Ballsy Read online

  “I’m sorry. I was feeling a little lightheaded downstairs, thought I’d come up here and…” I trail off because no good covers pop to mind.

  Luckily, Baylor seems too preoccupied to care. “S’okay, sis. What matters is that you’re here now. Rachel, say hi.”

  Kieran and I exchange a perplexed look. I fix my gaze on Rachel but neither of us moves. Baylor gently prods her forward. I follow suit because I don’t want for her to face the discomfort of the awkwardness that reigns between us. A rare moment of solidarity.

  “Hey, Rachel,” I murmur. “Nice to see you.”

  “You too,” she says. To the absolute surprise of no one, there’s not much sincerity behind it, neither in her expression nor in her robotic, Insta-bitch voice. “Thank you for making it.”

  “What are you two doing alone up here? It’s so...isolated.” Baylor scratches his head. His eyes alternate between me and Kieran, but whatever wheels are turning in his head aren’t powerful enough to subdue how little of a fuck he actually seems to be giving to anything that isn’t Rachel right now.

  Lucky for us.

  “Like Joey said, she needed some air, so we came here,” Kieran says. He looks at me and I nod subtly, flashing him a grateful smile.

  My lips are swollen and my cheeks are burning and I’m—me, all of me—smoldering with desire. I want so much more.

  But now that Baylor has found us there’s no chance we can go for round two, so I resign myself to that reality and focus on the conversation at hand.

  “That final touchdown was, just, beyond,” Rachel is saying.

  Oh, good Lord. To go from kissing Kieran for the first time ever to... whatever this is.

  It appears Kieran is having a similar reaction because he simply sighs and announces, “I’m going to get a beer.”

  “Get me one, would you?” says Baylor. “Rachel, Joey and I will wait for you.”

  “Do you want anything?” Kieran asks me.

  A cascade of tingles washes down my spine when we make eye contact. It lasts for a second too long. Baylor clears his throat and then yawns.

  “No, I’m good,” I say, mouth suddenly dry.

  A puzzled look crosses his face briefly, but it’s quickly replaced by a neutral expression.

  “You want anything, babe?” Baylor asks Rachel.

  “I’ll have a beer too,” she says demurely.

  I make a note of my annoyance at her apparent subtle attempt to tease or flirt or whatever with Kieran, but I quickly put it out of my mind. The lingering ecstasy that flourishes within me as a result of that magical first kiss doesn’t allow much room for thinking about anything other than Kieran.

  I participate halfheartedly at best in the inane exchange between Rachel and Baylor while we wait for Kieran to return.

  I want to see him again.

  I want to turn back time and experience the whole thing anew.

  I want to jump ahead and have a second kiss.

  Mostly, I want to know what all this means.

  Until then, I guess I’ll have to accommodate the butterflies in my stomach a little longer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KIERAN

  When I’m finally alone, I give into thoughts of her.

  How her skin felt pressed against mine, the heat of her sex so close.

  How her barely-there dress covered her only just enough to not be wholly indecent.

  How the sensation of her nipples hard against my chest made me harder than I’ve ever been.

  How I wanted nothing more than to push the skirt of her dress up, free my cock from the confines of my (all too tight) jeans, and take her.

  Right then and there.

  The thought of how smooth and wet she must’ve been gets me hard all over again. My cock twitches and throbs. In the privacy of my home, I pull my pants down along with my boxers. My dick springs out like a jack-in-the-box.

  I picture Joey making that joke, which in turn makes me even harder.

  She’s heroin. Cocaine.

  Addictive.

  This is so wrong.

  I squirt lotion on my hand and wrap it around the shaft. The cut, long since bandaged again and re-bandaged after that, has healed enough to where I can stroke with my dominant hand without feeling too much pain. I switch between my left and right hands, wanting to enjoy the moment without any stabbing sensations or shooting pains.

  I close my eyes.

  My grip tightens. My rhythm quickens. My breathing deepens just as my heart accelerates. I can hear my pulse in my ears, thrumming steadily along.

