One Good Man

“Okay, great. Bye.”

I watched her go, her long legs striding away from me, her hair long and soft and glinting gold in the sun.

Maybe. Someday. In the future. But not now. Never now. What I wanted was just out of reach, and I was starving for the sunlight like a man locked in a dank cell.

I almost called Janey back to answer her question as to why I thought I’d had such a knack for football. Because on the pitch, eleven opposing players tried to take what was mine. The ball. The score. The match.

But I refused to let them. Only there, racing across the grass, I was in control. And when the ball sailed out of the goalkeeper’s reach and into the net, and the crowd went mad; for that one brief second, I was one of the heroes my father had idolized. And I told myself that was enough.

It had to be.

Janey

The next morning, Monday, I went to Antoine’s office at the journalism department. He noticed my empty hands first.

“Well?” he said. “The article is not ready? It was supposed to be a standard interview, mademoiselle. Perhaps a glossy photo or two of Adrien in a game. It seems as if this simple assignment is beyond you.”

I bit back an angry retort. “I need another extension,” I said. “The story is bigger than one interview.”

He hmmph’d. “So you say. Or is this a ploy to spend more time with Monsieur Rousseau?”

I bristled even as my cheeks flushed. “It’s for the sake of the story,” I said. “Please. Let’s see how Paris Central does against Lyon-Dejeres this weekend. Or even better, wait until the final in two weeks. If Central stays in the top three and advances up, that is a much bigger story, oui?”

“Mon Dieu, I never asked for an exposé. What’s the angle?”

I bit my lip. Adrien’s real story was almost entirely off the record. I wasn’t about to betray his privacy, but my instincts told me if I had a little more time, something big might happen.

“Following the star center forward through his last games as a semi-pro. The finale is PC advancing, maybe even winning the championship.”

Antoine frowned. “I don’t care about the championship. PC winning or losing isn’t the story. Adrien Rousseau is the story.”

I agree completely.

“Please,” I said. “One more week?”

Antoine pursed his lips. “One more week, and that is final.”

But that week, whatever I’d been hoping to happen with Adrien’s story never came to fruition. Over the next four days. I hung out at La Cloche with the footballer group, ignoring Olivier’s crude jokes and innuendo, and becoming better friends with Brigitte and Lucie.

“Olivier’s a bastard, but he’s one of the best defenders in the league,” Brigitte had told me on Monday night as we sat gathered in their booth—our booth, now that they welcomed me as one of their own. We drank kir and listened to a never-ending stream of American music.

“He’ll probably get called up by scouts, too,” Lucie said, her lips pinched, “where he can be an ass to a whole new set of teammates.”

Things were tense between Olivier and Adrien, which made Robert nervous. But Adrien ignored Olivier. Most nights, he joined the group late and left early, though he never brought another girl around like he used to. More than once, I found him watching me, his eyes heavy with something that looked like longing, but I couldn’t let myself believe it was for me. On the field that Sunday, I’d asked Adrien to deny his playboy reputation and he never did.

And I refuse to be another notch on his belt.

But Antoine’s snide commentary played in my mind. Was I prolonging the article just to spend time with Adrien? What did I think was going to happen all these nights at the club? That Adrien’s story would miraculously break open?

So I sat, wedged between the girls every night, and not talking to Adrien. The guys ribbed him about the fast-fading bruising under his eyes, but he never told them how he got them. Every night, a different story. Once, he walked into a pole. Another, Sophie had punched him.

He joked the questions away, and never looked at me as he did.

By Friday night, I’d begun to feel like an extra in a movie, taking up the same spot in the booth, steadfastly trying not to look at Adrien. It had become painful; the sight of his beautiful face conjured a frustrating mix of emotions.

I wanted him to take me seriously as a journalist and as a woman, but some moments, a surge of heat would rush through me to remember him on the field, sweaty and fast, and better than any player there. In those moments, I had wild fantasies of him taking me home with him, of being one of his women. To lose myself in him and damn the consequences.

I felt stuck, immobile with confusion, and irritated at my girlish heart that couldn’t stop thinking about him.