Incredible. Carter and Max were arguing over Addison. The table practically vibrated with their lusty thoughts for her.
I wasn’t going to take that through the rest of my chicken sandwich. To return to a more comfortable subject, I asked Max, “So you were at, what? Kicker camp?” I could have sworn he’d been staring at me on the field—me, not Addison. If he had been, he would have seen me staring right back at him. Since that obviously was not what had been going on, I couldn’t admit that I’d been watching him at practice and I’d seen what he’d done at kicker camp with my own eyes.
He did give me kind of a funny look, like he’d thought our eyes had met on the field and now he was confused. But he simply said, “Yeah. I’m not big enough to play any position but kicker. The first time I got tackled, I’d get squashed like a leetle bug.”
He was making a joke before Carter could beat him to it, I thought. Max must be used to getting teased by his team about his size. But he was taller than average and not skinny, just lean. That had become clear to me when he took his shirt off. Every other guy on their team must look like Carter the oafburger.
“As rarely as he’s on the field, he might as well not be on the team,” Carter said.
Max’s eyes slid to Carter, but his smile never changed. He took a breath to defend himself. For some reason, I felt compelled to do it for him.
“He might as well not be on the team?” I repeated. “Carter, how can you say that? There’s a lot of pressure on the quarterback because you have so much to coordinate. But there’s probably even more pressure on the kicker. Max is solely responsible for scoring a field goal or an extra point, and often that’s the deciding score in a game.”
Max turned to Carter. “What she said.”
“But it doesn’t really matter yet,” I said, “unless you’re starting seniors.”
“We’re both juniors,” Max told me, “but we’re both starting.”
“You are?” I asked. “For your school? Wow, that’s huge. You must both be really good.”
Carter smiled and blushed, but Max gave me a savvier smile. “How do you know so much about football?” he asked. “You don’t strike me as a girl who would watch football. You look like you’d be a fan of . . . I don’t know.” He tilted his head as he ran his eyes over my brown hair streaked with purple, down my MARCHING WILDCATS T-shirt, to my funky bracelet collection on my left arm—which I never went without, but which Addison complained was annoying to listen to when I twirled. He said, “Fight club.”
Fight club wasn’t quite the look I was going for. Roller derby would have been better. I didn’t want Max to think I was harsh.
Over Carter’s and Addison’s chuckles, I said, “May I remind you that I am also a majorette for my high school marching band? That’s me, Gemma Van Cleve, Incorporated, defying stereotypes for almost sixteen years.”
“As a Japanese-American football player with a southern accent, I might know where you’re coming from.” Max winked.
“Touché.” I grinned at him.
He grinned back at me, and the smile seemed genuine, reaching his deep brown eyes. I had never been good at flirting. When I was heavier, I’d had no confidence that boys would be interested in me, so I didn’t bother trying. Even now that I’d lost weight and gained self-esteem, flirting was foreign. There was a fine line between sexy banter and out-and-out arguing. I tended to cross it and chase boys off. Or maybe I chased them off with my noisy bracelets. But in that moment, with Max, I felt like I had hit the elusive sweet spot. For once, I had done everything exactly right.
“What did you say?” Addison asked. “Tissue? Tush? What?” She wasn’t really that stupid, I hoped. It must have been the only way she could think of to re-enter the conversation. While I’d held the boys’ attention, she’d stripped the wrappers off three straws and braided them together. She did not do well when she wasn’t the focus of attention.
“You have been left behind,” I told her.
That was the wrong thing to say. Addison smiled at me humorlessly, face tight. I had lots of experience being dragged along on her flirting runs, but no experience getting caught up in one. She seemed to be telling me to get back into my cage and wait until she called me.
“I’ll tell you how Gemma knows so much about football,” Addison said.
Oh, she wouldn’t. She’d already spilled to these boys that I’d lost almost a third of my body weight. Surely she wouldn’t tell them about my dad, too?
Yep, she would. “When Gemma was little, she went to every Falcons game with her dad.”
“Wow, every game?” Max asked. “That must have been expensive. He had season tickets?”
I swallowed. “Sort of.”
Addison, seeing that this line of conversation caused me discomfort, generously made things worse. “Her dad owned the team.”
Both guys gaped at me. Their eyes and mouths opened wide. They looked like cartoon characters with their jaws and eyeballs lolling on the floor. Boys were terrified by the idea of my rich and powerful dad, even though he was nowhere around and didn’t care about me.
“He used to own the team,” I clarified sheepishly. “Only part of the team. It was just an investment he held for a while.” As the words came out, I knew I was digging a deeper hole for myself, lamely trying to explain away my dad’s casual investment of several million dollars, but I couldn’t stop. “He sold it when he moved to Hilton Head.” Good work, Gemma! I had successfully downplayed how filthy rich my dad was by revealing that he lived in the most exclusive oceanside retreat for Atlanta executives.
My face burned so hot that my whole body started to sweat in the air-conditioned restaurant. I managed to mumble, “I forgot I need to text my mom,” as I jumped up from the table and hurried in the direction of the restaurant exit. Too late, I realized that was also the direction of the restrooms. The boys probably thought I had bladder control issues.
In front of the long row of cash registers, a display case held photos of the Varsity in the 1950s and 1960s and signed pictures of stars who’d eaten there or used to work there. I parked myself at the picture of Ryan Seacrest, maybe from back when he was a deejay in Atlanta, looking very 1990s with his hair spiked and frosted.
I’d only wanted to escape the boys’ scrutiny for a moment. But as I leaned against the wall, I really did text my mom. She was picking me up at the MARTA stop, and this whole side trip of Addison’s would put me home an hour later than I’d told her. As I thumbed L-a-t-e, Addison rushed toward me in a cloud of blond, her blue eyes huge, lips pursed and barely hiding a smile, fists balled in excitement. “Guess what!”