Scrimmage Gone South (Crimson Romance) (5 page)

Her gut still turned over when she saw him. She hated that about herself, but at least no one else had to know. And really, to be fair, who wouldn’t get a little queasy looking at him, with that caramel hair and those cheekbones that looked like they could cut granite? And right now he was licking chocolate off his fingers as he made notes on whatever it was he was reading.

She took a deep breath and let the ice set in. She’d act like she came home every day to find him on her steps. And she would not rise to any bait he might cast her way. He could argue all he wanted. She would have a reasonable conversation. It was the only way.

Tolly strolled up so quietly that she was practically at his feet before he noticed her.

“Just a second,” he had the audacity to say and went back to his reading. There was a pile of empty Mounds and Almond Joy wrappers beside him. She wanted to pick them up and put them in the garbage but resisted. Finally, he put a big red
B
in the corner of the paper and scribbled underneath,
Good job. You’re doing better
.

“What do you teach?” she asked.

“College prep English.” She resisted showing the surprise she felt and only nodded. “What did you think I’d teach? Basket weaving?”

“I have never once entertained the thought of what you teach, or if you teach.”

“Where’s Seven?”

She was sorely tempted to tell him it was none of his business, but she remembered her pledge not to argue.

“I’ve just come from book club,” she said pleasantly. “
Kirby
went with Harris, Luke, and the kids to eat pizza. Then they were all going over to Luke and Lanie’s to watch a movie. He’ll be home soon.”

Nathan nodded, his mouth a straight line. Even he couldn’t criticize her for letting Kirby go out with a lawyer, a judge, and two three-year-olds. Besides, the men in question were his friends. He was probably disappointed he had nothing to bitch about.

“Would you like to wait for Kirby inside?” she asked as she breezed by and unlocked the door.

He picked up his candy wrappers and rose to follow her. “It’s you I was waiting for.”

“Is that right?” She buzzed around, turning on lights and adjusting the heat. Finally she turned to face him. He stood there clutching the essays and the bag of candy.

“Do you want an Almond Joy?” He held the bag out. It had witches and ghosts on it.

“You hate coconut,” she said. Why did she say that?

“Why do you think that?” he asked, puzzled.

“You once told me. It doesn’t matter.”

“I guess that used to be true. Times change. I hated a lot of things back then that I don’t now. And I liked a lot of things that I don’t anymore.”

Ouch.

“Or — ” He half sat on the sofa arm. “Maybe I just lied about hating coconut. Oh, wait. No. I never lied to you.”

Double ouch.
Don’t buy into it. Don’t argue.

“Did you come here to bicker with me? Or dredge up the past? Or is my porch just the best spot in Merritt for paper grading and candy eating?”

“Neither. I need that authorization form I sent to you by Darla Sturges. I thought you would drop it by the school.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s permission for Seven to play football. I can’t let him practice or play until you sign.”

“Oh. It must be in that envelope. I haven’t had time to open it yet. I just got it this morning.” She had to brush past him to get to the coffee table where she’d left it. He smelled like Irish Spring and chocolate. Still.

“Yeah, you had some serious wine drinking and not talking about a book to do.” Nathan knew all about book club because he and Lanie had gone out some when he’d first come to town. “Much more important than reading that parent packet.”

“I’ll get to it, Nathan. Give me time.” She extracted the form from the envelope and read over it. “Pretty standard,” she muttered.

“Harris wrote it.”

She picked up a pen. And stopped. If she signed, that meant Kirby had her permission — no, her blessing — to go out on that field and land at the bottom of a pile of two hundred pound boys.

Nathan nodded to her and raised his eyebrows, hurrying her. Still, she hesitated. His expression froze and he narrowed his eyes.

“Townshend.” He shook his head. “Do not taunt me. Do not pretend you aren’t going to sign that form.”

“I’m not. I mean, I
am
going to sign.” And she was. Miss Eula had let him play. He’d played for years. She couldn’t tell him no, even though she knew that, sometimes, when that pile of boys untangled, what was left was a ruined life. “It’s just that I am responsible for him.”

“And you’re just getting that?” Nathan closed his eyes and shook his head. “Townshend, I don’t even know how to respond to that. That boy is not a toy. You can’t take him down and play with him until you’re tired of it all. You have to see this through.”

