Текст книги "Scoring Wilder"

Автор книги: R. S. Grey

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter Four

"Let's get started." Coach Davis clapped her hands after we'd all lined up in small groups.

We were starting the day off with sprints. I predicted I would throw up mid-way through my first one. But who knows, maybe I wouldn't even make it there.

"How are you feeling, Birthday Girl?"

Liam asked as I stretched out my calves and hamstrings. I was the last one to go in my group, so no one else could hear us.

"This is going to be pitiful. I didn't think we were going to have actual practice today."

I shook my head and stared straight ahead, trying to take deep breaths to calm my stomach.

"Why would you think that?" he asked with a small smile.

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"I realize it seems dumb, but the vets said that usually we just talk and stuff on the first day. Hence, why I went crazy for my birthday."

"That's unfortunate," he nodded just as Coach Davis blew her whistle for the last group to line up.

Good news, I didn't actually throw up until the fourth sprint, and to Liam's credit, he only grinned after covering his mouth with his hand.

If he wasn’t my coach I would have flipped him off.

On the plus side, at least I knew the answer to the did-he-think-I-was-sexy-or-not question. That would be a hard no.

I was midway down the field when he had to leave early for his LA Stars practice.

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He waved to Coach Davis and spun around to jog toward his car. I didn’t realize how much I’d enjoyed having him there until he was gone. Even if he was finding quite a lot of amusement in my agony, hearing his words

of

encouragement

had

helped

somewhat.

After he left, we kept conditioning until my legs were falling off and my stomach was completely empty of all the cake and shots I'd consumed the day before. Still, as I was walking off the field, I contemplated how sad I felt about not getting the chance to talk to him before he left. Even a simple “bye” would have felt good.

What the hell kind of spell did he put me under last night? Snap. Out. Of. It.

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"Rough first day, Bryant?" Coach Davis asked as I made my way out of the locker room.

"I swear I'm in good shape. It was my birthday last night and I wasn't expecting to go this hard on the first day."

Coach Davis nodded and clapped me on the back. "Make sure you’re more prepared for tomorrow.”

"I will, Coach."

Becca and Emily followed me into the ice baths and we relaxed in our sports bras and shorts until I felt completely numb.

"This feels painfully awesome," Becca noted, "but that practice was much more intense than I was expecting."

"I know!" I complained.

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"Do you think the vets might have been lying about practice?" Emily mentioned in a hushed tone, as if she was scared they'd overhear us. Most everyone had already gone home or had found another ice bath in the building to heal their aching muscles.

"That would be so bitchy. I think I threw up like three times," Becca groaned.

My stomach rolled in response to her admission. "No more vomit talk. Sheesh...

Becca, where are you from?" I asked.

"Dallas, Texas. Born and raised, y'all,"

she said with an over-the-top wink, and all of a sudden I could totally see the Texan in her.

"Oh my god, did you compete in pageants? You have the pageant thing going for you with the freckles and blonde hair."

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"Hell no! You've known me for like forty-eight hours and you think I would compete in pageants?"

I recalled the drunken dancing and the inappropriate jokes. "Ah, yeah. I take that back. You'd probably be more likely to sabotage a pageant than compete in one."

She laughed and propped her arms back on the edge of the tub. We could only stay in for a few more minutes before the effects of the ice started to be counterproductive.

"Were you prom queen at your school?"

Becca asked me. I snorted.

"I didn't go to prom."

Her and Emily both gasped as if I’d just told them that I was actually a man.

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"Oh, jeez. Don't go there. My mom was just as devastated as you're both pretending to be."

"But, didn't someone ask you?"

I thought back to how Josh and I had skipped out on prom to watch a recorded European football match with a group of friends instead. I didn’t even know who’d ended up winning prom queen.

"Josh and I were dating and we both wanted to skip the whole charade.”

"Everyone went to prom at my school. I was prom queen," Emily smiled, and her eyes glazed over as if recalling a sweet memory.

"You lost your virginity that night, didn't you?" I smiled.

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When Emily started blushing, Becca and I both cracked up.

"There's nothing to be embarrassed about! It's just so sweet," I assured her.

Emily glanced down at the surface of the ice. "It was with my long-term boyfriend and we're still together... when did you lose your virginity, Ms. Los Angeles?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" I laughed, splashing water on her.

"You wear a grungy friendship bracelet next to an uber-expensive Cartier bracelet.

You couldn't be more LA if you tried.”