  In my mind, there’s only Joey and the memories, still fresh, of her lips, of her body, of her scent, of her.

  I groan, quivering in mini-spasms that indicate it won’t be long until I explode. I squeeze and stroke faster, harder, so intensely that when I do erupt, coming all over the bed, it’s unexpected.

  I exhale.

  Fuck. I needed that.

  I clean up and change into something more comfortable before collapsing on my bed. If someone told me at the start of the week that tonight was going to go down like it did, I would’ve laughed in their faces. Me? Kiss Joey? At Baylor’s fucking engagement party? (Which still felt like a farce, but that’s another matter altogether.)

  I wouldn’t believe there existed any version of me in any of however many infinite parallel universes that exist who would have the balls to go up against the boundaries Baylor set.

  Guilt dawns on me, leaving a bitter aftertaste as the end-note of what should be the almost-perfect evening. If Baylor knew about this, he wouldn’t think twice before pummeling me. He would channel all the anger he’s ever felt and direct it toward me, no questions asked. It would ruin our friendship. There’d be no coming back.

  I don’t even want to think about what the fallout for the team would be. That would be disastrous on its own because we’re seeing real success and have nowhere to go but an upward trajectory. The money’s good, the benefits are nice, the lifestyle is more than I ever would have dreamed when I was a kid…

  All of those are very real concerns. Things to take into account when I ponder the pros and cons of doing whatever it is I’m doing.

  Playing with fire.

  Letting it consume me.

  Without getting burned.

  Yet, I correct.

  Doubt seeps into my every thought of Joey. Doubt and guilt. Because we’ve danced around this for going on years now, but it’s always had a veneer of plausible deniability.

  No longer. What we did tonight was real and irrevocable.

  Fuck. Fair or not, I know where Baylor stands on this and I went ahead and did it anyway.

  On and on my mind whirs, in a cyclical hellscape of anything-but-regret.

  Because the truth is, I don’t. Regret it, that is.

  I recognize where I failed the bro code and how much of an asshole I am, but if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t change anything.

  Not a goddamn thing.

  And that’s another thing. I don’t think I’m wrong or a pervert for wanting Joey. She clearly wants me, too, or tonight wouldn’t have happened—let alone the last however many months and years.

  She wants it.

  I want it.

  We’re on the same page.

  And yet someone wholly outside of the two of us has veto power over the entire ordeal.

  Why?

  Because we accept it in those terms.

  Which pisses me right the fuck off now.

  A guy not wanting his friends hounding his sister is understandable—if the friend is a hit-it-and-quit-it asshole. But I’m not, and that’s not how it is with Joey. For Christ’s sake, it’s been years since I last got laid. I have the blue balls to fucking prove it.

  Yes, my reputation before that wasn’t the best, but I’ve basically been a saint until then. Hoist me up and canonize me because there’s probably not a guy in this town with a cleaner track record than mine of late.

  And all of it is fuc
king meaningless because there’s no arguing about this with Baylor. There just isn’t. How do you even broach the subject? “Hey dude, I think the fact I haven’t fucked anyone in recent memory qualifies me to date your sister. Help a brother out.”

  He would skin me alive.

  I hate that he has veto power, but I understand where he was coming from when he first told me to lay off his sister. I overdid it often and I probably came across as no more serious than a fucking lecher who would bed anything that moved.

  But a guy has the right to evolve, right? To shed his former reputation and change his tune? Surely all of that had to count for something, had to redeem me somewhat. Maybe not in Baylor’s eyes, but in Joey’s it has. She isn’t the type of girl to give anyone the time of day if she thinks they won’t take her seriously.

  That’s the crux of the entire matter: Joey is marriage material. She knows it, Baylor sure as shit knows it, and I know it.

  And the assumption all these years was that I wouldn’t treat her like she deserved.

