Tatum
“Coach.”
Tatum nodded at the burly, ruddy-faced man who stood just below the stadium steps, regal in his forest-green coaching shorts and stretched-to-the-seams yellow Sycamore State t-shirt. A crooked ball cap, much like those Shane always wore, cast shadows across his apprehensive eyes.
“Ripley.”
Tatum blushed at the old grump’s use of her last name. It might not have sounded like a term of endearment to most, but in Coach’s world, first names were for strangers. Last names were for players, or at the very least, friends of players. Maybe even friends, period.
She was even more honored considering the dustup Shane had told her about, and the fallout from their relationship after blurring the lines between reporter and subject, professional and player. The fact that Coach could still look at her, let alone talk to her, meant they’d been good for their words and played it low-key now that the story had come out.
Tatum offered up a foil-wrapped cylinder, still warm despite her long walk from the hot dog cart out front to the stadium’s back entrance, and now to the foot of the towering bleachers. In the distance, high overhead, a lone figure toiled, little but a glimmer in the late afternoon sun. “Double relish and onions, Coach, just the way you like it.”
He took the wax paper container begrudgingly, as if perhaps it held a ticking time bomb, or in this case, another lurid bedroom photo of she and Shane, sweaty skin and sleepy eyes and bruised lips. “Them chips barbecue, Missy?”
“Obvi.” She put on her most charming smile and did an embellished little curtsy.
Coach rolled his eyes, nudging the potato chip bag suspiciously with a thumb almost as thick as the hot dog inside. “Cuz last time you got me sour cream and onion.”
Tatum rolled her eyes. Heaven forbid, she thought to herself, before fixing on a dutiful smile. “Yes, and I’ve heard about nothing ever since, so barbecue it is from now on. You’re welcome.”
He wasn’t quite sure what to do with her antics. He never was, but the fact that he tolerated her at all was good enough for Tatum. He slid the red-and-white-striped tray atop the stairs where he stood, Tatum following suit as she slid the two remaining trays next to Coach’s.
She glanced up at the stadium steps, the lone figure inching closer into view as he descended the steps one at a time, a shimmering, gleaming blur of arms and legs, each one sweatier and sexier than the next. “What’d he do this time?” Tatum wondered aloud.
“Late to practice. Again.” Coach gave her a knowing glance.
She made a toothy, apologetic grin, accompanied by an equally sorry shrug of her shoulders. “My fault, I suppose. Big night last night.”
Coach winced. “I don’t wanna hear about it.”
“Not like that,” she rushed to assure him. “We were kind of celebrating, actually.”
He rolled his eyes. “What? Your two-week anniversary?”
She rolled hers back. “No, silly. That’s tomorrow night. Last night we celebrated the fact that my story finally made it through copy edits. Finally.” Tatum shrugged, recalling the dozen or more drafts of Shane’s profile she’d had to endure before Moira finally announced her first ever Rookie Roundup feature clear to print.
Coach grunted, reaching for something next to his hot dog tray. “That’d explain this then?”
He waved a fresh copy of the Statesman toward her, hot off the presses. “Yes, it would. What’d you think, Coach?”
He scowled as usual, unfurling the paper dramatically until they could both see Shane’s picture, sweaty and aglow in the batting cage, posted front and center, and in living color to boot. She blushed to recall what happened less than an hour after she took that very picture, but somehow managed not to blurt out all the dirty little details as Coach pretended to re-read the article, all three printed pages of it. “Nice job, Kid. Now, just don’t let it go to his already big head.”
“Thanks, Coach.” She was tempted to lean up on her tippy-toes to kiss the big lug, but refrained just as Shane drifted into view, dripping sweat and panting so loudly she could hear him from four bleachers away.
“Did you tell her?” Shane gasped, gulping for air as he reached the last stadium step, ribbed tank top drenched in glorious man sweat.
“Tell her what?” Coach growled evasively, reaching for his hot dog value basket.
“How much you loved her article, duh?” Shane beamed. Coach glowered. Tatum snickered. “I was just getting to that,” Coach huffed, giving Tatum a begrudging wink as he turned to Shane. “And what are you stopping for? I said six circuits, Dixon. I’ve only counted five.”
“Bull hockey,” Shane grumbled, nodding at the paper in Coach’s hand. “I did a whole other one while you were reading earlier!”
Coach glowered and wagged a thick finger Shane’s way. “You wanna make it seven, Hot Shot?”
Shane shook his head, gave Tatum a merry wink, and then set about running up the stadium steps one last time. “See what you’ve done, Ripley?” Coach huffed, reaching for his hot dog tray.