"Damn," I laughed. "I should give you more credit, Emily.” The three of us were each from opposite ends of the country and had wildly different upbringings. In any other setting we might never have been friends, 87/890

but as rookies on a team, we were all the other had. Hell, we'd just watched each other barf. If that doesn't form a quick bond I don't know what does.

"Well now you both know how I lost my virginity. Spill," Emily demanded, bringing the topic back to where it was a few minutes earlier.

I didn't think about Trey often. He was my boyfriend during junior year, and while I don't know who won prom queen, I do know that he won prom king. He was the king of my high school in every sense of the word.

When we had sex for the first time, I thought I was in love with him, but it was awkward and over before I'd even felt anything but pain. We did it a few more times, each just as awkward as the first. It was only a few weeks 88/890

later that I’d found out he’d been cheating on me with a girl from another school.

I tried to tell them the story as best as I could without bringing the mood down or playing the victim card. Just because I’d been cheated on twice didn’t mean I’d spend my life exclaiming, “Woe is ME!”

"What? Are you kidding me? Was Josh any better?" Becca asked.

“He was… okay? I think? It looked like he was giving the bimbo a good time." I guess there was no point in being coy at this point.

"What about you?" Emily asked, turning toward Becca. I smiled thinking how good her story would be in comparison.

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Becca coughed and glanced toward her arm still resting on the side of the tub. "Oh, well, I've never had sex."

"What?!" Emily and I both exclaimed. I would have bet my life that she was the most experienced out of all of us. I mean, she was gorgeous and funny and what else is there to do in Texas other than fool around? Isn’t everyone just banging on barrels of hay?

"It’s not a big deal. I was kind of a loser in high school. Soccer wasn't a cool sport at my school and I had braces until the eleventh grade."

"Ouch," I noted. "Well, Becca, you're freaking gorgeous and who cares when you have sex for the first time. Mine sucked anyway, right?”

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She nodded, and I knew the discussion was over for the time being.

“Let's get out of here!" I hopped up and out of the ice bath, but when I stepped down, my foot didn't hold my weight and I collapsed onto the concrete.

"Oh my god! Are you okay?" Emily asked.

At least she was worried about me.

Becca was laughing hysterically, just as I would have been.

"Guys, I can't feel my limbs. We stayed in too long!" I exclaimed, lying on the cold concrete floor.

We didn't stop laughing until our legs thawed out.

"Want to shower and then go grab lunch?" I asked the girls as we walked up to 91/890

the front door of the rookie house. Just before we went inside, Emily noticed a little package sitting at the foot of the porch.

"This has your name on it, Kinsley!"

I narrowed my eyes on the box. It was so small that I’d completely walked past it.

"Oh, I bet it was part of my mom's package from earlier," I said as she handed it over. "All of her gifts have multiple parts."

Becca pulled open the front door before yelling, "Last one to shower buys lunch!"

"Ah!" I shoved past her and ran for the stairs, only to have her take my legs out from under me midway to the top. My knees banged against the carpet as I fell forward and loose carpet fibers found their way into my mouth. Blech. Why did it seem like I 92/890

would leave this house with way more bruises and scars than I’d brought with me?

"It's not fair! You're a defender! You'll win every time!" I shouted as Becca crested the top of the stairs.

She just laughed and headed to her room. Quiet Emily trekked casually up the stairs after us, clearly uninterested in the competition.

Luckily, we didn’t all share one bathroom. The house had been renovated a few years ago so that it felt more like a dorm than a normal home. Each room was connected to a bathroom that two people shared. Emily was my suitemate.

"You can shower first, Em. I'm going to open my gift and call my mom." I smiled and closed the door to give her some privacy.

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That was when I finally studied the package. My name was written on the top in hand writing that definitely didn't belong to my mom. She pretty much wrote everything in calligraphy. As a kid, she would send me to school with napkins in my lunch that she'd scrawled long, perfectly lettered notes onto.

They'd always tell me something positive about myself: you're intelligent, talented, beautiful, etc. And then she'd add a little joke to make me smile, like:

Question: What did the snail say while he rode on the back of the tortoise?

Answer: Weeeeeee.

Have I mentioned that my mom might be insane, but also the most loving person in the world? Too bad she and my dad were 94/890

living it up without me in Aspen. I guess they deserved it. I’d been a hellion to raise.

But that's how I knew that my name wasn't written in her handwriting. It was too messy. I turned the package over and ripped open the parchment paper. There was a little box inside, and when I opened it, a small piece of paper fell out along with a gift certificate.

I scrunched my brows and picked up the gift certificate first. It was for a high-end Los Angeles Day Spa and it included an hour long massage and a few other optional treat-ments. I would absolutely be using the gift certificate at the end of my week. They'd probably need a team of masseuses to work out the knots in my muscles if we kept practicing like we had that day.

