Breaking Tackles: A Taking Flight Novel (23 page)

Courtney

When I open my eyes, the clock on Adam’s beside table reads 10:12 a.m. This is the latest I’ve slept in months, and we’re supposed to have lunch with our families at 1:00 p.m. I bolt upright and say, “Adam. It’s after ten.”

He makes a noise and I get up, pulling running leggings and a T-shirt out of my overnight bag.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice groggy.

“Putting on clothes to go running.”

“No,” he says definitively. “No running. Come back to bed.”

“Adam, I need to go running.”

“You barely ate anything last night. Or at all yesterday.”

“I still need to run. Exercise gets your metabolism going in the morning.”

“Pretty sure it’s breakfast that does that.”

I narrow my eyes at him and say, “Come running with me.”

“Nope. This is my vacation. You don’t need to go running because you look amazing. Besides, it’s good for your muscles to take a day off.”

“I’m going to go running.”

Adam looks at me for a long moment and says, “Fine. Go run. I will lay here in bed and not be jealous of your run at all.”

“Have it your way,” I say before heading downstairs and slipping out the front door. I stretch quickly in the driveway and then begin the run, jogging at first and accelerating as I feel my muscles warm.

Considering everything that happened last night, my mind is shockingly clear, even though I’m still embarrassed by how I reacted to the wedding scrapbook. But everyone has apologized and I’m hoping that now we can all scrap the scrapbook and start over.

Which means that I have to start planning my wedding.

Surprisingly, this doesn’t make me feel like I’m going to vomit or pass out. Which is new.

There is one thing my mom and Vicki are right about—long distance is hard, and even though I keep saying I want a long engagement, it does make sense for us to get married next summer. If we want to do that, we have to start making reservations sooner rather than later.

I cut my run short so that I can go shower and talk to Adam about all of this. When I head back up the stairs and into Adam’s bedroom, he’s still in bed.

“Really?” I ask.

“I’m a man of my word,” he says without opening his eyes, which makes me crack up. Then I launch my sweaty self on top of him. He makes an
oof
noise as I land, I hope more out of surprise than my actual weight, and puts his arms around me, pinning me to his chest.

“How much weight have you lost?” he asks.

“I’m not actually sure,” I lie. “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” he says. “You don’t really feel like you anymore.”

“What?”

“You feel, I don’t know, thin.”

“That’s the goal.”

“I know,” he says. “And you really do look amazing. But I thought you looked great before, too. I just don’t want you to become one of those crazy skinny types some of the guys on the team date.”

I feel my eyes go wide and he loosens his grip on me. I roll off of him and say, “I need to shower.”

I grab my clothes for the day and go into his bathroom without another look at him. After turning on the water, I strip down in front of the mirror, scrutinizing myself.

My body does look different, finally. My arms look toned, I have a waistline, and the stomach pooch I hated so much has melted away. But I still see issues. My thighs are flabby, and now that my stomach is beginning to look flatter, I’d love to have abs.

I’m almost there. The fact that I feel ready to start planning the wedding means that I’m nearly there mentally. By the time this wedding actually rolls around, I’ll look really amazing, I’ll finally feel good, and everything will come together.

When I finish with my shower and put on my clothes, I know I don’t have enough time to dry my hair and talk to Adam about wedding plans before lunch with his family. I quickly towel dry it and hope for the best.

I open the bathroom door and see that Adam is
still
in bed.

“Adam,” I say. “You really need to get up.”

“But the bed is just so comfy.”

I roll my eyes and settle onto the bed beside him. “Are you awake enough to have a quick serious discussion?”

“It depends,” he says, cracking one eye.

“On what?”

“The topic.”

“And if the topic is our wedding?”

“Oh,” he says, sounding very awake. Alarmed, actually. “Yes, I can have that discussion.”

“Good,” I say. “Because even though I freaked out yesterday about planning, I realized that I
do
have opinions about this wedding, and that it’s going to happen eventually. So we should talk about it.”

Adam exhales with his entire body. “You have no idea how relieved I am to hear that.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought you were going to tell me that you didn’t want to marry me anymore.”

My jaw drops open. “That is crazy talk. Why would you think that?”

“You’ve seemed so weird about all of this,” he says. “I was beginning to think maybe it was because you didn’t actually want to marry me and didn’t know how to tell me that.”

“That is definitely not it.”

“Good,” he says, and I lean in to kiss him quickly.

“So,” I say. “When do you want to get married?”

“Today?” he asks hopefully.

“Not going to happen.”

“After the season?”

I nod. “I think that makes sense.”

“Really?” he asks. “It’s not too soon?”

“No,” I say. “Distance is really hard. As much as I love Mizzou and my friends, I love you more. I
want
to be with you. So let’s get married when the season is over and I’m done with school for the year.”

“That sounds good,” Adam says.

I pull out my phone and open the calendar, scrolling to May of next year. “Let’s just pick a date and make it work. May or June?”

