“How was babysitting?” David teased.
“Having to be sober at parties sucks.”
“People aren’t as funny as they think they are,” David agreed.
“The new pledges were great. They haven’t gotten comfortable yet, so they were on their best behavior,”
Crystal said and asked, “What did you do?”
“It was Tami’s roommate’s birthday, so she, Jim, and I took her out to dinner. The roommate then met up with friends for some drinks. The three of us kept it casual and caught up. We had a great time.”
David’s phone dinged with a message from Rachel saying that she needed help getting Cormac to the hotel.
They were at a bar down the street, and he showed it to Crystal.
“Like I said. It sucks to be the sober one,” Crystal said as she rang off.
◊◊◊
Neither Cormac nor Rachel was in any shape to walk home, so David got a cab to take them back to the hotel.
One of the bouncers helped him get the drunks into the car.
David sent Jim a message on the way to the hotel, so he was waiting for them when they arrived.
When Jim went to help Cormac out of the car, Cormac said, “You’re tall.”
David bit his tongue because of the look Jim gave Rachel’s plus-one.
“Seriously. Are you a giant?” Cormac slurred.
“Men call short women petite. What do women call short men?” Jim asked.
Cormac had a confused look.
“That’s right. They don’t.”
Rachel found that hilarious.
Cormac straightened himself up and looked up at Jim.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re funny? Nope? I would take that as a sign, Mr. Tall Man.”
“Did you just get a new nickname?” David wondered out loud.
“Do you want to deal with these two alone?” Jim asked.
“Nope.”
“Then I don’t think I have a new nickname.”
‘Yeah, right,’ David thought.
◊◊◊
David had just gotten to sleep when there was a knock at the door. He managed to rouse himself enough to get out of bed and open it, where he found Rachel in her pajamas, looking miserable.
“Do you have any aspirin?”
He went into his bathroom and found his bottle of Tylenol. With his concussion, he wasn’t allowed to take aspirin. He saw that Rachel was in no shape to navigate the childproof cap, so he opened it and handed her two pills.
She went to his mini-fridge and took a water out so she could take them.
“Drink all of that,” David ordered.
“Yes, Dad.”
She chugged the water and then crawled into his bed.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to lie down. Now, shut up and turn off the light,”
Rachel ordered as she turned her back to him.
He debated whether to pick her up and haul her butt back to her room or not. He finally gave up, got into bed, and turned off the light. David got lucky because he fell asleep before Rachel began to snore. He discovered that little quirk when he woke up having to take a leak at three in the morning.
◊◊◊
Movement woke her. The arms around her were gone.
Rachel rolled over and watched as David disappeared into the bathroom.
Grabbing his pillow, she pulled it close, hugging it to her chest while waiting for him to come out. Rachel could get up, but the shower turned on, and she closed her eyes, listening until the water turned off again.
Rachel lay in the bed, watching the bathroom door, when it opened and a puff of steam escaped with David close behind. He was naked and rubbing a towel through his hair, water droplets scattered on his upper body. Desire raced through her body, and heat pooled between her legs, making the dull ache turn to a throb, reminding her she hadn’t had sex in six months.
David noticed her looking and quickly covered himself.
“Sorry. I thought you were still asleep,” he apologized.
“How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad. It was a good call about drinking that water before I went to sleep.”
“Why don’t you go get ready, and we can all go down for breakfast? You probably could use some pancakes,” David suggested.
Rachel got up, and as she was leaving David’s room, Cormac’s door opened. He gave her a smile.
“I was going to go down and get you coffee …” he said, trailing off when he realized she’d come from David’s room.
“David said that we should join him for breakfast in a few. Let me get a shower, and we can go down,” Rachel casually said.
She hurried to her room thinking, ‘Nothing to see here.
Coming out of David’s room was innocent.’
She glanced at Cormac as she went into her room. Yep, they were done.
◊◊◊
After the football game, they decided to eat before flying back. Tami knew a little out-of-the-way place that wasn’t packed. The only missing person was Cormac. He’d met some people who offered to give him a ride back to USC.
“Why did Cormac bail?” Chloe asked.
“He saw me leave David’s room this morning,” Rachel admitted.
“That makes sense,” Jim said.
“Why’s that?” David asked.
“Because you’re tall,” Jim said with a straight face.
When David and Rachel laughed, they had to explain what Cormac had said and Jim’s comeback the previous night.
“David’s worth losing Cormac over,” Chloe announced.
“Nothing happened,” Tami said.
“How do you know?” Rachel asked.
“She can read me. I’m sure I have some tell when I hook up with someone,” David said.
“I know what it is,” Jim said and paused. “She was drunk.”
Tami touched her finger to her nose to let Jim know he was spot on. David explained his ‘take a drunk girl home’
philosophy to Chloe and Rachel so they understood.
When they were seated and put in their orders, Jim said,
“Okay, Cap. Tell me what you saw today.”
“I don’t think the girls want to hear me talk about football,” David said.
“He’s learning, but I honestly like hearing how his mind works. I would like you to answer the question,” Tami said.
USC had lost to Stanford 17–3.
“Two things lost us the game. First, Coach Merritt is hypersensitive about his quarterbacks not making turnovers,” David began.
“Is that why you ran the ball so much last week?” Tami asked.
“It was. But Matt is a pocket passer, so Coach couldn’t take advantage of his legs today. Matt’s just not a runner,”
David said and then got back to his critique of the game. “If you watched Matt, it was obvious that he was hesitating.
Early in the game, his other problem was that he threw deep to Tyrell, which was incomplete.”
“He overthrew that pass big-time,” Jim added.
“Because of that, they never went back to the deep ball, which allowed Stanford to shorten the field defensively. It was a big reason why we couldn’t get anything started.”
“They were getting good pressure on Matt,” Jim said.
“Most people don’t see the reads Matt was making. We run a fair number of hot reads; good ones, actually. We run both the dig from the ‘X’ and ‘Z’ and the drive quite a bit.
Those routes were there, and Matt simply missed them more often than not.
For a dig pattern, the receiver started straight downfield before breaking across the middle of the field at a 90-degree angle. The drive was a shallow crossing route run by the outside receiver.
“As for why that is, I obviously couldn’t say for sure as I haven’t had a chance to break down the film. But it appears to be an issue with diagnosing post-snap coverage. On that third-down pass to Nolan at the end of the half, Matt clearly saw the coverage pre-snap. Stanford gave him the same look post-snap, and he stuck it in there for a first down. Doing that wins games.