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I reached down for the note.

"Birthday Girl,

You'll need this after today. Sorry it's a little late, but I thought you deserved one more gift."

No signature. No name. What the hell?

My first guess, and the guess from the 5% of me that lived in la-la land, was that Liam sent it. He'd called me Birthday Girl a few times and even once that morning… but then I realized he hardly knew me. Damn. That meant it was probably from Josh. The handwriting sort of looked like his.

The idea suddenly dropped a rain cloud over the entire gift. Did I really want to think about him while I tried to relax in a spa? I reached for my phone and texted him.

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Kinsley: Did you drop something at my house today?

Then I closed the text and called my mom. She answered on the fourth ring and hearing her voice instantly made me miss her.

"Kinsley, how was practice?!" she asked.

I sank down on the floor next to the bed and smiled against the phone.

"It kicked my ass. Like literally, my ass is sore as I sit on the phone with you."

"That sounds... painful. Why is your butt sore?" she laughed.

"They made us run a kajillion sprints…

aaand I suppose I might have gone a little crazy last night for my birthday, so I paid for it this morning."

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"Ahhh, the truth comes out. Did you go out with your new teammates? And if you were drinking, you better not have been driving. Also, you better not have been drinking."

Right, because what US college student wasn’t drinking? I chose to just skim by the topic.

"We took a cab, and yes, actually two of the other rookies and I have pretty much formed a little love triangle, sans lesbian tendencies. Becca is from Texas and looks like she could be a Dallas Cowboys cheer-leader, and Emily is from Minnesota. She’s a little quiet, but super sweet."

"I can't wait to meet them." I could tell she was smiling. "I'm flying in for the first game no matter what, but maybe I'll come to 98/890

a scrimmage or something? If that wouldn't be too embarrassing?"

I smiled.

"Yeah, you should. I'll let you know when we start getting things on the schedule.

But I have to go shower, Mom. I'm going to lunch with Becca and Emily."

"Oh good! Use the credit card I gave you and buy them lunch on me since we couldn’t throw you a fun birthday dinner."

I smiled, thinking that since I was most likely the last person to shower, I owed them lunch anyway.

"Sounds good, thanks. Love you!"

"Love you, too!"

When I hung up, I looked down and checked my phone. Josh had texted back immediately.

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Josh: No? Just the flowers yesterday.

You said you got those, right? The pink roses reminded me of you. How was practice?

He'd mistaken my question as a peace offering. He was sorely mistaken. But if he hadn't sent the gift card... No, I couldn't even think about it. There was no way it was from Liam, and if it was, then that baby was getting framed and mounted on my wall.

"Shower is free, Kinsley!" Emily called through the bathroom door.

Saved by the shower.

I tucked the gift certificate in my wallet and decided not to tell Emily or Becca about it until I had pinned down its sender.

…

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"Wake up, Rookies!" a voice shouted just before a fog horn ricocheted through the house the next morning.

"What the hell!" I scrambled to sit up and catch my bearings just as the fog horn rang out again. A glance at my cell phone told me it was barely 5:00 A.M.

"You have three seconds to get downstairs everyone or you'll be running laps around the block!" Tara called. I could imagine the sardonic smile taking over her features. If anyone was power hungry, it was that girl.

I threw the sheet off my legs, which were feeling the effects of the previous day’s workout, and slipped out of bed. I banged on Emily and Becca’s doors on the way down to make sure they heard the commotion. They 101/890

both shuffled out after me and we hustled downstairs only to stop dead in our tracks when we saw the upperclassmen lined up in front of the small fireplace. They each had a camo bandanna tied around their head and black stripes beneath their eyes.

They were dressed for war. I was dressed in fuzzy socks and a long sleeping shirt.

"Line up!" Tara yelled. Becca and I exchanged knowing glances. Was this normal or was Tara actually going off the deep end?

Either way, we listened. All the rookies lined up and faced the upperclassmen without saying a word.

"Today is the first day of your initiation onto our team. It's a rite of passage. It was done to everyone that came before you, so suck it up and take it like a champ." Why did 102/890

that sentence seem so foreboding? Like she was about to ask us to bend over.

That's when I saw the costumes laid at their feet, and I groaned. We were going to have to dress up.

"Excuse me, Kinsley, is there a problem?" Tara asked with a hard stare.

"No," I answered quickly, glancing at the array of colors and fabrics on the living room floor.

"Are you sure? Because you don't seem to want to be here." She was picking a fight and I knew it. She wanted an excuse to go harder on me than the rest of the girls, and I wouldn't give it to her.

