Don’t trust him, I hear my mother’s voice whispering to me. Don’t trust anyone, and especially not any man. They’re just scum who will let you down.
(“What about Dad?” I used to ask her. Her answer was always that my dad helped create me and that’s what men are good for. And also that the Bible tells women to honor their husband, so now that she’s married to him, she isn’t going to trash talk him.
She’d always say that part like it was like some special exemption she was bestowing upon him. But then she’d stress that all men, until you find the right one that God wants you to marry, are evil and want to do evil things.
Evil, dirty, naughty things.
Maybe, for instance, Elias wants to pull down my panties and feel how wet he makes me. Perhaps he wants to feel it with his fingers first, and then with his tongue.
But I shouldn’t be thinking about this right now, not because it’s forbidden, like my mother thinks, but because I’m in the middle of some earth-shattering business that will help my career, if I can only keep my mind out of the gutter long enough to make sure I do it.)
“I… am not sure I know of any official word on that front,” Elias finally answers.
During the long pause while all these thoughts and doubts flooded my mind, it was as if he was deciding what to say. I know he didn’t want to deny what he saw but he also didn’t want to confess to it right now, and I didn’t blame him.
That wasn’t the point of my question.
The point was to plant the idea in peoples’ heads.
Everyone is here, paying a lot of attention, so why not alert them to the fact that there might be a stranger lurking around the field or locker rooms?
I had been wondering how I could even go back there, after what happened, and wondering if it might happen again.
What if this sick creep came back for me?
So, this is my attempt to minimize that possibility as much as possible.
If said stranger knows that everyone is on the lookout for him, he’ll be a lot less likely to come back again and start trouble.
“They don’t always fill me in on everything that happens,” he says, with a staccato laugh to punctuate the further silence.
Then as he’s looking at me, it’s almost as if something dawns on him: the purpose behind this question.
See, my inner voice – the one that likes to fight against my mom’s voice – tells me. He gets what you’re doing now. He sees the path you’re on and he’s willing to go down it with you. You can trust him.
“You know, I think there might be some rumors about something like that,” he says. “I can’t fill you in on any more details about who will or won’t be on the field, but I can safely confirm that it won’t be any kind of interloper or intruder. I would just hate for anything to hurt our chances on the big day.”
Beside me, Kirsten turns around sighs loudly, as if we’re in middle school. I know she’s upset because I just broke two big stories. I can already see the headlines now.
Elias Turner confirms he’s starting during the Superbowl.
Elias Turner warns fans of possible interloper pretending to be part of the team.
And Kirsten is green with envy.
Or, I should say, as I look more closely at her face, she’s more like red with envy.
Her anger is so palpable I can see it.
“Good job,” Monica whispers, close to my ear on the other side of me, while apparently resisting the urge to touch me again.
A normal person might hug me, but Monica is not a normal person. She’s a tough as nails reporter who knows you shouldn’t go around displaying huge emotions in professional settings, and so she doesn’t.
She’s what I never learned to be from my parents, but who I aspire to become.
So, even though the look on Elias’s face says something like, “Are you sure you really wanted to go there? Because we really, really went there,” and I’m having some second thoughts about whether that was really the best thing to do, since it kind of flies in the face of my earlier plan to keep mum about the attack and not cause any drama for the Leviathans this season.
Even though Coach Kramer is looking at both Elias and me like he wants to kill us, which could certainly cause some problems for both of our careers down the line, I tell myself to act confident.
I just smile and say, “Thank you, Monica. I told you I would be the first reporter he fielded a question from, and I delivered on my promise.”
Chapter 10
Elias
I wait a while after the press conference to make sure that everyone else has gone, but I know that Stacy will still be here. One way I know is that I saw Monica come out of the prepping room, which the reporters also use afterwards before they go home, exchanging a rare hug with Stacy as she did so.