Noah grimaced. “Nothing I do is all that interesting, trust me.”
“They call you The Machine, right?” I asked.
His eyes sharpened, landing hot and fast on my face. “Yeah.”
“Even machines need to be refueled. There has to be something you do, somewhere you go that recharges you.” I kept my gaze on him. “No one here is going to judge you, no matter what it is. But there has to be something that you keep for yourself, that isn’t about football. Everyone has something like that.”
“Your brother did?”
“Sure. He had us.” I shrugged. “My sisters and I were his life, and it was a part of his life he kept private for a really long time. But once the stadium lights were off, and he’d showered off the sweat, he was back home, picking up toys and watching Disney movies and learning how to braid hair. His family refueled him.”
Noah worked his jaw back and forth. The way he looked at me, it felt like it was just him and me in the room as he tried to decide if this was a place he could be honest. “The stars,” he said gruffly.
“What about them?” I kept my voice gentle, like he’d spook at any second.
“I like astronomy. I would’ve minored in it if my dad had agreed.” He cleared his throat. “My assistant in Miami will send my telescope as soon as we find a house.”
Now this is a surprise, I thought pleasantly. This was the layer we needed to peel back, even if it took us the entire time to show what was underneath. “Where’s your favorite place to go? To look at the stars.”
“Here?”
“Anywhere. If you could go anywhere to look at the stars, where would it be?”
Noah let out a slow breath, his eyes taking on the hazy look of someone who’d just mentally transported somewhere else. Somewhere they wanted to be very, very badly. “My grandma’s cabin in the Black Hills, South Dakota.”
Rick nodded at me, just a tiny lift of his chin.
Keep going.
“How come?” I asked.
“It’s so quiet. So … open. The mountains are different there than they are here. Less people. Less lights. Less pollution.” He closed his eyes, and every line in his face disappeared as he imagined whatever it was that he was seeing in his head. Suddenly, I wanted to be there too, to see what it was like. “The sky is bigger there than anywhere else. It’s the one place where I feel small.”
Noah opened his eyes, and I felt a strange snapping on my heart. Like someone had pulled a rubber band, tightening that statement into place around the thing that pushed the blood through my body.
Without looking away, I knew there was a three-day window in the practice schedule just before preseason started.
“Does our budget include a weekend in South Dakota, Rick?” I asked, eyes still lasered in on Noah.
He smiled, and I saw his head move from me to Noah and back again.
“It does now,” he answered.
NOAH
“You cannot be serious.”
When I tried, unsuccessfully, to duck my head through the opening, her answer was a helpless bout of laughter. It reminded me of a wind chime at my grandma’s cabin, the light tinkling sound of the wind moving through the glass. I used to love that wind chime. Now it would remind me of Molly Ward’s laughter. The thought made me frown. Which made her laugh even harder.
“This house was built for someone a foot shorter than me, Molly.”
“Short people need places to live too,” Marty reminded me, half his face hidden behind the ever-present camera.
I glared at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be a silent observer?”
He grinned. Or half-grinned. “Everything that doesn’t serve the narrative will end up on the cutting room floor anyway. Don’t you worry about me, Griffin.”
Serve the narrative. That kind of PR jargon made me want to rip through the drywall with my bare hands just so I didn’t have to get it stuck in my head.
I leaned toward Molly. “If I start saying things like serve the narrative, punch me in the throat.”
She nodded seriously. “Please say it now. I’d like to practice if that’s okay.”
“Hey. We agreed on a truce.”
“Yes, yes,” she said lightly. “We did, didn’t we?”
It took me a moment to realize that the cameras were on us, like it had been ever since we arrived at the first house of the day. It was about thirty minutes east of Seattle, close to Seward Park. From the outside, it looked promising. Trimmed landscaping and a Frank Lloyd Wright architectural style that appealed to me. A little pricey, for just me, but it was close to the water and had a pool.
Then we walked in and realized it was built for someone probably a foot shorter than me. I’d hit my head on three doorframes already. Each hit took my mood from ambivalent, to annoyed, to fully irritated.
She crossed her arms and surveyed the kitchen. “I like it.”
“You would,” I said. “You can walk through all the doors without getting a concussion.”
Her lips, red today, twisted up in a smile. “Isn’t that view worth it?”
I didn’t even glance at the wall of windows. “No.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “Fine. Do you want to go to the next place?” She gave me a winning smile, and her left cheek showed a hidden dimple that I didn’t remember. “It’s got tall ceilings.”
She was handling me. Managing me because I sucked at this. It made my skin feel too tight and my head pound at the base of my skull.
Yesterday, somehow, she got me to confess something that I’d never planned on confessing. And I did it in front of a camera crew.
I’d underestimated Molly, that was for sure. Because as she aimed that sunny smile at Marty, who ate it up with a spoon, I vowed I wouldn’t do it again. Her ability to herd me in whatever direction she wanted was like a kitten backing a grumpy tiger into a cage.
I was the tiger.
And this short-ass kitchen was my cage.
“I need to get out of this house,” I muttered, brushing past both of them. Marty turned to follow, and because I was cognizant of the camera trained on me, rather than where I was going, the smack of my skull on the frame of the door echoed through the room. “Fuck,” I yelled, rubbing the top of my head.
Molly slapped a hand over her mouth. This time, she wasn’t laughing when she dropped it. “Are you okay?”
Instead of answering, I strode out of the house, only taking a full breath when I was outside again. The skies were overcast, the threat of rain heavy in the air.
The sudden turn in my mood surprised me, but I didn’t want to analyze why.
It probably started when they made the uncomfortable realization that my personal life from an outsider’s perspective was about as fun as watching paint dry. That nagged, all night. Even if my dad still lived in town, inviting him to come look at houses would’ve been a terrible idea. Our relationship was as warm as the highest peak of Mt. Rainier off in the distance.
Behind me, I heard Molly approach. When she walked, she barely made any noise. Something I’d noticed in our meeting. She always wore those shoes … the ones that looked like glorified slippers. And because of that, her steps were just slightly above a whisper of sound, which made me hyper aware of her movement.
“What was that?” she asked.
Today, she was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved Wolves shirt that fit her too well.
I didn’t want to notice that she was wearing a shirt that fit her too well.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.