“What’s that, Coach?” Tatum found she enjoyed the grumpy banter between both men, her stunning jock, and his grumpy coach. It almost—almost, that is—made Tatum pine for the high school athletics she’d never joined back home.
He waved the paper again before shoving it into her hands. “Created a monster with your puff piece, that’s what!”
He hoisted his hot dog and turned, glancing over his shoulder with a warning glare. “Don’t let him off the hook, either. Make sure he runs that last circuit or else.”
“Sure, Coach,” she agreed. She leaned her hip against the half-wall that bordered the playing field where she stood. “Enjoy your foot-long.”
He grumbled something in parting, and before she could glance up from the Statesman, disappeared down the same corridor she’d just exited. She grinned to herself, glanced up at Shane, dutifully struggling up the last few stadium bleachers high above, and sighed, turning her attention to the front page of the student paper instead.
Though it had been a struggle to wrangle all of Moira’s stringent edits and finagle in her pointed suggestions, all while doing penance for succumbing to temptation in the first place, ultimately Tatum appreciated the effort and realized that her editor in chief had improved the story quite a bit. The gist of Tatum’s words were there, glowing praise tinged with just the right shade of modesty, making Shane Dixon leap off the page one paragraph at a time.
The pictures didn’t hurt things, either. Full color and crystal clear thanks to her new cell phone, they, too, leapt off the page, treating the rest of Sycamore State to what Tatum already knew—Shane was a total jock babe. And thanks to (almost) two whirlwind weeks together, he was hers. All hers. Every sexy, sweaty, smutty inch of him.
“Not bad, huh?” Shane had descended the steps while she’d been daydreaming, robbing her of seeing him in his favorite grey gym shorts, face flushed and sweat stinging his gentle green eyes.
“I mean, sure. Moira says it’s the Statesman’s best-selling issue by far, and it’s only been out a few hours.”
Shane reached for a fresh white towel that had been folded neatly at the edge of the bleachers. “Congrats, Tatum! But, uh … I meant that fox you’re staring at in there.” He tapped at the middle spread of the story, splashed across page six, leaving a wet fingerprint where he’d soiled the page.
“Oh, yeah, that, too,” she murmured, eyeing him up and down and back again. “Please tell me you wore underwear this time?”
He chuckled. “Hell, no, why would I do that? And deprive you of your dirty, sweaty laundry kink?”
“It’s not a kink,” she insisted. She peered around the stadium as if someone might hear, despite the fact that practice had been over for more than an hour, leaving Shane plenty of time to endure his punishment for being late. “It just makes me horny, okay?”
He dabbed at his neck absently, descending the last few steps on rubbery legs. “I know I’m just some dumb redneck jock, Tatum, but isn’t that the definition of a kink?”
Tatum pressed her fingertip against Shane’s sweaty tank top, if only to feel the rich, wet dampness beneath it. Kink indeed! “At least I don’t make you wear heels to bed every night, oh, kinky one.”
Shane blushed but chuckled just the same. “I guess we’re both just a couple of kinky horndogs, what can I say?”
Still pressing against his chest, Tatum slid her finger to the nearest sleeve of his tank top and tugged him close. Close enough to kiss. “Say you’ll skip the shower tonight, Stud.”
His chuckle was pure sugar and total spice, her favorite Shane Dixon combination. “Your wish,” he teased, reaching over to snatch the paper from her hand. “So, how many times have you read it so far?”
She grinned, knowing he’d only get the answer out of her some way if she lied. “Twenty-seven. You?”
“Dang, only nineteen, but I’m a slow reader!”
They chuckled, Tatum flattered that he’d even read it at all. “It’s funny,” he added, tucking a big, dirty thumb under her chin. “For someone who only took the job as a pre-rec, you’re one hell of a reporter after all.”
Tatum blushed vaguely, not wanting to admit how much the words suddenly meant to her. It was true, she’d taken one job to get to another, but after feeling so passionately about her subject, and turning that passion into prose, the writing had begun to mean more and more to her. She’d thought Moira was joking about submitting her article to the college competition she’d mentioned, but now that she had, Tatum was waiting on pins and needles to see if it won. She wondered what Shane might think of her if she did, and where her life might lead if writing became more than just a prerequisite from here on.
She peered back at her lover, winking to keep things light. “Only because I had one hell of a subject to write about, Shane.”
“Aw, you’re just saying that so I’ll stay nice and dirty for your kinky little ass, aren’t you, girl?”
“Maybe,” she murmured, folding into his arms and inhaling his rich, manly scent, more powerful than any cologne. And way sexier by far. “But I haven’t heard you complaining this week.”
