4th & Girl

In true Abby fashion, she ignored me completely.

“So, a matinee date with Bradley Cooper?” she asked. I heaved a sigh and then, finally, shrugged.

“Why the hell not.”

It wasn’t like I had anything else to do.

Unemployed, unoccupied, and underfunded. If I had any hopes of laying hands on that Gibson guitar anytime soon, I’d have to be willing to take whatever Mable sent my way.

Good thing I was so damn determined.

Too bad you can’t say the same for your hands when it comes to keeping a hot dude’s pee off your clothes…

Ugh. Apparently, my inner self-conscious had gone full-on snarky bitch overnight.

But, thankfully, I was resilient and fully prepared to handle the mental blows. My pride might’ve been temporarily shot to shit, but that didn’t mean I would let it consume me.

Bradley Cooper, on the other hand? One ticket and a large popcorn, please.

Never in my life had I been so excited to give another urine sample, and never would I be again, I was certain.

It wasn’t like an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii or a free Lamborghini, but I had my reasons—cute, adorably awkward, and so fucking pretty.

Yeah, I definitely had my reasons.

In fact, last night, I’d spent a hell of a lot of brain power thinking about the blue-eyed blond who’d blundered—or fumbled, if you wanted to get all cutesy and football about it—during our handoff, and Lord Almighty, I was looking forward to seeing her again.

Scratch that, I was more than looking forward to it.

I’d mentally kicked myself more than once for leaving when she’d asked me to yesterday, but today, well, it was a glorious chance at redeeming myself.

Hell, I’d even channeled my inner comedian and pondered what jokes I could use to ease any discomfort she might still harbor over the whole embarrassing scene.

If you’re looking for pee jokes, urine luck. Ba-dum chuuuu!

Like I said, I’d pondered the jokes, but that didn’t mean I’d turned into Jerry Seinfeld overnight.

And this morning? Well, I’d spent the majority of it visualizing several much better options for our second exchange than a urine cup fumble.

Assured counter placement. Sink utilization. An undisclosed specimen drop-off location that I could map out for her with scavenger hunt-style clues. Just about anything that avoided another replay of yesterday’s piss-falls would do.

I didn’t necessarily understand the whys or the hows, but my number one priority revolved around making her feel better.

Anything to put her at ease. Anything to find out more about her. Her name. Her number. Her next available date night.

Considering our disastrous first introduction, I might have been putting the cart before the horse, but attraction and intrigue were tricky, irrational fuckers, and as much as I liked to control the situation, I wasn’t exactly in control of this fixation ride.

Riding shotgun? Of course.

But actually in full control? Not exactly.

The fact remained, I hadn’t stopped thinking about the pint-sized bombshell since I’d left the lab after inadvertently marking her scrub pants like a dog on a fire hydrant.

I mean, I was all about swapping some bodily fluids under the right circumstances, but let me tell you, coating a woman in my piss wasn’t quite what I had in mind. But maybe, just maybe, if I played my cards right, the opportunity for the right way would soon follow.

The hall was quiet as I approached the medical wing of the stadium, the complete opposite of yesterday’s boisterous laughter the team had obnoxiously bestowed after we’d headed for testing following a meeting with our owner.

This was a seasonal expectation and a task for our jobs, and Wes Lancaster was pretty clear that he expected it to be treated as such. I wouldn’t say any of the guys took it seriously to the degree that he’d intended—I mean, it was just a piss test, for fuck’s sake—but they’d done a better job than me.

Of course, my mishap had been unintentional, but I still didn’t like being the guy who’d fucked up. Luckily, I had high hopes for today’s venture.

Today, it was just me, one of the only ones who hadn’t been able to provide a viable sample on the first go, but second chances are all the rage in movies, so I didn’t see why I couldn’t put a positive spin on my own.

I’d have a little more time to talk to the medical assistant with the dimpled cheeks, and if nothing else, I’d had a whole extra day to ensure I was properly hydrated.

The overhead fluorescent lights of the lab buzzed as I stepped inside, and I moved my gaze around the room. The space was seemingly empty, but a rotating desk chair belied that possibility with a slow, silent spin.

Either someone had just vacated that chair, or Mavericks Stadium was haunted.

And since I refused to even contemplate the second option, I waited patiently for my cute little blond medical assistant to appear.