Page 20 of Who’s Playing You (In The Nick of Time #1)

“Oh, you know, just…” And I felt pathetic. As I traced back my day in my head, I was coming up empty-handed. What the hell had I done today? It felt like nothing.

“Just hanging?” he said, as if he had some insight into my day, which felt… odd.

“Umm, yeah, I guess you could say that. How about you? How was work? You said you were tired.”

“Yeah, busy day. Work’s kicking my ass this week,” he chuckled.

“And,” I hedged, “I just realized that I don’t know what you do…” I let the last word hang in the air. He began laughing at my question though.

“Oh, yeah,” he chuckled. “I guess we never got to that, huh?” I hummed a no in response. “So, I umm, work for the football team, The New York Rage. Ever heard of them?”

I felt a little foolish because no, I hadn’t really heard of them. I hoped this wasn’t like a common knowledge thing where I was totally coming up short. “Umm…” I began.

He full-on began laughing. “You don’t know about them, do you?” he responded right away in an amused way, without judgement. “That’s alright, Scottie. That just tells me that you’re at least not rooting for the competition. Maybe we can make you a fan this season though.”

I chuckled at that. “Yeah? Well, good luck with that. I’m not very athletically inclined, I guess, and sports never interested me much. No offense.”

“None taken,” he replied without any judgement. “But I think that just means that this is your year.”

I laughed again at that. “Oh yeah? Well, maybe. So…” I drew up the last word, “what exactly do you do for The Rage?”

“Good question,” he said and went quiet for a minute. “I work with the team to help them do their jobs so that they can win championships.”

“Oh wow!” I said, feeling impressed. “That’s a lot of pressure,” I stated without really knowing what went into making a football team work or win nor the significance of his job.

He just chuckled, “Sure is. I guess some days it feels like I’m carrying the weight of the whole team and their success on my shoulders.”

“Oh geez, Nicholas, that’s a lot of responsibility.” I felt for him because, wow! That felt like a lot.

“It’s okay, Scottie, but thank you. I’m used to it.”

“So I take it you’ve been doing this for a while then - training with the team, and I’m guessing teaching them plays and stuff?”

“Yeah, you can say that. I did the same thing when I worked with my team in high school and then college.”

Ok so college graduate, I filed away in my brain. That put him north of his early twenties at least.

“Oh okay, so you’re saying you’re kind of a pro at this point?” I teased him with a little shy chuckle and he returned it with a full laugh.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“May I ask, where did you go to college?”

“Oh, right, we hadn’t covered that either. Yeah, so I went to school in Arkansas, at Zeiders University.”

“Oh my gosh, that’s an incredible school!” I gushed, because that was one of the top ten schools in the nation for their academic programs as well as their research institutions, and their sports programs.

“It sure is. I got the best of both worlds there,” he said, then changed the topic. “So what are you up to right now?”

The change of topic threw me off my train of thought for a minute and I scanned my surrounding area, trying to remember what in the hell I had been doing before he started texting me.

“Oh. Nothing important. I was just trying to figure out a solution to a problem I’m having.”

“Which is…”

“Oh, well one of the things I wanted to do this summer before the fall semester starts up again was to kind of hone my figure drawing skills.”

“That’s cool, that’s cool,” he said in an odd way before continuing, “So what’s the issue?”

“Well, I don’t have a model,” I hedged. I quickly continued, “Normally during the school year we have a list of students who like to model for the art department for extra cash, but they haven’t returned yet, and so I had put out some feelers but it’s come back with zilch.”

“I see, so you’re in need of a model?”

“Precisely.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Pardon?” I stumbled, surely not hearing him correctly.

“I’ll do it. I can be your model.”

“As nice as that is, and thank you, I appreciate the offer… It’s figure drawing,” I emphasized the figure part.

“Yeah? So?”

“Figure, as in the human body. As in nude.”

“Okay, and? I’ve got a body.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his nonchalance. “Yes, yes you certainly do. But Nicholas, I…”

He just started laughing at my obvious stumbling. “Are you saying you couldn’t draw me? Do you not like my body, honey?”

Honey.

Oh my God, I was melting.

Him calling me honey literally had me melting to the floor off my couch while my core flooded with heat. The thought of having him naked in front of me combined with him calling me that had me stuttering like I’d never stuttered before.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” the bastard was laughing at my expense.

“But Nicholas…”

“You obviously don’t have an issue with nudity, Scottie, since you were searching for a model, to pose nude. So I don’t understand the hesitation.”

“It’s just that-that, I don’t want you to offer this because you feel sorry for me or think that you’re getting me out of a pickle. It’s really not that serious. I have other ways of making it work. It’s seriously not that big of a deal.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you. You need a model, and I’ve done some modeling before,” he stated simply as if he were telling someone what time it was.

“You, you’ve done some modeling?”

I imagined him shrugging when he said, “Yeah, no big deal.”

“But-but, Nicholas, this is quite literally figure drawing where you’re in nothing but your birthday suit.”

“Scottie, listen, unless you’ve got an issue with seeing me naked, I’m your man. Period.”