  I realize I can go ’round and ’round on this carousel, talking myself into one point of view or another all night if I give myself enough leeway. So I decide to go do something better or at the least more productive with my time. I get up and head toward my studio, where stacks of wool, knitting needles, and other arts and crafts supplies reside.

  I like to think that any man less confident in his own masculinity would have a hard time doing half of the artsy shit I do in public. But not me, especially not when Joey sees it like she does. I’ll never forget the first time she saw me produce a pair of knitting needles and a ball of yarn from my bag when we were going to an away game. Her eyes widened and bulged until she nearly burst them out of their sockets.

  You’d think I had a top hat and a habit of pulling rabbits out of it.

  She talked to me all afternoon, apparently overjoyed with this small quirk of mine she’d discovered. The guys had all learned not to give a fuck years ago, so her reaction was a novelty of sorts.

  Seriously, she marveled at it.

  For the record, I don’t knit because it’s a chick magnet. If I wasn’t an athlete, it wouldn’t have that effect on women. But I have to confess Joey’s enthusiasm did push me into doing it more often, and making her more stuff.

  Anyway.

  Before all of this, I might have said that everything was under control, but after tonight…

  I don’t know. I think we’re primed to lose ourselves to our lust sooner or later.

  Hopefully sooner.

  Shit.

  I could knit a beer cozy for every last goddamn can and bottle in this entire fucking country and it wouldn’t be enough to work off all this sexual tension I have mounting inside of me.

  I toss the needles and the yarn across the table and go to the corner where my easel is. Maybe painting will do the trick. Relax me a little. Take the edge off. Anything that will help.

  I replay the kiss in my mind. My cock finds itself in a perpetual state of hardness, but I don’t take my eyes off the canvas or my hand—injury be damned—off the brush.

  A little while later, a clear image starts to form in front of me. A figurine, dancing.

  There we go. Now we’re going somewhere.

  I continue, letting time and space and every other bit of mundane bullshit slip away. I shade where there needs to be more shadow, I add contours where the shapes are falling flat, and then I draw the hair. Long and wavy, with bangs to frame the heart-shaped head of the figurine, falling down her prominent collar bones, past the curves of her breasts, until it reaches that tiny waist…

  That’s when I realize.

  I’m painting Joey.

  Fuck.

  The way this is going I’m going to be backed up from balls to brain by next week.

  It doesn’t matter how aware I am of all of this or how much I want to press the pause button. I can’t stop thinking of her—and I won’t.

  Not until I have her again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JOEY

  Baylor slams his fist against the table and curses a string of expletives so over-the-top it attracts the attention of nearby onlookers.

  Another week goes by and another episode in the long list of Rachel-induced bullshit rears its ugly head.

  “Why won’t she answer her phone?” His voice is low and intense. Angry.

  He’s overreacting, yes, but I can’t blame him. For all the cartoonish shit my brother pulls—God love him—he has good intentions at heart. Rachel does far worse, far more often, and I can’t even begin to guess what it is she’s after.

  Well, I can, but not for certain. You know, benefit of the doubt and all that.

  Kieran and I exchange a look, our expressions mirror images of each other’s. We have helpless written all over our faces. It’s not a convenient time to not know what to do. There’s a game tomorrow. If we want to continue the team’s winning streak, which we do, we need to find a way to talk Baylor off the ledge. The only guy who comes close to being able to sub in for Baylor isn’t half as good as my brother in the best of circumstances, and today he’s coming down with some kind of seasonal football fever or flu, or whatever.

  Long story short, Baylor needs to snap out of it. But he won’t, because that’s his dynamic with Rachel.

  “I’m sure she’s just busy doing something else…” I trail off because I’m not even convincing myself. Anyone who’s known Baylor for more than two seconds can pick up on his intense anxiety at all things Baylor-related or not. Rachel went dark hours ago and there’s no plausible scenario that explains it.

  I know it.

  Kieran knows it.

  Worst of all, Baylor knows it.

  He paws at his phone again, pressing his sausage-like finger to Rachel’s contact card.

