“Few years. I took five years to graduate. Had to go part time for some of it. Ernie took that.” She held out a hand for the photo, smiling at herself, and he was glad the memory was a good one. “I couldn’t afford to go full time, and I refused to take out student loans. Best decision ever, since I couldn’t do what I’m doing now with student loan debt hanging over my head like an ax waiting to fall. I’d have to take whatever shitty job was around to make ends meet.” She let the photo drop in her lap and grinned at him. “Oh, wait . . .”
He smiled and settled the frame back on the dresser. “You don’t like your job?”
“The job itself . . .” She lifted one shoulder. “I’d like different assignments, more intense ones. I want to be the one on the field flagging down players between quarters to ask what went right, what went wrong. Making the coaches respond to tough questions.” She stretched like a cat coming out of a long nap. As she spoke, she talked around a yawn. “But getting to know the players off the field is fun, too. It’s just not where I want to be in twenty years.”
Since kicking a ball around wasn’t what he wanted to be doing in twenty years either, he could relate. He glanced around the room, found a photo that he could easily assume was Aileen at around age five or six, standing with two adults beside a car. She was an adorable little girl, her hair more red than brown, with two braids and dirt smudges on her knees. Her smile displayed two missing teeth, and her cheeks were dotted with her unloved freckles. “Who are these two? Your parents?”
Just like that, the friendly moments died. Her smile dropped off, her eyes shuttered like someone battening down the hatches before a hurricane, and her shoulders slumped. “Put that back, please.”
He hesitated. He really should ask. Dig harder. Wasn’t that the entire point of the back-and-forth? That he annoyed her enough she left him alone?
No, even as he set the picture back gently, he knew their arrangement, and his desire to get out of the interview, had nothing to do with wanting to know more. He just . . . wanted more. Wanted more inside info on her thoughts, her wants, her past. Slippery slope.
But he wouldn’t push today. Tomorrow was his official turn to interrogate. He’d try then.
* * *
Aileen paced in the practice field bleacher, checked her watch, then dropped back down with a groan. What the hell was taking so long? She wanted to get back to the basics with Killian. After he’d left her apartment, she’d given herself the stern talking to she’d needed, and was ready to roll again with the professional aspect of their relationship.
No, not relationship. Professional working partnership.
She grimaced at the label. So stuffy, so . . . ug. But what other term properly explained exactly what they should be?
When a weight sat beside her, Aileen glanced up and into the eyes of one Cassandra Wainwright. The head coach’s daughter, the center of a bizarre, alleged sex triangle that never added up to Aileen. And, also allegedly, Trey Owens’ girlfriend.
“Hi,” Aileen said cautiously.
The other woman smiled easily, her long chestnut-brown hair braided and draped over one shoulder. She wore a trim olive-green jacket and simple jeans, the outfit ending in simple brown boots with a short heel. She looked professional without looking prim. Something Aileen had never managed to pull off. “Hey, I’m Cassie.”
“Aileen.” She shook the hand Cassie extended. Bobby’s request for a Cassie Wainwright story shot through her brain like a fire bolt. She released the other woman’s hand, irrationally worrying she could read her thoughts via the contact. “Nice to meet you.”
“Same. They’re taking forever today.” She tipped her head back to the sky, serenely soaking in the waning winter sun. “I needed some vitamin D. I love my job, but if I’m not careful I’ll turn into a pasty, squinting stereotype.”
Observing the slender woman with a healthy complexion in front of her, Aileen found that reality hard to believe. “What’s your job?”
“I work in the tech department for the main office. Part of the Nerd Herd.” She said the term so fondly, with a slight smile that Aileen knew it wasn’t an insult to be considered a nerd in Cassie’s eyes. “But being inside for so long, hunched over a screen, wears on you. Thought I’d get out for an hour.” She glanced around, then leaned in. “My dad texted me and asked me to come over for lunch. So I think we’re going out.”
“Did he?” She looked around, but most of the other media were hanging close to the locker room exit. They were surrounded by a hundred yard bubble of solitude.