“Or last,” he reminded her, wriggling free of her grasp and sinking down onto the spectator bench near where they stood.
She doled out their hot dogs and sodas, just like old times. Just like the first time, in fact. “Guess we’re getting to be quite the habit, huh, Tatum?”
“Again, I don’t hear you complaining, Stud.”
“And you never will, either.”
“Never say never, Big Guy.”
He chuckled, holding up his foil-wrapped hot dog with a merry grin. “This is getting to be a habit too, huh?”
“Sure, I mean, once Coach read an advance copy of the story and let me watch you run the bleachers after practice every day.”
“I wouldn’t have to run the damn bleachers every day if you wouldn’t keep me up all night.”
She cracked open her soda, as if to match the smile she cracked while grinning over at him. “Did you ever think I want you to run those bleachers every night, Big Guy? I mean, how else are you gonna get so hot and sweaty in the off season?”
“Why, you devious little horndog.”
They chuckled easily, so easily it had become another habit of theirs, like Tatum’s afternoon stadium visits and hot dog delivery service. Like their late nights and early mornings, hot and sweaty and sticky and sore.
“So, tonight?”
“My place, obviously.”
“Phew, good! Boomer’s making chili again and it always stinks the place up.”
Tatum nudged Shane with her hip. “Oh, maybe we should stay at your place then. You know how much I like stinky.”
They giggled playfully, like the young lovers they so clearly were. Seated on the bench together, scarfing down hot dogs and grape soda in the crisp fall afternoon sun, Tatum had never been happier. She had a feeling, for all his cocky bluster and goofy charm, Shane hadn’t, either.
They sat in comfortable silence, chewing and sipping until she spotted his darling face, peering up at her from the middle spread of the campus newspaper. She snatched it up and waved it gently toward him, murmuring regretfully. “Gonna be hard to keep things under wraps once everyone has a chance to read this, you know?”
“What wraps? You’re mine, I’m yours. Nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, remember?”
“You say that now, Shane…” Her voice was as full of warning as it was resignation, knowing how hard it would be for a cocky young jock to resist temptation once the hot, sexy, younger girls of Sycamore State got a good look at Shane in the paper.
He set down his soda can and turned toward her, clasping both cheeks in his big, sweaty hands. “When are you gonna learn to trust me, woman?”
“I do trust you, Shane. Honest, I do. I just know how boys think.”
“You know how three boys think, Tatum. Your first ex, your second, and your third. Damned if I’m going to be your fourth.”
Despite how many times he’d said it since they’d met, made love, and for lack of a better term, fallen in love for the first time, Tatum was inclined to believe it. She sagged in his arms, smothering him with a grateful kiss and comforted by the pounding of his young, foolish heart.
“Okay, Shane. Fine. I’ll trust you.”
“Why do I sense an if in there somewhere?”
She chuckled. “You know me so well, Big Guy.”
“So, Tatum, you’ll trust me if what?”
She stood abruptly, unsticking herself from his sweaty torso and standing above him with an alluring gaze. “I’ll trust you if you stop reading that article I wrote about you.”
“What?” He picked it up, waving it around playfully. “Why? I love this thing, almost as much as I love the gal who wrote it.”
“Yeah, but the more you read it, the cockier
you’ll get, and I love you just the way you are.”
He chuckled, standing to join her as they tossed their wrappers and
empty soda cans into the trash by their cozy little bench for two.
“Yeah, well, I’m not promising that because it’s the only thing I
have that you’ve written and until you write something new, it’s
all I’ve got, so…”
She slid her hand into his, squeezing it tight as they started the long, slow walk to exit the stadium. “Well, you’re in luck.”
“Don’t I know it,” he teased, nudging her hip suggestively.
“No, seriously. I … Moira was so happy with the way the article turned out that she wants me to cover the team this season.”
He stopped dead, yanking her back with his strong grip and wrapping her up in a hug so tight she struggled to breathe. Just not very hard. “What? That’s awesome, Tatum. Congrats.”
“Thanks, I … I couldn’t have done it without you, Shane.”
He eased her gently away from his chest, offering a big, dimpled smile. “That’s true, actually.”
She punched him playfully as they turned and continued walking. “Honestly, though, that’s a few months away still.”
“Oh, sure. Lots to catch up on, so I’ll be working on this full-time until spring training and then, opening day.”
“Looks like we’ll be spending a lot of time together then, huh?”
“Oh, all the time, Babe. All the time. You up for that?”
“Time with you? I’d spend every day with you until I retire from this here sport, Tatum. As long as that takes.”
For some reason, holding Shane’s hand as they walked out of the stadium and into the crisp, clear day, Tatum couldn’t help but believe him.
The End