I tapped the space over my ears, and he obliged, pushing the headphones off. “That was week three last season, right? Not the season before?”
His eyebrows curved in. “Last season.”
I nodded. “I could tell.”
Boom.
Noah didn’t want to be interested. That was why his jaw snapped tight, and he closed his mouth after it popped open to ask me a question. But interested he was. That was why his eyes darted back and forth between me and the screen.
“How?”
I shuffled just a couple of inches closer, snatching the headphones from his head so I could turn them off. The sound popped up instantly, and I pointed a finger at the screen.
“Well, last season, their O-line was better, so their QB was able to hold onto the ball about a second and a half longer than the season before.”
Noah’s mouth sagged open before he snapped it shut. Inwardly, I pumped my fist in the air so violently, it would’ve been obnoxious.
“Then there’s you,” I said, letting my voice trail off.
His whole frame went still again, and I was starting to recognize it for what it was: a warning.
You know how the air feels before a tornado swoops down? Everywhere you look, there was a perfect, ominous stillness. Even the color of the sky was different, rosy and warm and pinkish yellow.
“What about me?” he asked, voice all low and grumbly and delicious. I felt that grumble in the soles of my feet, and it made my toes curl up in my shoes.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. “You changed the way you pivoted around the tackle to get to the quarterback. Before, you used to duck more, lower your body mass, which made it harder to move as fast because your momentum wasn’t helping you.” I pointed at the screen. “And see, right there, that’s how I know it was last season. That’s when you started spinning around them, like Freeney and Mathis used to do back in the early two thousands for Indy. You broke the single season sack record last year because of that change. You should have won defensive player of the year. I always thought you got robbed.”
Noah’s finger punched the screen, pausing the video. He took a second to breathe deeply, and I risked a glance at his face. He was staring at me with such an arrested intensity that I fought not to squirm away from the force of it.
“You—” He stopped, then shook his head as though I’d punched him.
What was it about him that was so entertaining when he was off-balance? Smiling at him, laughing at him, it would be the last thing he’d want from me, especially given his earlier mood. And even more surprising was that it wasn’t hard to fight the impulse. I didn’t want Noah to think I was laughing at how hard it was for him to adjust to this thing we were doing. I wasn’t the one being filmed all the time.
“How do you know that?” he finally managed. “About Freeney and Mathis. You couldn’t have been older than …” He stopped to do some mental calculations.
“I was in middle school.” I grinned. “Come on, Noah, my brother was a second-round draft pick the year I started kindergarten. What do you think I’ve been watching every Sunday my entire life?”
Behind the couch, Marty moved on silent feet, but Noah paid him no mind. All his attention was on me, and something about that unwavering focus raised all the little hairs on the back of my neck.
Maybe it was because I’d shocked him or maybe it was because he had to come to terms with the fact that he’d underestimated me, but Noah Griffin was staring at me like he was contemplating ways to devour me whole.
“You gonna tell me how I can improve now, Coach Ward? With your endless wealth of football knowledge.” The edge to his voice wasn’t unpleasant, not in the slightest, and it was taking me some time of my own to realize that I’d underestimated how mercurial his moods were.
If I could anticipate them, it might have felt less dangerous somehow, less like I was standing in the middle of a thunderstorm with a giant metal pole in my hand.
This time, because of that shift, I let my lips curl up in a smile. “Yoga.”
“Yoga,” he repeated.
“You’re strong, and you’re fast, but when you lose your balance, you lose the sack.”
Noah sat back like I’d shoved him with both hands. “You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
“I work out for hours every day, Molly.”
“I know, trust me.” I let my eyes wander over the curves of his shoulders, down the vein that traced his biceps, the muscles bunching like I was touching them with the tips of my fingers. “But weights and strength training and the stuff you do in practice aren’t the same thing as yoga, and I’d bet you a hundred bucks that if you practiced something like that regularly, it would help you.”
His eyes sparked, and for the first time, I saw a teasing glint in those depths. It changed every aspect of his face, and it was hard not to want to curl my hand around his skin and feel the change for myself. “A hundred bucks? That’s a steep bet.”
I exhaled a laugh. “Not all of us have multi-million-dollar contracts, hotshot.”
“Deal.”
My eyes shot up. “What?”
“It’s a deal.” The edges of his lips almost curled up, and I found myself holding my breath.
“You’re going to go to yoga with me?”
“No,” he said firmly. “But I can hire someone. Or if you send me something on YouTube. I’ll try it at home where Kareem can’t see me.”
I bit down on my lip because the smile threatening was so big and so overwhelming that I felt my heart pinch. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He lifted his iPad. “Can I get back to work now?”
MOLLY
“It’s probably a really, really stupid idea.”
“I couldn’t say one way or the other.”
No matter what my sister said, I knew it was as I drove to Paige and Logan’s house for our Tuesday night family dinner. But as I took the exit, I couldn’t stop thinking about Noah sitting on that friggin’ black couch, his legs too long and his frame too bulky for him to be comfortable. I thought about his fridge, full of boring food filled with vitamins and minerals and zero good carbs.
Good carbs like the bread kind of good carbs.
I thought about the fact that his telescope was being shipped from Miami, and how he never sat at the clear dining room table because he was always eating by himself.
“I’m just going to do it.”
Isabel glanced at me from the passenger seat. “Molly, if you keep overanalyzing, I’ll jump from this moving vehicle just so I don’t have to listen. For the love of all things holy, make a decision.”
My thumb punched the Bluetooth button on the steering wheel.
“Call Noah Griffin,” I said.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Iz sighed and shook her head.
But there were no cameras to be found, and maybe it would be a good way for him to just … relax. The phone rang and rang, and with each one that went unanswered, I felt even more resolute that he needed someone to step up and be in this role for him.
Noah needed a friend.
He needed someone who could see past whatever trappings were entailed in being The Machine.
After a prolonged beep, the disembodied voice of his phone told me to leave a message after the tone. I debated hanging up but didn’t end the call when it came through the speakers.
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.