Cream of the Crop (21 page)

Thanks for everything Friday night, you're the best.

Missy

XOXO

My mind reeled, rolling back to Friday night. Whoa, wait a minute. He didn't leave me to go to—

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a minute here. You left me to go see your ex-wife, and then you knowingly feed
me
her
thanks for the Friday-night fuck
muffins? What the
hell
?” I picked up the note and read it aloud with the most sickeningly sweet voice I could muster. “
You're the best
. Come on, why doesn't she just say, Hey ex-husband, thanks for the penis, thanks for visiting my vagina, here's some fucking awesome muffins?”

“She bakes me muffins all the time—”

“Oh, is that what they call it up here?”

“Is that what they call
what
up here? What are you talking about?”

“Well then, what the hell did I do last night:
churn your butter
? You better not have
whipped her cream,
or so help me God, I will—”

“I fixed her hot water heater.”

I froze. Then blinked. And glared.

“What the hell kind of sick sex act is that?”

“Did you smoke crack when you were outside?” he asked, the bacon now smoking and the eggs a curdled mess. Even not directly touching it, I can ruin a meal.

“Did you or did you not leave me Friday night, after fucking my brains out, because your ex-wife called?”

“Yes.”

“And she baked you muffins just for fixing her water heater?”

“Yes.”

“I don't buy it.”

“Her water heater's been on the fritz for the last year. She doesn't want to buy a new one unless she has to. So when it goes out, she calls me, I come over, I fix it, and she bakes me muffins as a thank-you.”

“Oh,” I said, sitting back down on my stool. Oh.

“What the hell was that about churning my butter?”

“Never mind. So nothing happened with you and Missy Friday night?”

“Nope.”

Shit.
“Well, don't I feel like an asshole.”

“You should,” he said, lifting the pan of burned bacon and dumping it in the trash. The eggs followed.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I'll clean the pans. Maybe we can go grab some breakfast in town?”

He looked at me for a moment, really looking at me. I tried a half smile, which coaxed one from him.

“You're a bit loony—you know that, right?” he asked, reaching out and grabbing a handful of pigtail.

I grinned. “Comes with the territory.”

We did go into town for breakfast. Tucked into the last empty booth at the coffee shop, we ordered up a big mess of waffles based on the waitress's recommendation.

“These are special, the last of the blueberries for the season till next year.”

“Then that's what we're having,” I said, not bothering to open my menu.

“Done,” Oscar agreed, handing back his menu as well. “And coffee, lots of coffee.”

“I'm not surprised. The way you two were carrying on at Pat's last night, you should need some caffeine.” She raised her eyebrows at the two of us, and went off to put our order in.

“You think the town's talking about us?” I asked, looking around the busy restaurant. There were definitely some interested looks being thrown our way. And we had been a little ridiculous last night.

“Do you care?” he asked, leaning across the table and picking up my hand, then kissing it slowly, his lips just barely brushing the backs of my knuckles.

“Do you?” I breathed, already knowing the answer. Oscar did what he wanted, when he wanted, and really didn't care what anyone thought.

His answer was in fact another kiss, leaning across the table and giving me one hell of a lip smack.

“You're determined to make us the town topic, aren't you?”

“People are gonna say what they want to; I can't stop that,” he replied, a teasing look in his eye. “Besides, they're always trying to figure me out. It's been that way since I moved here; best to keep them guessing.”

“How long ago was that?” I asked, enjoying the warmth of his hand in mine.

“Hmm, five years now? Six?”

“And where were you before that?”

“Dallas.”

“Is that where you grew up?”

“Nope,” he said, chewing on his bottom lip. I noticed he did this when we were talking about something he didn't really want to. “Cream?” He gestured to the silver pitcher that a busboy had just set down on the table, along with our coffee.

“Please,” I nodded, tearing open a sugar packet and adding it to my cup. “So you didn't grow up in Dallas. Where were you before Dallas?”

“LA.”

“You lived in LA?” Holy shit, my country boy in Los Angeles was hard to envision.

“I didn't live in LA, I just went to school there. I didn't like Los Angeles much.”

“What school did you go to?”

He chewed his bottom lip again. “USC.”

A lightbulb went off. “You played football there, didn't you?”

He nodded. “Full-ride scholarship.”

I squeezed his hand. “That's incredible!”

He squeezed it back, then let go. “It's not that incredible.” He looked out the window, watching the clouds. “Looks like we might get rain today.”

“Wait a minute, you went to one of the best colleges in the country on a full-ride scholarship and you say it's not that incredible?”

He shrugged. “I come from a football family. We all played, all my brothers.”

“Did any of them go pro?” I asked. Finally, a reaction on his face. He blushed and smiled sheepishly. “
You
played pro football?”

He shrugged once more. “Dallas.”

My head exploded. “You played for the Dallas Cowboys?” My shriek caused several to look our way, and he winced.

