Page 1 of Playing the Field
CHAPTER 1
Gracie
I’m not exactlya sports fan. I know, I know. It’s blasphemy in a sports town like Los Angeles, but let me explain.
For my entire teenage life, I spent my evenings and weekends sitting on the sidelines of some sport or another. My parents were diehard basketball, baseball, football—you name it—fans, and to them, “family time” was hours spent tailgating and watching games. Or eating nachos at home and screening playoffs on TV. Or asking me to pick up my younger brother from his sports practices once I had my driver’s license.
For a while, I tried to join the party, rattling off game stats I calculated in my head. “He’s not going to score. He goes wide off a breakaway 87 percent of the time.”
I also kept track of behavior. “Watch how he takes that second touch right before he passes left. Someone should be guarding that side.”
It worked a little too well. My family members beganshowcasing my knowledge like a party trick. Instead of feeling like I was in on the joke, I felt like the butt of it.
So I tucked my knowledge away and started bringing a book wherever I went, generally a romance novel or a scientific journal because I knew my macho dad and brother wouldn’t talk to me about that.
It worked.
I read from starting whistle to ending applause, even if I couldn’t invest in the reluctant duke or the heartthrob earl because I didn’t identify with the female character. Her life would never be mine. I lived firmly planted in a reality supported by statistics and numbers, and nerd girls from small towns didn’t generally seduce royalty. But as long as I was with my family, attending counted as bonding.
When I moved to college, I declined the student tickets to Stanford football games, even when we were on a winning streak. I clung to the reading pretense when athletes strutted into the dining hall in their practice jerseys, just as everyone else clambered around them like groupies. I ignored the occasional Super Bowl invitation and delighted in a library.
It’s worked out just fine.
Until now.
“Dev-ils, Dev-ils!”
Now, I’m sitting at a Los Angeles Devils soccer game against a Houston team in heaven knows which league. Only now, I’m thirty-three and going hard on the numbers because this may be my new job—watching pro soccer players, compiling their performance data, calculating their odds of future success—in a town I don’t understand because half the people here are too beautiful to be real.
In the time since my plane landed, I’ve seen tanned limbs, pouty lips, impossible bodies, and social media-perfect hair. Maybe it just happens from living here. Maybe it filters in fromthe infernal sunshine. I’m not used to it. San Francisco fog is legendary, and I’m at home in the cool, damp weather.
The scientist in me is curious about how things work in LA. This fashion-backward wallflower is intimidated.
I forget all about that for a second because there’s drama on the field. Fans are standing. People are yelling.
I crane my neck for a better view and see a Houston player charging ahead with the ball. He dribbles up the field and passes to another who makes a run toward the goal, with no one in his path.
Unless the keeper stops it, the point is all but guaranteed for Houston. It would put them ahead with only minutes left in the game.
The fans are going nuts, yelling unintelligible things that blend into a collective roar. The player takes one step too many before trying to pass the ball, and he’s cut off in his tracks by a Devils defender. And not just any defender. This one I know by his statistics and reputation as one of the most aggressive in the league.
Hunter Reyes.
He was my brother’s best friend growing up, but I haven’t seen him since he was a gorgeous teenager with an attitude in our kitchen. Probably just as well.
Playboy off the field, hothead on it. He has one of the worst penalty records in the league, more red cards than almost anyone, and more defensive victories. Fans can’t get enough of him. And, if the rumors are true, women can’t either.
Coaches, not so much.
If I take the job as head of analytics, one of my first tasks is to run data analysis to decide whether the Devils should keep him or throw him out on his tight, muscular rear end.
That is why I have an iPad in my lap and I’m adding data to the trove I already have on Hunter and his teammates. I need tobe thorough and impress my potential future bosses, even if I’m ambivalent about taking the job.
On the field below us, Hunter attacks like a missile, slide tackling a Houston player, deftly sweeping his legs out from under him, taking possession of the ball, and kicking it away to end the play.
Houston fans shout their disapproval at the reckless move. Devils fans cheer for the expert defense.
The Houston player lies on the ground, gripping his ankle and writhing in pain. Hunter paces in a circle like a wound-up animal. Every muscle flexes in preparation for the next fight. From my center field seat, I see a sheen of sweat fly off him when he kicks his toe into the ground. More beads of sweat launch when he flips his damp hair off his forehead.
