Page 59 of Hell Bent

“Don’t stop basking on my account.” I knew my smile was foolish, but nobody else could see it, so that worked.

“Hey,” she said. “Let me talk to Ben.”

“Uh … sure. Is that it, then? No phone sex?”

“Get over yourself,” she said, and I laughed again. Then I went and got Ben.

“Huh?” he said, not looking away from the TV.

“Pause it,” I said. “Alix wants to talk to you.”

“Oh.” He did pause it. He also sat up and smoothed his hair. Alix had made an impression. I didn’t hear much morefor a while, just, “No way,” a few times, and, finally, “Yeah, he told me. See you on Saturday, I guess.” Another pause, and he said, “Are you kidding? No, thanks. OK. Saturday,” and hung up.

I took the phone from him. “Good talk?”

“She says I should watch the replay of the third quarter. Before we got there.” He did the kind of ultrafast remote-clicking and fast-forwarding that only somebody who watches a lot of TV manages, then asked, “When was it?”

I felt pretty stupid by this point, as you can imagine. I said, “It wasn’t that big a deal. Go back to your show.”

“Alix said I should look, though. She’s, like, strict. She’ll probably quiz me on Saturday, and she’ll know if I watched it or not and give me a whole lecture about appreciating other people. She made a joke about the hangover already. I mean, geez, I get it, OK? It’s easier just to watch it.”

I had to laugh, and I took the remote from him, showed him the play, which lasted about thirty seconds, and said, “There you go. My big moment.”

He said, taking the remote from me and rewinding to watch it again, “Do you get paid more if you do that? Tackle?”

I laughed again. “I have no idea.”

“The announcers are saying that kickers are going to have to tackle more now,” he said. “How come?”

I explained the kickoff rule change, and he said, “Huh.”

“It makes kickoffs more exciting, more of a contest, is the idea,” I said. “I was afraid Coach would say today that I shouldn’t have done it, but he didn’t. Said instead that I should up my tackling practice so I can do it better next time, so I guess for once, the announcers got it right.”

“Yeah?” Ben asked, not moving to restart his demolition derby of a movie. “So is that cool with you? Having to tackle?”

“Yes. It felt good. New, but good. I’m a pretty good size fora kicker, and pretty mobile, too, because of the soccer. That helps.”

He seemed to think about that, then said, “It would kind of suck just to kick and nothing else. The other guys are all celebrating and stuff, and you’re just kicking and running off.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Astute of you. You’re part of the team, but … sometimes not so much.”

“Huh,” he said again. “I used to watch you play soccer.”

“Yeah?” I sat beside him and shoved a hand into his popcorn bowl. Nothing wrong with popcorn, diet-wise. He’d disapproved of my vegetable-intensive dinner, but he’d eaten it, filling in the edges with chocolate milk, a second baked potato, a bowl of cereal, and now popcorn. I was seriously reevaluating my next grocery order.

“You’re better at football,” he said, and once again, I was laughing. Laughing, grabbing him around the neck, and rumpling his hair in the way I’d done when he was a little kid, and he was ducking and laughing himself.

“Whatever pays the bills,” I said.

“Is that really what it’s like?” he asked. “You’re not part of the team? I’d think it’d still be cool.”

“You’re right, it’s still pretty cool. And I shouldn’t say that. I’m feeling more like part of the team now. I’m new, that’s all.”

“Girls want to go out with you, for one thing,” he said, refusing to be redirected. “Like Alix.”

I considered denying it, but said instead, “You have to figure out what they want you for.”

“Yeah, right. Obviously it couldn’t be the money.”