"How do you like your fingers on it?" Jacqueline queried, sweat streaming from her face.
"These two, right here..." came the reply. "But really, just this one finger...I like to rest the other one underneath..."
"Well," Jacqueline countered with a grin, "If I had hands like yours, I'd do the same thing!"
"But, you have to understand," the red-headed model continued, "I grew up working with something different from what I get to play with now. Something bigger. When you couldn't experience that control before...and now you can? You damn sure take that opportunity!"
Jacqueline reached down, gave it a tender caress...
...and then, with a perfect spiral, flung the football to Chris Weathers.
"Yeah, that makes sense," Chris replied.
"My Dad was big on all of those football instructional videos," Chris explained. "I was taught, 'ring finger over the second lace, pinky under the fifth lace.' But it's all muscle-memory now, anyway. Sometimes, I don't even get my fingers on the laces when I spin it."
"Trust me," Jacqueline returned, "I got the exact same lessons that you did. But that grip doesn't work on an NFL football with a girl's hands. I could never get my fingers on the laces with that ball. But then, when Flag finally started to get popular, and I got to start using the smaller ball, and I could finally grip the laces? I go second lace, fourth lace, and I rest my middle finger just off of first lace. Give me every lace that I can get my hand on!"
"Well," Chris answered as he whipped the ball back to her, "It's obviously working for you!"
The Perion Flag Football team's afternoon practice had just ended. Today, the team was welcoming a special guest: The Tackle Football team's star player.
As most of the Flag team cooled-down and stretched, the two Perion Predators starting quarterbacks--Chris Weathers and Jacqueline Sullivan--were trading passes and talking shop out on the field.
Kelsie watched the exchange from up in the bleachers, enjoying every second of it.
Her man and her friends were finally spending some quality time together!
Of course, making this all happen had required a bit of theatrical subterfuge.
As long as Kelsie and Chris were within 100 feet of each other in a public place, they had to make a show of not interacting. They had to act as though it was pure coincidence that the quiet blond girl up in the stands and the hulking athlete down on the field had both arrived at this practice today. That it was purely Chris's love of football that had brought him here. That the strong bond he so obviously shared with three of the Flag team's star players was just an "athletes knowing other athletes" coincidence.
In truth...the whole charade was ridiculously flimsy. Anyone who actually sat and watched this practice would be able to tell, within an hour, that Kelsie was close friends with Jacqueline, Alexia, and Kaykay, and that Chris was also friends with Jacqueline, Alexia, and Kaykay. Factoring in the fairly common knowledge that Kelsie and Chris had "shared a moment" after the first Perion Predators game, and...a person wouldn't exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to piece this thing together.
The real truth was that Kelsie, Chris, and their friends could get away with this only because a certain someone simply didn't care enough to uncover their ruse.
It had been two weeks since Cooper Deering had left Chris in the Howard Hall laundry room...and Cooper had barely even texted Chris since that night. To the surprise of absolutely no one, "sympathy" wasn't exactly Cooper's strong suit. The well-being of Chris's father was clearly something that Cooper felt she could simply sit out until it was absolutely necessary to become involved. As far as Cooper was concerned, it wasn't like Chris was going anywhere; his father's illness didn't make Chris any less her property.
So, for now, Cooper was tuning Chris out...which was a relief...not least because, had she even bothered to call his family to send well-wishes or to reach out in any other supportive way...she would have immediately learned that the entire "Sick Dad" story was a lie.
Beyond the emerald-eyed ice queen's cold disinterest: There was zero social crossover between Pi Shop/The Preditorettes and the Flag Football team. Whatever happened on this field was not going to get back to Pi Pi Pi. Out here, this silly little masquerade--in which Kelsie pretended that the giant boy down there playing catch with her friend was not bathing Kelsie in sexual pleasure nearly every night--was more than enough.
As their relationship had been afforded a little more breathing room--at least for now--Kelsie and Chris were finally getting some sleep. They both felt much better physically...
...but unfortunately, this didn't appear to be helping Chris much out on the football field.
After starting the season strongly, the Predators Football Team had now lost two games in a row. Chris was officially in a slump. Out on the field, he looked tentative, worried, distracted. The increasingly common refrain from the media was that, perhaps, Chris Weathers--despite all of his obvious gifts--just wasn't quite up for this level of football.
Only Kelsie and her friends knew the truth: The entire Kelsie vs. Cooper situation had sent Chris into a spiral of stress. He had found his perfect girl, yes...but he was now in a state of constant worry that something bad would happen to her. Amidst it all, Chris had lost something that he had taken for granted for as long as he had been putting on football pads: His competitive edge.
Kelsie felt incredibly guilty about her own role in Chris's downward slide, and she desperately wished that she could do something to pull him out of it. Right now, sadly, short of teleporting Cooper Deering to another planet, Kelsie had no solution.
This afternoon, at least, Kelsie wasn't going to worry about that.
Today, she was going to sit here and watch Alexia and Kaykay run around the field as Chris and Jacqueline threw them passes. Kelsie was just going to enjoy the moment.
There was one other small thing, beyond Chris's presence, that made today's viewing experience slightly unusual for Kelsie: Today, she was accompanied in the bleachers by a different Lim sibling.
Erika Lim had, for some reason, decided to tag along with her pale blond friend this afternoon. Throughout the practice, Erika had been sitting next to Kelsie, quietly watching the action on the field. Erika was wearing a thick, blue "The Perion Center for Dance" sweatshirt and black leggings. Her dark hair was pulled back behind her tan face in a ponytail.
As for Jason Lim...
"Hey!" Kelsie remarked, turning toward her reserved friend. "Where IS Jason today, anyway?"
Erika shrugged.
"He's working on something," she returned, her light-brown eyes still focused straight ahead. "Some big project. I'm not sure what, but it seems to involve a lot of computer equipment. He had it all piled in his room."
Erika went back to staring quietly at the field.
"Huh," Kelsie replied.
The two continued to watch their friends catch passes for several more minutes...
...and then, to Kelsie's surprise, Erika suddenly pivoted toward her.
"Kelsie...can I talk to you about something?"
Kelsie was startled. She was pretty sure that--aside from "does Chris usually do his laundry on this night?"--this was the only question that Erika had ever asked her.
"Uh, yeah, sure!" Kelsie offered.
Erika looked down at the bleachers.
"Well..." she began deliberately.
"...I feel like...you know a lot about...stuff."
Kelsie was at a loss.
"Stuff?"
Erika hemmed, still staring at her feet.
"Like...sex stuff."
Kelsie laughed out loud.
"Oh, yeah, sure! ME?" she chuckled sarcastically.
Kelsie's self-deprecating cackle faded as she realized that Erika appeared to be...serious?
"Erika," Kelsie offered with amused confusion, "Chris is almost the only boy I have ever been with! And I wasn't even WITH him until a few weeks ago!"
"Yeah," Erika returned faintly. "I know."
Kelsie tacked on what seemed, to her, to be the most obvious addendum ever.
"Erika, you need to talk to Kaykay, Alexia, and Jacqueline! THEY'RE the experts! They'll tell you anything that you want to know!"
"...I know." Erika softly replied. "But...they're kind of, like...scary to talk to, sometimes? They're very loud, and they have a lot of strong opinions..."
Kelsie couldn't resist another smile.
