Page 24 of Full Coverage (Boys of Fall)

She hadn’t been his type because she hadn’t taken anything seriously. While he’d taken everything seriously.

Except football. There they’d switched roles. Blitzes and option plays had been serious stuff to her. Nolan didn’t know a fumble from a formation.

Lacey looked puzzled. “You don’t think so?”

“No way.”

“You’re sweet, funny, talented, beautiful. What was his type?”

Not turned on by motors and transmissions. Not neck deep in football from August to January. Not pulling a C in history class.

Nolan had known everything there was to know about World War II, the sixties, the Reagan years, countries she’d never heard of, political theories that made her yawn.

He’d filled in for their history teacher for a week when he had gallbladder surgery and they couldn’t get a sub. Nolan had covered Hitler’s rise to power pre-World War II and, interestingly, those were the only things Randi still remembered now from nine months of American history fourteen years ago.

“We just had nothing in common,” Randi finally answered Lacey. “I was taking motors apart while he was working on math extra credit. I took shop class. He took advanced-placement English.”

Lacey smiled. “Well, I’m glad you found something in common now,” she said. “Really. I know you’ll have a great time tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Randi watched Lacey move off to pick out cantaloupes. Then she headed to the meat counter. And tried to tell herself they did indeed have something in common now. And that a book about Coach Carr and a love for tequila body shots was enough to keep them both interested for one night.

What they were going to do in New York, she had no idea. But one concentrated effort to not come off as an uncultured,small-town Texas tomboy at a time.

Chapter Three

Steak, baked potatoes, green beans and brownies.

He was in heaven.

Add in a beautiful girl in a short skirt who smelled like peaches, and it was heaven in heaven.

“Did your mom teach you to cook?” he asked. Randi’s mom was a nurse and her dad was an over-the-road trucker, home only two or three nights a week.

She nodded. “She tried. I frustrated the hell out of her, though.”

He took a bite of the steak she’d grilled and gave a little groan. He looked over to see her watching him with a surprised but pleased look.

“It’s good?”

“It’s really good.” He chewed and swallowed. “Why did teaching you to cook frustrate the hell out of her?”

“Because I thought it was a waste of time.”

“How so?” He took another huge bite.

“You spend an hour, sometimes more, doing it and then it’s over in like fifteen minutes,” she said. “Drove me crazy.”

“You spend hours fixing cars,” Nolan pointed out.

“Yeah, but in the end you have a running car,” she told him with a smile. “That will last and actuallydosomething.”

Nolan sipped the iced tea that was sweetened perfectly. “So it’s not an attention-span thing.”

She shook her head. “If I love something, I can do it for hours.”

The temperature in the room spiked a few degrees. At least for Nolan. He had several ideas about how to keep her occupied for hours. The way she’d paused with a forkful of potatoes halfway to her mouth and cleared her throat before taking the bite made him wonder if she’d had a similar thought.

---