if my weekend included anything particularly momentous.

I swear to God.

I wasn’t about to tell them about our adventures in almost-sexland because, Jesus Christ, how do you even go about telling people those kinds of things? And I didn’t want to get into why I freaked out the next night.

Because I feel like an idiot. One night I was all about it, the next I’m a basket case.

I just need to lose fifteen more pounds.

But of course, because this week is a nightmare sent straight from Hades, I’ve gained two pounds even though I’ve been sticking to the diet and working out. I haven’t been cheating or slacking. But I still gained two pounds.

On top of that, photos of me at that nightclub in Kansas City have surfaced online and one blogger noticed that I’ve lost some weight, so now all of a sudden news that I’ve lost weight is everywhere.

Everywhere meaning a handful of weird sports blogs that chronicle the personal lives of professional athletes and their significant others.

But even though the story is about me losing weight and looking great and all “Go Courtney Go,” the photo that accompanies every single one of the articles makes me look like a blimp next to Melissa Montgomery.

A freaking blimp.

I look enormous. Like a cow.

Moo.

Now I’m even more mortified that I let Adam see me totally naked and that we did all that stuff together.

I printed out the photo of me from the draft, the one of me and Adam from the restaurant in New Orleans, and the one from the nightclub and taped them to my wall for inspiration. Then I looked up diets online. In addition to cutting carbs, the Internet suggests I also cut sodas and refined sugars.

I only have a couple Diet Cokes a day and because I’ve already cut out carbs, refined sugars shouldn’t be that hard because most of the refined sugars I eat are found in carbs.

So I’m going to go for it.

No carbs, no soda, no sugar.

And I’m adding in a full workout on the weekends.

That should help.

I pull into the parking lot of a local greasy spoon and immediately spot Ryan’s car. The two of us have always been close, but since he graduated last spring, I haven’t seen much of him due to his job as a pharmaceutical salesman.

He travels. A lot.

But this week, he’s in Columbia, doing whatever it is pharmaceutical salesmen do. From what I understand it’s a lot of taking doctors out to dinner and giving away pens and stationary.

But tonight, he’s taking me out to dinner. Even though I’m not an MD.

I walk in and spy Ryan sitting in a booth.

“Hey, big brother.”

“Hey, little sister,” he says, standing and giving me a huge hug. “You look great.”

I look down at my jeans and Mizzou T-shirt.

“Okay, the clothes you are wearing look pretty standard for you. But
you
look great.”

“You’ve seen all the blog posts about the weight loss, haven’t you?” I ask before sliding into the booth.

He follows suit and says, “I might have seen one or two.”

“Now I don’t know if you really meant that I look great or if you’re messing with me.”

“Would you rather me tell you that you look like shit?”

“If that’s the truth, yeah. I’m sick of strangers telling me I look great because some blogger compared two pictures of me and told the Internet my cheeks look marginally thinner.”

“That
is
really freaking weird,” he says.

I sigh and we both open the menu. When the waitress comes over, Ryan looks at me and says, “Mozzarella sticks?”

I shake my head. “Get them if you want them, but I can’t have them. Fried carbs.”

He rolls his eyes and ultimately doesn’t order the mozzarella sticks, but does get a cheeseburger, onion rings, and a chocolate milkshake.

A meal that sounds like heaven right now.

“And you, hon?” the waitress asks.

“A side salad with Italian dressing, please. And a water with lemon.”

“That’s it?” Ryan asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s what I want.”

“For dinner you’re having a side salad and water with lemon,” he says, disbelievingly.

“Yep.”

The waitress walks away to put the order in, and Ryan continues to stare at me as if I’m the alien robot Sophie accused me of being.

“So,” I say, needing to fill the silence. “How’s your love life?”

“Nonexistent,” he says. “How’s the long distance?”

He grimaces when he mentions the state of my relationship. Ever since his high school sweetheart cheated on him while they were doing long distance in college, he’s been a commitment-phobe. But when I told my family that I wasn’t going to move to New Orleans yet, he didn’t say anything about that decision, or how hard it was going to be, or how I was making a mistake.

Which adds to the already long list of reasons why Ryan is my favorite brother.

“It’s okay,” I say. “No. You know what? It’s hard. Really super hard.”

