Page 45 of Full Coverage (Boys of Fall)

He turned to find her studying the wall of words also.

“It is,” he agreed.

And it worked like a damned aphrodisiac. He would never tell her, but if Randi put on some lingerie and lay on his bed reading a book by Anna Quindlen or Anderson Cooper, he’d last about ten seconds once he took his pants off.

She moved closer to the wall and ran her fingers over the words,Half my life is an act of revision. ~ John Irving.

It was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. Or one of the hottest, anyway. He wanted to add something else to the list of hottest things he’d ever seen right now.

He put his hands on her hips and pulled her close, her back to his front. He rested his chin on her shoulder.

“I like football,” she said, still looking at the wall.

Nolan wasn’t sure why she said it, but he squeezed her hips. “I know.”

“I like the game. The rules, the strategy, the whole thing. But I like football players partly because I always know what to say to them.” She ran her hand over the Mark Twain quote. “He’s the only one I know. I wish I knew who these other people were. I wish I could talk to people who knew who these people were.”

Nolan frowned. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he sensed something strange in her tone. Almost a wistfulness. “Why don’t you think you can talk to people who know those people?”

She shrugged. “I could never talk to you without stumbling all over myself. And I’ve known you forever. I can’t imagine talking to someone I just met.” She took a deep breath and turned in his arms. “I don’t know if I should go to New York with you.”

He shook his head immediately. “It will be great, I promise.”

“Do you know why I’ve stuck around Quinn?” she asked.

“Because you love it here.”

“Because I’m comfortable here. I know everything that everyone here knows. I know more than most of them about a few things. But there isn’t one conversation at Pitchers that I can’t follow.”

Nolan felt his frown deepen. “You’ve stayed here because you’re worried about not keeping up outside of Quinn?”

She sighed. “I’ve never wanted to leave Quinn,” she said. “Honestly. It’s not fear. It’s that I like being surrounded by the same things, the same people that I’ve always known. I’m comfortable. I fit here.”

“You can be whatever you want to be, Randi.”

She shook her head, giving him a sad smile. “Come on, Nolan. That’s not true. People say it and it sounds nice. But it’s not true. Not everyone has the brains or the money or the opportunities to be whatever they want to be.”

She was right. That was the thing. It wasn’t always about desire or hard work. Sometimes it came down to dollars or having doors opened. “What did you want to be?” he asked.

She looked up into his eyes, a tiny crease between her eyebrows.

“Randi?” he asked after a few seconds.

“What I am,” she finally said.

“You always wanted to be a mechanic here in Quinn?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I always loved the shop. The smell of the motor oil, the conversation, the idea of taking a bunch of parts and putting them together into a big, powerful machine. The idea of being able to put my hands on something and make it work.”

Nolan felt admiration expand his chest. He gave her a smile. “And that’s what you do.”

She nodded, but her smile fell a bit. “But that’s not something I can tell people at your party. Those people make things with…words. Ideas. Imagination. Everything they do comes out of their heads.”

Nolan didn’t know where to start with the arguments he had for her. “That’s one way to make things,” he agreed. “But what you do is just as valuable. Is that what you think? That you’re not good enough to spend time with them?”

She dipped her head, focusing on the middle of his chest. “I’m just not very interesting. You can exhaust my topics of conversation and knowledge in about ten minutes.”

He actually laughed at that, which pulled her eyes back to his. “Seriously? We’ve been talking all day, every day, for the past week and we haven’t exhausted your topics of conversation and knowledge.”

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