Page 80 of Family Bonds- Emma & Warren

She burst out laughing. “No onethinks I’m polite. Are you smoking crack? I know that’s not part of your health regimen. So are you pounding soda?”

He pushed her face into his chest to get her to stop laughing.

“You’re not always polite, but you’re not mean. You know when to say what...for the most part.”

“For the most part,” she agreed. “What about the otherWAGs?”

She rolled it off her tongue longer than it needed to be. It was still funny to her.

“Well now,” he said. “Some of the more popular players have significant others who enjoy being on camera.”

“Got it,” she said. “Long manicured nails, tight clothes, more makeup in one night than I wear in a year, and hair that took hours to style?”

“Not everyone,” he said. “But there are several. They like the attention. Or some do and they are in their own clique. Remember, I’ve only been on the team for a year, so I’m not close to a lot of people.”

“Which surprises me,” she said. “You’re a likable guy. And the team captain.”

“But I don’t like to go out and many of them do,” he said. “I don’t have a significant other so when I am invited, I go alone, and it feels like the odd man out.”

“Is that why you say you’re a hermit?” she asked.

He shrugged, but she poked him in the side when he didn’t answer. “I think sometimes it’s just better to keep to yourself.”

“Who digs at you?” she asked.

“What?” he asked.

She lifted her head and looked at him, holding his stare. His light blue eyes trying to read her mind. He had another thingcoming. No one could ever figure out what was in her mind, including herself half the time.

“I asked who digs at you. Everyone has someone who digs at them. Or dug at them. That makes them change what they’d normally do or think. For me, it was Stanley Herbert. What a douche.”

His shoulders and chest were shaking with laughter. “What did he do? Do you want me to go beat him up for you?”

She hopped a little on the couch. “Would you please? That would teach him to tell me that no one would want to read romance books. That they are trash and not good literature.”

“Ouch,” he said.

“Yeah. He was a wannabe dick. He wanted to be the next great American author. We had an assignment once where we had to pick a popular fiction book, read it, and discuss what we liked, what we’d change, how it was rated. All sorts of things that the class got to debate if they wanted or had read the book.”

“I can just imagine what he picked,” he said. “One of your mother’s books?”

“Oooooh yeeeeeah,” she said, laughing. “Everything he said I contradicted. I had to. It was just too funny. He had no clue what he was talking about. The fact that half the class and the professor read it too and agreed with me was icing on my yummy I-told-you-so cake.”

“Do you know what happened to good old Stanley?”

“I Google him once in a while to see if he ever published a book,” she said. “So far nothing, but I do see he works at some magazine.”

“Magazines are losing steam,” he said.

“Oh, they are. It’s a popular cultural one. That’s even funnier.”

“Then why did you let him dig at you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “I think it was just the fact that he thought he was better than everyone else and knew it all. He wasn’t and he didn’t.”

“What did you do that you wouldn’t normally do?” he asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. She liked it when he did those romantic gestures without thought.

Her heart was racing, there was a thumping sound in her ears, and her palms were getting sweaty.