"No, I'm excited," I answered, looking up at her with a small smile. It was like looking 103/890

into the face of the devil and accepting his challenge.

"Good, then you'll be thrilled to see what you're wearing to practice today, Bryant."

She reached down and picked up a hideous bright yellow spandex leotard and tutu. Seriously, whoever made it had perfected the exact shade of puke yellow.

"You'll be our snitch."

Oh god. My eyes took in the other outfits, suddenly realizing the theme. There were wizard robes and scarves from all of the houses in Harry Potter. Some of the other stuff I didn't recognize, but I'm sure, like my spandex outfit, they all served some kind of purpose.

I was at once impressed with the idea and also dreading having to put that outfit 104/890

on. I didn't really have a choice, though. I didn't want to be the whiny rookie. I wanted to accept Tara's challenge and up the ante any way I could.

Tara threw the outfit toward me and I had to think fast to catch it.

"Pass out the rest of the outfits," Tara instructed, and her little minions quickly began following orders.

I thought mine would be the worst, but when they handed Becca her outfit, I couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"You'll be a quaffle," Sofie explained as she handed Becca a ridiculous outfit made up of a brown tutu that spanned from her chest down to her hips. She'd look like a giant shower loofah.

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"What is a quaffle?" Becca challenged as she reluctantly took the outfit from Sofie.

"It's some sort of quidditch ball from Harry Potter. Who cares, just wear the dumb outfit." Sofie waved her hand and dismissed her.

"Go change and be back down here in five minutes," Tara yelled.

Emily, Becca, and I all ran up to my room so we could change and complain in silence.

"What the hell? Are they allowed to do this!?" Becca asked as she stood in front of my mirror, taking in her ridiculous getup. I couldn't stop laughing long enough to answer her.

"I'm sorry. You guys definitely got the worst outfits. It doesn't seem fair," Emily 106/890

answered as she finished putting on her fake glasses and wizard robe. The bitch got to be Harry Potter and she looked cute in her fake glasses.

"Emily, you suck," I joked, pulling the spandex leotard up over my sports bra. It was supposed to be my size, but the spandex was tight enough to make it hard to breathe.

"At least they gave you a tutu. You'd look ridiculous just wearing a leotard," Emily offered, trying to show me the bright side.

The bright side was that I wasn't dressed as a giant brown loofah.

"How about when we get back from practice, we burn our outfits and use the ashes to put a curse on Tara," Becca suggested as we put on our long soccer socks and running shoes.

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"Rookies, thirty seconds to be back down here!" Tara’s voice rang out.

The three of us rolled our eyes and hopped up, slinging our cleats over our shoulders. One glance in the mirror was too much. Puke yellow was not my color and the tutu made me look like a nine-year-old.

When we made it back downstairs, it was clear that Emily had been right. Everyone else was wizards. Well, most everyone.

One girl was dressed up as a broomstick. Or maybe just a stick. It was hard to tell.

A senior girl walked up to Emily when we were in line and drew a lightning bolt on her forehead with a fat Crayola marker. Then she moved on to me and Becca. She put a giant "S" on my chest and a giant "Q" on 108/890

Becca's chest. Seriously, were the costumes not enough at this point?

"We’ll give you breakfast when we get to the practice field, but only if you make it there. The upperclassmen will drive next to you guys while you run a designated route that ends at the fields. If you fall behind, the entire team has to run extra, so stay with the group."

I fought back a groan.

“Oh, and everyone will grab a broom on the way out,” Tara declared.

“For what?” one of the rookie girls asked.

Tara scoffed at her. “Because you’re dressed up as people from Harry Potter, dumbass.”

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So, yeah, the entire time we ran, we had to carry a broom between our legs. Have you ever had a splinter on your inner thigh?

Neither have I. Because that’s not where I got them. Think a little higher. It wasn’t pretty, people. When I got home, I was going to tear apart this itchy yellow material piece by piece.

"At least you both have boobs," Emily pointed out as she ran next to Becca and me.

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked between breaths.

"Liam will definitely notice them in that leotard, believe me."

"Oh shit!" I'd completely forgotten that he would see us like this. Crap. Crap. Crap.

Tara had probably done it on purpose. I looked over to where she was driving the car 110/890

next to us. She was in a cute workout outfit and had even applied a light layer of makeup. That scheming whore.

If only we actually were in Harry Potter.

I’d totally Crucio her ass. Yeah, that’s right, I’d use one of the Unforgivable Curses. Come at me, Ministry of Magic.