“Do you think I wouldn’t? That I would have taken it up if I wasn’t going to take it seriously?”

“Yeah,” Nathan said flatly. “That’s what I think.”

She scribbled her name on the form. “Don’t presume,” she said with all the ice she could summon, “that you know what I would do, like you used to presume that you didn’t like coconut.” She slowly folded the paper in a perfectly symmetrical tri fold and handed it to him. “Here’s your paper. You and I are done now.”

“We really aren’t.” He unfolded the form, probably to make sure she hadn’t signed the Great Pumpkin or something. “We will have to have some interaction from time to time.”

“I don’t believe that’s true. Since you moved here you and I have been in many rooms on many occasions with many mutual friends. We’ve even danced together. But we have not interacted. Never mistake polite conversation for interaction.”

“Well, it’s different now.” He stood up and unwrapped another piece of candy. “I’m just saying you might actually need some help with this. I’m Seven’s coach. For reasons I can’t figure out — though I do admit even you are better than those Ohio Hell People — you’ve taken it upon yourself to be his guardian.”

“I don’t need any help. You be the coach and leave me out of it,” she said. “And I’ll be the guardian and leave you out of it.”

The ice lasted until she locked the door after Nathan. Then she started to shake. She walked over to a box she’d unearthed just today marked
Mason-Harper Academy.
Had she even kept the journal? She remembered throwing it in the trash once and digging it out again, but she couldn’t remember if she had ultimately kept it. As she dug through yearbooks, old essays, and pictures, she realized it would be relief it if was missing. She didn’t
want
to read it, but she felt compelled to try to find it.

Ah, there it was. Aunt Mary Alice — Harris’s mother — had brought her the handmade blank book from Italy that summer. Tolly had never been one to keep a journal, but with its elegant rose colored silk cover and marbled paper pages, the book inspired her to try.

She hadn’t been very good at it. Mostly she’d written things like,
Trig test. 97!
Or
Grandmamma sent the skirt Mama said I couldn’t have
. And later,
N. called — twice.

And that was all until that Sunday afternoon when she’d sat down and wrote the only long entry in the book. She flipped through. Even back then, her penmanship had been neat, precise. But it was a little loopier, a little more playful, handwriting somewhere between a child’s and a woman’s. And after all, that’s what she’d been. She found the entry and began to read.

• • •

I just got back from seeing Nathan and I am in worse trouble than when I started out. The reason I went to Tuscaloosa was to tell the truth. I should have told him weeks ago. Okay, so I shouldn’t have lied to him to begin with. But he was so cute. And I didn’t even know who he was when he asked me to dance that night at that party where I wasn’t even supposed to be. Sure, I’d seen him play football about a million times but you can’t tell anything about somebody in a football helmet. I can’t even pick out my own cousin except by his number. And Nathan only told me his first name and it’s not like it’s all that unique. For all I knew, he could have been Nathan Quattlebalm from Missouri, a space cowboy, or some party crasher just like me.

When he asked for my phone number I shouldn’t have given it to him but I guess I really hoped he’d call even though I didn’t think he would. I sure didn’t believe he’d keep calling. I should have stopped it, should have thrown my phone in the river, but I just liked talking to him so much. The last two weeks he’s even called me on Saturday as soon as he could after the game was over. He didn’t even know I’d been at those games with my family, there to watch Harris play. I’d have to sneak off from my family to take his calls.

I blame all this on cell phones. If cell phones hadn’t been invented, I would never have gotten away with this. Except, I haven’t gotten away with it. I am about to get caught if I don’t think of something fast.

Which is why I am writing all this down. I can’t tell this to anybody — not Gina, not Andrea, not Mary Margaret, CERTAINLY not Harris. Ms. Campbell, the guidance counselor, says I am a visual learner, meaning that I learn by seeing things. So I thought if I wrote all this down where I can see it I might figure something out.

It all started a month ago. Alabama was playing at home, in Tuscaloosa, and we — my parents, my aunt and uncle, and my grandparents — were going to the game like we always do. My school, Mason-Harper Academy, was out that Friday so I went home with Marcie Carnes, who is from Tuscaloosa, and spent the night at her house on Thursday night. The plan was for my parents to pick me up on Friday when they got to town. Since they come from the other direction, this was a lot more convenient than picking me up at school, though I have told them over and over again that I am perfectly capable of driving myself to meet them in Tuscaloosa. It’s only two hours.

