I nodded and took the card, my face frozen with a big, awkward smile. Surely he didn’t really mean it.
“Or if you want tickets … We start playing again in September.”
“September, huh. Is that when the NFL starts back?” I said, smirking.
“Right,” Ryan said, grinning at me. “Forgot who I was talking to.”
“He gave you his number?” Lucy shouted.
After the game, I had stopped by her place for a glass of wine. It was nearly nine, but Caroline was wide awake, watching Finding Nemo as she nursed a cup full of bright red juice, the kind that is just waiting to be spilled. Lucy ran a loose ship—very unlike the way she grew up and the way you’d imagine she’d mother—and there was something about it that was both surprising and refreshing.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “Don’t get so excited.”
“What do you mean ‘it wasn’t like that’? Of course it was like that. He gave you his number!”
“He gave me his card,” I said.
“Does it have his number on it?”
I nodded, laughing.
“Well, then, same difference! Let me see it,” she said, motioning for it.
I mumbled that she was getting worked up for nothing, but pulled it out of the side pocket of my purse.
She stared at it and then called out for Neil. “Honey! Come here and help us analyze!”
Neil stepped away from loading the dishwasher as she showed him the card and filled him in. “Now,” she said to him, “wouldn’t you say he’s interested? What other explanation is there?”
He studied the card, looking impressed. “I’d say he’s interested,” he said, looking up at me.
“I’d say you’re just agreeing with your wife because you know you have to,” I said.
Lucy ignored this and said, “You need to call him.”
“Come on, Luce,” I said. “He can go out with any girl he wants. Models. Actresses. Anyone.”
“He had Blakeslee,” she said. “And now he wants something different.”
“You mean a big girl?” I said. I wasn’t one to get hung up on my weight, but I was definitely big-boned compared to Blakeslee.
“Down-to-earth. Normal. He wants you.”
I laughed and said, “He doesn’t want me. He just likes me as a friend. Besides, even if he were interested, I can’t go out with one of Miller’s teammates …”
“Why the hell not?” she said as she snatched the card back from Neil.
“Because … it’s a code.”
“It’s not your code,” she said. “It’s a guy code. And Ryan showed you that he doesn’t care about that guy code when he handed you this.” She studied the card one more time, then gave it back to me. “You better call him.”
I threw out a final objection. “I thought you didn’t want me to go out with football players. And I’d be going from one to the next like some … groupie.”
“There are football players,” she said, making a face. “And then there is Ryan James. God … even I would be jealous of you if you could close this deal.” Lucy looked over at Neil. “No offense, honey.”
“Oh, none taken,” Neil said. “I’d be jealous of her, too.”
“You both are ridiculous,” I said, but just for the hell of it, and to humor Lucy, I banged out a text to Ryan: Great to see you tonight. Would love to get a bite sometime. LMK. Shea.
“There,” I said, holding up my phone and showing her the delivered message. “Happy now?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I will be happier once we get access to his private plane and house in Cabo.”
“Ha,” I said. “Keep dreaming.”
The next morning, I had a response from Ryan, a text that he’d sent at 6:00 A.M.: Charity function Fri. Need a hot date. You game?
I must have read it a half dozen times, searching for a “just friends” angle, if only to guard against disappointment, and concluded that he must have been joking about the “hot date” part. Because if he really saw me as a hot date, he wouldn’t call me a hot date; he’d just think it. Still. The facts were the facts. Whether or not I qualified as hot, he had a function to attend and was asking me to go with him—and I was absolutely going to accept the invitation, this time without any prodding from Lucy. So I texted back: I’m in.
He called only a few seconds after that and said, “That’s what I like about you.” I could tell he was on speaker, and pictured him wearing Ray-Bans in a shiny sports car, driving with one hand low on the steering wheel, the sunroof open.