Page 50 of The Midseason Fakeout

“Just be thankful I’m not the one protecting your ass out on the field,” he shoots back.

The spectators close enough to hear this exchange laugh. My stomach bubbles up with more nerves though. These players are used to competing. Of course they want to beat each other.

“Don’t let them get in your head,” Aidan whispers in my ear, throwing his arm around me. “First up is the three-legged race. I’ll match my pace to yours.”

We walk toward the starting line and the blue elastics placed there every few feet. This is going to be an epic disaster. I picture me face-planting for sure. Or worse, causing Aidan to face-plant. What if he uses his arm to block his face and it snaps in half? Everyone will blame me for taking out the most important player on the football team.Ugh!

“Hope you’ve been getting your cardio in,” Aidan snarks at one of the stockier players on the team. He’s probably a lineman as well. Those guys are supposed to be big and scary, but the girl he’s with is super petite. I don’t know how they’re even going to compete in this race at all given their stride differences.

“Line up!” a man’s voice yells.

There’s something about his tone that makes me jump. Aidan too. He places us side-by-side on the starting line as a man comes down the line and moves up the wide, tight elastic piece, linking our legs together. “Thanks, Coach,” Aidan says after he’s settled us in.

Coach grunts in response, and my nerves fire even more.This is a bad ideakeeps repeating over and over in my head. Aidan, though, is staring downfield like he can beat the contest into submission. If this is how he looks in a game, I’d be running away from him.

“Promise me you won’t get mad.” One last-ditch effort to tell him this is really going to go badly couldn’t hurt.

He leans over, kissing the top of my head. “Power couples don’t talk like that.”

Reaching up, he makes me give him a high five by bringing our palms together. “Yeah, but girls who like cinnamon rolls do.” I pat my stomach for good measure, and Aidan wraps his arm around me, gripping my hips. “I wouldn’t change a thing about you, Angel. Now, let’s kick some ass.”

I beam at him, butterflies swirling in my stomach. Coach’s wife says to get ready, and I maneuver my hand around his waist. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, and I’m starting to think Aidan won’t get mad if I do screw this up for him.

Aidan murmurs. “Outside leg first.”

“Huh?”

The whistle blows, and I barely get a step out before I nearly topple over. Aidan barks out a laugh. “Outside first,” he says, wrangling me to my feet.

“Oh!”

I tentatively step with my right leg, then the leg that we’re bound to one another. Another step and another step.

Just like he said, he matches my pace until we’re running like a cracked-out gazelle across the field. We pass the one defensive linemen with the short girlfriend and then another couple who’s fallen to a heap on the ground.

We don’t win. Not by a long shot. By the way Kenna and West have their hands in the air, they crossed the finish line first, but I’m smiling too much to care. “I’m sorry,” I say, chuckling. “I didn’t know what you were saying.”

Aidan kisses my forehead. “I told you I didn’t care.” Immediately, he peers above my head, waving to his parents.

Throughout the day, Aidan carries my ass. Of course, he single-handedly wins the football throwing competition, even though my score was actually pretty good. He just didn’t need it to pulverize the competition.

He showed off his hand-eye coordination in the egg running contest, while I took my time and didn’t drop once.

By the time we get to the obstacle course two hours later, I’m hyped up on blue sports drink and the bananas Aidan brought for us. We’re in second place, behind Kenna and West.

“Are you ready to go down?” Kenna asks when we line up at the start of the obstacle course.

“Yes,” I answer. “I actually am.”

She bursts out laughing. “You guys are the cutest. The crowd is totally rooting for you.”

“It’s because we’re underdogs.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about, though. The crowd loves them, too. Actually, the crowd loves it all. I hope we’re helping raise a lot of money for the Step-Up Foundation while I humiliate myself in the process.

Coach’s wife stands in front of us, giving out the rules. First, the guys will call out orders to their significant others while we make our way through the obstacle course. Behind me, Aidan wraps a blindfold around my eyes and ties it in the back.

Through my portion of the competition, I have to crawl under a spiderweb of ropes, then cross a short balance beam that’s only two inches off the ground. Then, I have to run up and down a slide before switching the blindfold to Aidan. The tricky part is that if I fall at any time, I have to start from the beginning again.

---