Page 8 of Devil in Disguise
Through the glass doors and into the rustic-sumptuous lobby, with its huge beams and enormous fireplace at one end, empty now in summer. There was a crowd here tonight, loitering in Wild Horse’s version of glamour, looking in the display windows of the boutique shops that stretched along one wall. Some of Dyma’s classmates among them, who’d lingered over their celebratory dinner with their families and now didn’t want the night to end. Mostly focused on their own excitement, their own rush, but she got some stares, saw some cell phones focusing in and clicking. She thought for a second about how exciting it would have been a couple years back—no matter how much she knew intellectually about accomplishments mattering more than status, especially not status that came from being involved with some guy—to know that just about every girl was jealous of her and just about every guy was jealous of Owen. Not because he was with her. Because he played in the NFL. Like that was all he was, or all he meant. They didn’t know him at all.
And then she forgot to think about it, because over there, in a knot of people near the reception desk, was Blake, doing his usual yeah-I’m-the-boss-and-a-star-but-I’m-cool-about-it thing. And Dakota.
Oh, great.
She could tell Owen had seen them, because his steps slowed. She grabbed his arm and said, “No. Let’s go.”
Too late. Blake was coming over, bringing Dakota along by the hand and saying, “Hey, guys.”
Owen said, keeping his cool perfectly, of course, “Hi. Checking out the property?”
“You know it,” Dakota said. “He can’t drive by without stopping.”
“Hey,” Blake said. “Maybe I wanted to admire your new glass exhibit.”
“Yeah,” Dakota said. “You tell yourself that.”
Dyma was bumping Owen with her hip, trying to give him the message,You’ve said hello. We just saw them about an hour ago. Let’s go.She might as well have saved her energy. Of course, bumping Owen had about the same effect as bumping a Volkswagen, so maybe that was why.
Blake said, “Y’all done celebrating?” with his eyes going between the two of them in a way Dyma didn’t care for at all.
“Yep,” she said. “We went dancing. I’m pretty tired now, though. Thanks for coming to my graduation. It was really nice of you.”
Again, it was like she wasn’t even here. Owen said, “Yeah. We had a real nice time.” Slowly. Almost woodenly.
This was some sort of quarterback-center thing, she could tell. Owen had told her that the relationship between a quarterback and his center was unlike any other in football, that the communication between them had to be almost instinctive. “Muscle deep,” he’d said. “Muscle memory. You’re kind of the head of his Secret Service detail, is what it’s like. Protect your quarterback, and let him get the play off. You’ve got to know what he’s going to do just about as fast as he does, and then what the defense is going to do when that happens, what you can expect your linemen to do. You’ve got a few seconds max to read it, and way less than a second to react to it.”
“And if you do it right, nobody will notice that you did anything,” Grandpa Oscar said, because they’d been in his kitchen during this discussion. “That’s the real kicker.”
“Yep,” Owen said. “Most people don’t get everybody telling them how great they are all the time, though. No different from any other job that way.”
“Sounds like it’s better to be the quarterback, though,” Dyma said, “if you don’t get any credit.” She’d been sitting at the kitchen table at the time, her foot up on another chair, painting her toenails, preparing for prom and trying not to be ridiculously excited about it, and Owen had been just back from fishing with Oscar and was sitting back and watching her. Which was a thrill all its own for her, and yet all he looked was calm.
“Nope,” he said. “You do the job you’re good at. I like mine fine.”
That was the thing about Owen. Hedidlike it all fine. She was aching with every fiber of her being for everything she hadn’t seen yet, everything she hadn’t done yet, and he was working on being where he was.
Right now, where he was happened to be standing in front of his former quarterback, who was saying, “Well, good.” And then looking like he wanted to say something else. Like Dyma neededanothersemi-uncle figure in her life to save her from—what?
She didn’t take drugs, not anymore. She didn’t drink much, and she didn’t smoke weed. She’d tried all those things, sure, but the supposed thrill hadn’t been worth it. She didn’t skip school, and she showed up for every single shift at her job, even when it was Burger King. She hadn’t even hadsex.So she wanted to get her freak on inoneway.One.Withoneguy who absolutely everybody in her life knew. She didn’t need protection. She protectedotherpeople. Who told the bullies to knock it off, and was willing to follow it up? Her, that was who. Why did they all treat her like they were about to check between her toes for needle marks?
Blake didn’t say whatever it was, because Dakota said something instead. It was just, “So, hey, Orbison, want to take a girl home, or what?” It worked for Dyma, though.
Blake glanced at Dakota, looked back at Owen and then at Dyma, hesitated, then said, “You bet, darlin’,” got an arm around her, nodded to somebody beyond them, said, “Hey. How you doin’,” which was Blake’s way of saying, “I do not want to talk to you,” and got his feet moving. And Dyma let out her breath.
Owen let out a breath of his own. “Unexpected.”
Time for a do-over. She said, “Are we going to keep standing here for a while longer, so everybody in my high school can be jealous that I’m wearing your jacket? That’s cool, but it’d be even cooler to, you know. Go to your room.”
She wanted the dock back. She wanted up-against-the-car. She wanted to be carried away, and to feel him lose his caution and his deliberation and justtouchher the way he needed to. Shecouldn’tbe wrong about that.
She wanted everything.
He pulled the white keycard from his back pocket, weighed it in his hard, scarred catcher’s mitt of a hand, and said, “Yeah.” Slowly.
She asked, “Which room is it?” just for something to say.
“Four-twenty-three,” he said. Still slowly. Like he was thinking.