“May,” he says. “The sooner the better.”

“Okay,” I say, smiling. “I’m done with classes in early May, so how about two weeks after that? May
twenty-second?”

“May
twenty-second it is.”

I open a new appointment on that day and type “Wedding” and then look at Adam, who has a huge, goofy grin on his face.

“We’re getting married,” he says.

“On May
twenty-second.”

“I guess this means I should put clothes on so we can go tell my family.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“But first,” he says. “I want to make out with my fiancée.”

As if I’m going to argue with that.

Adam

A week later, I wake up with a killer headache.

I sit up slowly, and once I’m upright I try to make sense of the world, which is swirling around me.

We won our game last night and I went to Deeks’s house to celebrate.

There were
a lot
of shots.

I look around and see that I’m not in my apartment—so, still at Deeks’s. I must’ve gone to sleep in one of his several guest rooms. Fully clothed. Including shoes.

I rub my eyes and wonder if I can stand without puking. I would kill for a glass of water and several ibuprofen.

After sitting for another ten minutes, I finally make it to my feet and to the kitchen without incident. As I’m grabbing a glass, I hear movement behind me and I slowly turn my head.

“Morning,” Mariella says.

“Morning. Water?” I ask.

“Please.”

I grab another glass and take them both to the filtered water dispenser on the refrigerator. Mariella takes a seat at the large kitchen island and begins rifling through her massive purse. I put her water down in front of her and ask, “Are you looking for ibuprofen?”

“Car keys,” she says, but quickly pulls out a bottle of ibuprofen and hands it to me.

“Thanks,” I say, opening it and popping two. “Are you okay to drive?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I didn’t really get all that drunk last night. Drunk enough to finally let myself sleep with Grant Walker, but not drunk enough to be unable to drive this morning.”

“You slept with Walker?” I ask, amused by the idea of her and our kicker. Mostly because I can totally see them together.

“Yeah,” she says, smirking. “We tend to flirt a lot when we see each other. It was going to happen eventually.”

“Didn’t his divorce get finalized, like, last week?”

“It sure did,” she says. “So maybe it wasn’t that I was all that drunk. Maybe I just like knowing that I’m not sleeping with a legally married man.”

“So you and Grant Walker.”

“Maybe,” she says, looking hopeful. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

I finish my glass of water and feel better knowing that what will make me feel much better is a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit, hash browns, and a large black coffee.

I pat my pocket to make sure I have all my stuff—keys, wallet, dead cell phone—and then say, “I think I need to get home before I start to feel like crap again.”

Mariella downs her glass of water and says, “Me, too. Except unlike you, I have to teach a yoga class in two hours.”

“Good thing you’re not too hungover, right?”

“Right,” she says.

I put our glasses in the sink and then walk with her out to Deeks’s large driveway where all the cars are parked.

“See you around, Mariella.”

“See ya,” she yells back with a wave of her hand.

Once I’m in my Jeep, I plug my phone in to the car charger, hoping for some juice so I can call Courtney. We talked after the game before I went over to Deeks’s and I’m sure that I drunk texted her, but I want to call her this morning to let her know that I’m awake and doing okay.

And to hear her voice.

God, I can’t wait until May, when we’re married and she moves down here and I get to wake up next to her every day for the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, my phone is very dead and doesn’t even turn on until I’m through the drive-thru and pulling into my parking lot. I head inside with my sack of food and once I’m on my couch and have inhaled the greasy breakfast, call Courtney.

But she doesn’t answer. Then I realize that it’s Monday and she doesn’t have class until this afternoon, so she’s probably running or at the gym.

I hang up and send her a text, letting her know that I’m awake and at home and asking her to call me when she can. Then I switch on the TV to catch up on the headlines and NFL scores.

When I wake up, it’s nearly six p.m.

I’ve been asleep for almost seven hours.

I grab my phone and see that I have ten missed calls and texts—one each from Courtney and my offensive coordinator, but also from every member of my family, Luke, Sophie, Deeks, and Amanda, the team’s publicist.

Odd.

I call Courtney back first, but her phone goes to voice mail, so I send her a text.

Fell asleep on the couch and slept like the dead. Sorry I missed you earlier, hope I didn’t worry you. Call when you can. Love you.

Then I call my coach.

“Kistler,” he answers on the first rang. “You better be telling me that you have a damn good excuse for missing our tape review that isn’t being hungover or sleeping around.”

“Oh, no,” I say. I had an appointment to watch tape with him at four o’clock and I completely slept through it. “I’m so sorry. Can we reschedule?”

“You need to get down here immediately. Be prepared to have your ass handed to you by everyone.”

“Yes, sir.”

I scramble up, and with no time for a shower, throw on a team shirt and jeans, brush my teeth, and grab my always-packed gym bag on my way out to the Jeep. I’m sure that they’ll make me run some drills for missing the meeting.

On my drive, I try Courtney again.