“Could you not yell, please?” His expression was guarded now, closed off somehow. “Yes, I played pro ball.”

“How long?”

He didn't answer for the longest time. When he did, his voice was quiet, and harder than I'd ever heard it. “Six and a half.”

“Years?”

He shook his head. “Games.”

I remembered our conversation from earlier, all the scars. The broken fingers, the busted elbow, the blown-out—

“You blew out your knee playing, didn't you?”

He sighed, a sigh that seemed to go on and on and carried such a heavy load. “Yes,” he finally said through gritted teeth. And when he met my gaze, those piercing gray-blue eyes were full of so much hurt.

“Here we are, waffles for everyone!” the waitress chirped cheerfully, setting down two platters of waffles studded with enormous blueberries, pulling a container of syrup out of her apron pocket.

Oscar nodded his thanks, poured on the syrup, and then started eating. The conversation was over.

After the quietest breakfast ever, he looked at his watch and swore. “I'm late for practice, want to tag along?”

“Sure,” I said. I knew he had kids' football today, I just hadn't known if I'd be invited along. He paid quickly, and we headed out into the sunshine for a short walk over to where the kids were starting to gather. As we walked he stayed quiet, but he held my hand. That meant something.

Once there, he deposited me with some of the players' moms on the bleachers, threw me a woolen blanket he'd grabbed from the truck, kissed me quickly on the forehead, then headed out to his team. I watched as he greeted his players with real joy, the first I'd seen since we'd started talking about something that he clearly didn't enjoy discussing.

I watched him tease his players, slapping a few on top of
their helmets, chasing a few others, truly in his element. Ignoring the stares I was getting from some of the moms who doubtless enjoyed the view of Oscar each week while their sons played, I pulled out my phone and did the modern-day-dating equivalent of asking around.

I Googled Oscar Mendoza.

And in three seconds I had access to everything about him. He grew up in Wisconsin on a dairy farm, the son of a former professional football player and a high school English teacher. Oscar's entire life seemed to have revolved around football, and he'd been poised to be the next big thing ever since he started playing. Originally coached by his father, he then played for a highly competitive secondary school, eventually being selected for All County, All Region, All State, and, his senior year, selected as a High School All American. Sought after by all the major football schools in the nation. Played three years as inside linebacker for USC. Picked third in the second round of the NFL draft by the Dallas Cowboys.

Taken out of his seventh professional game when he was injured. Spent the next year rehabilitating his knee after surgery for those injuries. His contract was dropped when he failed to regain the speed he'd once had, and his football career was over at twenty-three.

Oh, Oscar.

I stopped reading and watched him coach his team the rest of that morning, not wanting to know the rest of his story until he was ready to tell me. When practice was over, I walked out to him on the improvised field in the middle of the town square, a million miles away from where I'm sure he intended to end up but seemingly happy. He looked up from his clipboard with a genuine smile, also seeming happy that I was here, with him, in his world. As soon as I could, I wrapped my arms around him
and kissed him. Just once, soft and sweet. And when he kissed me back, he lifted me against him, his arms so tight around my waist, the autumn sun dancing around us, and I felt very happy to be here with him.

When we got back to the truck, he threw his gear inside and looked at me expectantly. “Feel up for a walk?”

“Sure,” I said, letting him slide his long arm around my shoulder and tuck me into his side. We headed down Main Street, turning right on Elm, and walked with what seemed no real direction, no real hurry. Just walking. We went right again on Maple, right on Oak, then finally right once more on Main, having walked all around the town square. He started talking when we made the next turn onto Elm.

“Football was everything in my family—you should know that first.”

I exhaled, relieved that he was trusting me enough to tell me his story, and pleased that he wanted to. I tightened my hold on his waist, my hand resting along his hip under his jacket, warm and cozy.

“Football. Got it.” I nodded and looked up at him. The sunlight was encircling his head a bit like a halo.

“My father played football—never was a star, mind you, but played in the NFL for almost five years. Third string for Indiana, then half a season in Detroit, and he played out his last season close to his family home in Green Bay. When his contract wasn't renewed, he moved us all to the farm and worked with his father at the dairy they owned.”

A family of dairymen; interesting.

“But football was still part of his life, all of our lives. I played, my brothers played, he coached, and if we weren't out working the cows or milking them in the barn, we were on the field.”

“Sounds like fun,” I replied when he seemed to stall in his story.

He nodded with a faraway look. “It was. As we got older, it wasn't as much fun. I loved football, loved the game, the sport, the community, all of it. But if you were good, and I was, it could take over everything else. That's what happened for me and my brothers. Everything became about training, everything became about the game that weekend, what plays we could have run better, what block could have been harder, what tackle should have been a sack. We literally ate and slept and breathed football. When the season ended, we kept on drilling at home, year-round.”

He paused somewhere in the middle of Oak Street, scrubbing at his face. “He wanted us to have that edge, to be better than anyone else. It started to not be so fun anymore.”