Anyway, since Marcie’s from Tuscaloosa and her mother is a dean at the University, she knows a lot about what happens on the campus. She got the good idea that we should sneak out and go to a fraternity party, which they always have on Thursday nights before home games. She said we could say we were juniors at Huntingdon College, which isn’t too far from Mason-Harper. She said no one would ask who invited us to the party because they would not care since we are female and pretty.

I started to tell her flat out no, but then I thought, why not? I never do anything bad. It might be fun. And besides, I didn’t have to do anything really bad, like drink or have sex. How bad was it to crash a party? It wasn’t like I was going to steal anything or break a chair. So I told her I would, but under no circumstances could I go to a party at the Sigma Chi house because that’s Harris’s fraternity. She said, okay, we’d go to DKE. She’d crashed there once before and knew all about it.

So we did our makeup a little heavier than usual and I wore a gray wool skirt with a black twinset and pearls because that outfit makes me look older. We didn’t go until almost nine o’clock, which seemed late to me, but Marcie said any earlier and we’d stand out.

I felt like I stood out anyway and I didn’t like being there. It was loud, crowded, and there was lots of drinking. Almost immediately, Marcie went off with some guy and I was by myself. Some drunk guy kept talking to me and trying to put his arm around me, so I asked him to get me a beer. As soon as he was out of sight, I went out to hide on the porch, which was big with columns across the front. There were a few people out there so I went over to the end and kind of stood in the shadows behind a column. I figured I’d just wait there for a little while and then I’d call Marcie’s cell and tell her I needed to leave.

Pretty soon the door opened and Nathan came out, only I didn’t know it was Nathan. Some people yelled at him not to leave but he said he had to. Then other people said good luck to him and he said thanks and was about to go on his merry way. I just stood there, leaning against the house, trying to look like that’s where I was supposed to be — like that’s where I wanted to be, as much as I wanted to be anywhere. I sort of wished I had a cigarette so I could pretend to smoke, because I wouldn’t look so out of place standing alone outside if I was smoking.

And he saw me. There was enough light on the porch that I got a good look at him too. His hair was all butterscotch and caramel and he was tall and really well built. (I later learned from the football program that he was 6’4" and weighed 230 pounds). I should have known he was an athlete then. He looked at me and smiled. I lifted my head, nodded, and looked away like I do when I want people to leave me alone. Except he didn’t. He came over and talked to me. His eyes were brown, but not just any brown; they were the color of a Hershey bar. When he asked me my name, I told him it was Townshend. I don’t know why. Nobody calls me that. I guess I thought it sounded more grown up than Tolly.

I told him the story that Marcie had made up and he didn’t question me. I mean, why would he? What kind of psycho makes up crap that that? Then he told me he was on his way back to his dorm, but he could stay a little longer if I would dance with him. I said sure and he led me back inside. The guy who’d been talking to me before came up to us and said he’d been looking for me, that he’d lost me. Nathan said, “And I found her. She’s a smart girl. If she’d wanted you find her, you would have. Now shove off, pledge.” I liked feeling like a prize.

First, we fast danced. He was a good dancer and he made me a better dancer. I had never danced that well with anyone before. When the song was over we both said at the same time, “You’re a great dancer,” and we laughed because we had said the same thing. Then we slow danced. He smelled like Irish Spring soap, chocolate, and peanut butter. I blurted that out and he laughed again and told me he’d been eating Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups earlier. He liked the little one-bite ones.

Then we danced two more times. Finally, he said he really did need to leave, but would I walk him out? I did, and I asked him why he didn’t live in the fraternity house. We were on the porch by then. He looked amused and told me he lived in Bryant Hall — the athletic dorm. I know that place. Harris lives there, but I still didn’t get it. I asked him what sport he played and he smiled. Then he looked at me all serious like and said, “Football. Do you know who I am?” Then I told him, sure I knew who he was: he was Nathan, the DKE, who smelled like chocolate and peanut butter.