“Hello, Adam,” Sophie says.

“Sophie, hey,” I say. “I called Courtney, right? Not you by accident?”

“You called Courtney’s phone,” she says primly. “But you’re going to have to deal with me.”

“Huh?”

“You are perhaps the biggest asshole in the universe.”

“Sophie, what are you talking about?” I ask, completely confused. She must be pranking me.

“Listen to me, you colossal fucktard,” she says, her voice taking on a razor-sharp edge. “Unless you have the world’s best explanation for what you’ve been doing down in New Orleans with that woman who looks suspiciously like your current fiancée, you will never speak to Courtney again.”

“Sophie. Explain,” I say, my heart thundering in my chest. Sophie is
pissed
and I have absolutely no idea why.

“Don’t play dumb with me.”

“Sophie, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about and today has turned into a day from hell. I went to celebrate the win last night, stayed at Deeks’s, left this morning, got breakfast, and then slept for seven hours on my couch. I missed a meeting with the offensive coordinator, have a billion missed calls, and now you’re yelling at me in your scary voice and calling me a fucktard and I don’t know why.”

Sophie is quiet for a moment before she says, “There are photos of you with a woman that surfaced online today. A couple of professional shots from a fancy looking bar where you’re dancing together, some Instagram photos from other Saints players where the two of you are laughing over drinks and doing shots, and a paparazzi photo of you two leaving a house together this morning.”

Everything goes numb, but I have the sense to pull into a nearby parking lot.

“What?” I ask, my voice sounding foreign.

“It looks really bad,” Sophie says. “You’ve hung out with whoever this woman is on multiple occasions and it seems that you know her well.”

“Her name is Mariella,” I say.

“I don’t want to know,” Sophie says, interrupting me. “What I need to know is if you’ve been cheating on Courtney.”

“No,” I say, with more emotion in that one syllable than I knew I could put in it. “How could you even think that, Sophie?”

“These photos sure make it seem like you are.”

“Well, if I recall correctly, there were unflattering photos of you that circulated on the Internet last year. You of all people should know that photos aren’t proof.”

“Yeah, but I was doing the things those photos made it look like I was doing! So tell me right now if you’re cheating on Courtney with this Mariella hoebag.”

“No,” I say again. “She’s friends with the woman Deeks is dating. I’ve seen her literally twice. I met her at a club that Courtney knew I was going to. Yes, I danced with her, but I didn’t touch her other than shaking her hand. And she was at the party last night. We both crashed at Deeks’s place—in separate room— and left at the same time this morning, but Sophie, she told me that she hooked up with Grant Walker. I woke up by myself, fully clothed in one of Deeks’s guest rooms. Hand to God.”

Sophie sighs and says, “Okay, Adam.”

“You believe me?”

“Yes,” she says. “I do. The idea that you would cheat on Courtney was something that I wanted to reject anyway. I figured the whole thing just looked bad, but didn’t want to immediately assume that you weren’t a dickhole.”

“A dickhole?”

“Shut up, Kistler. I’m still worked up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, glad that Sophie believes me. “Can I talk to Courtney? Is she okay?”

“No and no,” Sophie says. “She needs some time. I’ll tell her that I spoke with you and what you told me, and when she’s ready, she’ll call you.”

“Sophie,” I say. “I want to talk to my fiancée.”

“Well, she doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”

I hit my steering wheel out of frustration. “Just hand her the phone.”

“Not gonna happen,” she says.

“But you know that I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, you didn’t, but you’re still a shithead for not thinking about the fact that you’re being photographed all the goddamn time. How could you not consider what it would look like?”

“Because I can’t live my life afraid that every woman I pass on the street or pose for a quick photo with or sign an autograph for might be a person who is photographed with me. That’s insane.”

“I know it is,” Sophie says. “Believe me. But this is the world we live in. The one you live in. And this is how the paparazzi game works.”

I groan and she says, “Let me go talk to Courtney while you go fix things with your offensive coordinator.”

“Fine,” I say, looking at the clock and knowing that he knows where I live and how long it should take me to get to his office. I’m going to be in so much shit.

“I’ll let you know how things go,” Sophie says. “Text me when you’re out of your meeting and hopefully I can get Courtney to call you then. But if she’s not ready, I’m not going to force her to call you.”

“I understand,” I say. “You’re a really good friend.”

“And you are in so much trouble,” she says so brightly that it makes me laugh.

Mostly because it’s true. Obviously I need to fix this with Courtney, but I assume the team publicist called me so that we can talk about all of this.

“Good luck with everything,” Sophie says. “I’ll talk to you later.”

I hang up and pull back out onto the road, but then remember that my family—including both brothers—called me. I need to let them know that I’m not cheating on Courtney and that the wedding is still on. At least, to my knowledge.

Courtney has to forgive me, right? I didn’t
do
anything except be nice to Mariella. It’s not my fault everyone has a camera these days and posts every single thing everywhere.