“Long distance sucks balls,” Ryan says. “But you guys are doing okay?”

“Yeah, we’re fine.”

“That doesn’t sound like things are fine.”

I sigh and consider telling Ryan about everything. He and I have never talked about my love life in detail—because there was never anything to talk about before—but I know all about his relationships. When he lost his virginity, he told me the night it happened.

I made him take a shower.

“I’m just going through some stuff,” I say. “I have some hang-ups about intimacy.”

“By ‘intimacy’ do you mean sex?”

“Yep.”

Ryan rubs a hand down his face and says, “Okay, little sister. I’m not going to like this conversation because you’re, well, my little sister, and you’re engaged to Adam and I’ve known you both forever, but lay it on me.”

“We haven’t had sex.”

He looks at me the same way my friends did when I told them this same information.

“Why is that everyone’s reaction?”

“I was trying really hard not to have a reaction,” Ryan says.

“Your lack of reaction
is
a reaction. But anyway. We haven’t had sex. We’ve gotten close. Really close. But only once. Like, last weekend. I told him I was ready and then he was looking for condoms and it turned out that he didn’t have any, so we didn’t do it, and then the next night he wanted to, and I was, like, ‘Well that ship has sailed, sorry.’”

“Seriously?” Ryan asks.

“To which of those things are you asking ‘seriously’?”

“Well, I’m a little shocked Adam didn’t have any condoms with him.”

“He supposedly left the box he has on his bathroom counter in NOLA when he was packing.”

“Okay, fair enough,” Ryan says. “I guess I’m shocked that you two haven’t had sex yet, if I’m being totally honest. I thought you two slept together back in high school.”

Now it’s time for me to have a lack-of-reaction reaction.

“You two were hanging out and talking all the time, and then all of a sudden you were avoiding each other like the plague. I just figured you finally slept together and that it made things weird.”

“No,” I say. “He went to our rival high school. He was dating someone else. We just drifted apart.”

That’s close enough to the truth, at least.

“Okay,” he says, shrugging. “So you told him you were ready one night and then the next night changed your mind?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Because I realized I wasn’t ready.”

“But why did you think you were ready the night before?”

“Because I lost my damn mind.”

“Courtney, you’re doing that thing where you speak girl and you know I can’t decipher that.”

“I…well…we were doing things and we went a lot farther than normal and I felt ready then. And then I thought about what all happened and I felt dirty and embarrassed and, well, fat.”

“Thinking about foreplay made you feel fat?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, Court,” Ryan says. “This is your life and your body and your decision. I’m glad that Adam is respecting it. But mostly, if you’re not ready to have sex, then don’t.”

The food comes and my salad looks paltry and sad in comparison to Ryan’s greasy cheeseburger. I do my best to not look at his food, lest my mouth water, and eat my salad, pretending that it makes me happy.

“So explain this whole fat thing to me,” he says.

“I feel fat,” I say flatly.

“Right, we’ve established that. What I want to know is why. I’ve literally never heard you say you’ve ever felt fat before. And I lived with you through your teenage years.”

“I’m technically still a teenager.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, fine. I don’t know. I just looked around and realized that I was a lot bigger than all my friends and most of the girls I know.”

“But just because you’re bigger doesn’t mean you’re fat.”

“I know,” I say. “But I actually am.”

“You really think you’re fat?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I have a muffin top. And flabby arms. And huge thighs.”

“All of those things will be toned by the exercise you’ve been doing. It just takes time.”

“Right,” I say. “I’m only fifteen pounds from my goal weight. Well, seventeen. I somehow gained two pounds this week.”

“Is it two pounds of muscle?” he asks.

I shrug.

“If you’ve been working out a lot more than normal, it could be that you’ve gained muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat. So you shouldn’t really be concerned about the number. Be concerned about how you feel.”

“I know,” I say. “And I feel really good. So I’m sure that when I lose seventeen more pounds I’ll feel even better. And I’ll look better.”

Ryan narrows his eyes at me and says, “Just do everything in moderation. Don’t be one of those girls who becomes obsessed with dieting. Or who starts hurting herself in order to lose weight.”

“I don’t have a problem. I have a goal.”

“How’s that goal tasting?” he asks, eyeing my disgusting salad.