Page 38 of Hard Count
What can I say to erase the doubt from her eyes? “Because when I’m not around you, I want to be. When I learn something new about you, it's not enough. I want to know even more.” I kiss her slowly. “You still don’t believe me.”
She sighs. “I believe you. Your kisses are very persuasive.”
“If you need more convincing, I’m happy to oblige.” I kiss her one more time. “Goodnight, baby.” I grab her bag and hand it back to her. She slips inside and I reset the clock until I get to see her again.
14
NASH
NEWHOUSE 5-0
Drew pauses the tape and scribbles a few words on the pad of paper in front of her. She’s right handed. I make a mental note of my own. She also has a scar on her elbow—likely a broken arm—and a line art heart tattoo that’s split in half on the inside of her right wrist.
Her eyes drift off her paper and she catches me staring. She blushes as she bites down on her bottom lip while her pen continues to move across the page.
We’ve been sitting on the floor so long my ass has gone numb. Drew is thorough if nothing else. I check the time on my phone. We’ve been working for almost three hours. Well, she’s been working. I’ve spent most of the time with my eyes on her.
I snap a quick picture of her laptop screen where she has one of her spreadsheets pulled up. It tracks the players on every team in our conference. She has each stat brokendown in various pie charts and bar graphs in every color imaginable.
“What are you doing?” she asks, eyeing my phone with suspicion.
“Sending a picture to my friend.”
ME:
My girl’s spreadsheets are better than yours.
WYATT:
Not Bad.
But no one does spreadsheets better than birdie.
I laugh when a photo pops up on my phone of Wren mid eyeroll holding her laptop like a freshly caught fish.
“What’s so funny?”
“My old roommate, Wyatt, and his girlfriend, Wren. They moved back to his hometown of Rivers Bend after they graduated last year. They’ve been rehabbing his family’s farm.” I show her the photo of Wren and scroll through a few more of the play area they’ve been building over the summer.
WYATT:
Your girl huh?
Who is she?
“It looks fun,” she says, as I blacken the screen. “Are you going to answer his question?” She presses play on the remote with a hint of a smile on her face. It’s been almost twoweeks since we’ve officially become an item. I think she likes being referred to as my girl as much as I do.
“Maybe later. If I text him now, he won’t leave me alone. And that would make me waste my time with you.” I twist a few strands of her hair around my finger.
“We still have one more game to watch.”
I groan and drop my head back against the couch. “Is it really necessary? You already have a lot of intel. At this rate, we’ll be able to out score them by the first half of the game and let our third string finish them off.” I flip the pages of her notebook.
“Yes, it is.” She shoves the notebook out of my reach. “If anything, the game from last week is the most important. We need to see if they added anything new.”
“Is this what you do every week?” A pang of guilt hits me for pushing her to take this on. It consumes so much of her free time. When does she relax or have fun?
“Yeah. It’s not a big deal. I watch most of the games anyway. It’s just an extra step to write everything down and then type it up in my spreadsheet.”
