Page 30 of It Happened on a Sunday
“That’s it?” Bryan asks sharply. “Where are the others?”
“There are no others,” I tell him. Unless Pauline sent something and then erased it, but I can’t imagine a world in which she would. She thought starting the conversation was doing good by me. But she wouldn’t do anything else—that’s one thing in this roller coaster of a business I am absolutely certain of.
“So now that you know I didn’t go on some melatonin-fueled texting spree at eight this morning, will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”
Bianca and Olivia exchange another look, and my manager hands me an iPad that has a video already cued up.
This time, when my stomach flips, it has nothing to do with my past and everything to do with the fact that Sly is right in front of me. Sure, he’s over a thousand miles away, but he’s still right there.
As if the cameraman can read my mind, he pans straight for Sly, who’s standing in the middle of the field. He may have hishelmet and pads on, but I can still tell it’s him from the loose, easy way he moves.
At least until he gets the ball. Then he’s all grace and harnessed energy as he searches for someone to throw it to. When he finds someone, he unleashes all that power and the ball soars what looks to be at least seventy-five yards through the air, only to be caught by another Twisters player, who runs it straight across the goal line.
“Touchdown!” the commentator yells, and the fans goes wild.
The camera pans toward the crowd, and suddenly I see exactly what Olivia wanted me to. Several fans are carrying signs that read sly + sloane.Or worse, Sloaney.
“Where on earth did those come from?” I ask, startled. “That one picture of abuela Ximena and me in my dressing room?”
“We think so, yes,” Bryan tells me as he paces nervously.
“Well, it’s just a few fans who are excited, right?” I look back and forth between them as I try to figure out what the big problem is. I mean, even being superficially tied to the golden boy of football isn’t great optics. But we’ve dealt with way worse than that over the past eight years. “Surely if we don’t feed the story, it’ll die down in a couple of days,” I tell them.
But my heart is still beating fast—whether it’s because of the signs or because I’m getting a close-up of Sly taking off his helmet as halftime hits and a teammate pats him on the back, I don’t know.
I do know he looks good. Really, really good.
He runs his fingers through his just-shy-of-floppy brown hair, face lit up with exhilaration. His eyes are bright, his cheeks flushed, and his smile wide as he turns to scan the crowd.
“I don’t understand.” I shake my head in confusion as I stare down at the tablet. “If it’s not the fans, then what’s the pr— Holy FUCK!”
I actually gasp out loud as I finally see why my team has gonestraight to DEFCON 1.
Everything inside me screeches to a halt, like the rigging system locking up mid-show. One second, I’m dangling above the stage, out of reach but still singing. The next, I’m in free fall with no net in sight and no say in where I land.
“Holy fuck!”
“You can say that again,” Bryan tells me wryly.
“Did he just—” I force the words out of a throat that suddenly feels like it’s closing up.
“Hell, yes, he did,” Bianca says. Somehow she manages to sound pissed off and admiring all at once.
My eyes are glued to the screen, to the jumbotron looming above the stadium for everyone to see. On it is a picture of Sly in his uniform, looking rumpled and a little bit sweaty from the game.
But it’s not his picture that has terror cascading through me. It’s the words in huge capital letters superimposed over that picture that make me want to crawl into my web and never, ever come out.
SLOANE WALKER, CAN I TAKE YOU ON A DATE IN L.A. NEXT WEEKEND?
Chapter 13
Sloane
I close my eyes and scrub them really hard, hoping—praying—that what I’m seeing will disappear if I wish hard enough.
It’s not the first time in my life I’ve hoped for such a thing. It’s also not the first time I’ve been disappointed, because when I open my eyes, the jumbotron is still there. Only the decibel level of the crowd has changed.
“What the fuck was he thinking?” I whisper.