  “Baylor…” I start to say. It takes every ounce of patience not to lose it on him. When Rachel finally deigns to check her phone—you know, the one she can’t get enough of when my brother is out on the field and her eyes should be fixed on him and not on the stupid little device—she’ll see probably close to three digits of mixed calls.

  I’m not even kidding.

  How do I explain to my brother it’s unhealthy, unwise, and just all-around stupid to show that gold-digging, two-faced, personality-less jackass of a woman how much power she wields over him?

  Yeah, yeah, I went there with the name calling. Sue me.

  I’ve been a party to this shit longer than most. Believe you me, she’s earned every insult I’ve dished out. Even if I can’t prove it to him, which is why we’re in this situation in the first place. That and his own blindness.

  Why does he hold on to her like this? I wonder.

  “Look, man, she’ll check in with you later,” Kieran says with a sigh. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself. Forget her. Let’s focus on tomorrow. We’re going to hand those cardinal ghouls their asses and maybe even teach them a thing or two about how to play offense. This is easily going to be the biggest landslide victory we’ve ever had and their biggest blunder of the season. Are you going to let Rachel ruin that for you? Are you? You could be the next Tom Brady.”

  We’ve reached the tough love stage, still light on the abrasion but getting there. For some reason using reason to casually shame Baylor into submission works better than gentleness and soft, inside voices.

  It also works better when it’s coming from Kieran. My brother still sees me too much as a baby to ever take my efforts to cajole him seriously.

  Which is yet another whole can of worms I’ll have to work on with him in due time.

  One day I’m going to run out of internal memory, trying to keep all of these issues that will soon bubble to the top in check.

  “But she just disappears!” Fist, table surface, loud smack. I wince and scan the people around us, offering them a sorry-we’re-aware-how-embarrassing-this-is-so-please-don’t-judge-us-too-much smile as best as I can muster.

  “Bay, look, I’m
sorry she’s being so shitty right now. I wish she would be a little more considerate of the fact you have a game coming up and need to focus.” I pause to take a breath before launching into the rest of my spiel. “It’s just awful for her to disappear like this, especially since she knows how worked up you get, but really, bro, it’ll be okay. I’m sure she will turn up. Besides, you have your own stuff to do. Forget her.”

  Baylor rests his head against the table. He taps his fingers nervously before shooting up from his seat like a rocket about to launch. “I’m gonna get a draft or something.”

  “No, you’re not.” I use my Team’s Official Nutritionist voice. “You know that’s not part of the program. Nuh-uh, you’re not going to put the plan we’ve worked so hard to accomplish in jeopardy just because Rachel decided to fuck off.”

  “Hey, don’t talk like that about her.” His heart isn’t in it, though. He pouts, and I have a nagging feeling it’s mostly about having me rain on his beer-guzzling parade. “I’ll… Ugh, I just need to be alone.”

  “No alcohol and no carbs,” I call after him.

  He disappears inside the bar, leaving Kieran and I alone at the table. The rest of the guys are either playing pool or watching some game or other. There aren’t a lot of couples here, which is fortunate because if it were a lovey-dovey sort of environment, that would keep Rachel at the forefront of Baylor’s mind.

  Sigh.

  It isn’t lost on me I spend increasing amounts of time figuring out which eggshells I can walk on and which ones I should avoid when it comes to Baylor. It wasn’t always like this, and it probably isn’t now. I’m probably overcompensating for the fact I’m doing something I know would come across as a betrayal to him.

  Then I look up and my eyes find Kieran’s and I don’t care about anything except the here and now—the us of it all.

  I scoot closer to him. Smile. Tousle my hair playfully while he watches, a grin playing on his lips.

  “I like it when you do that,” he says.

  “I know,” I admit. I burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel… like sunshine around you.” I shrug. It occurs to me that that’s such a dorky thing to say, so cliché, but I don’t care. I know we’re on the same wavelength and that’s what matters.