I hadn't slept in a bed with someone else in a long time. Even after most hook-ups, I'd find a way to slip away before having to resort to spending the night. I liked my bed, I liked my pillows, and I liked my noise machine.
I liked my bed a lot less when I had to share it with a guy who took up approximately 3/4 of my space, forcing me to sleep practically on top of him. But I found myself at ease watching him sleep, his chest gently rising and falling with his breath.
It always amazed me how much younger people looked when they were sleeping - unhindered and unbothered by the world and everything in it. Early morning sunlight that trickled in through my blinds softened all the rigid edges of him, and there was a peacefulness to him that seemed like such a stark contrast to his intensely competitive persona. Even the wild hurricane of his hair had turned to ripples and waves on my pillow, the way the early morning ocean would hit the shoreline.
At this point, I couldn't deny that I found him attractive, but in this specific moment, there was something beautiful about him that no guy had a right to be. The absolute fucking audacity.
I must have been more at ease than I'd even realized because I'd fallen back asleep, and when I woke up, he was awake. He had one arm draped around me as I rested on his chest, and with his other hand he held his phone sideways, watching game film.
I was unsure if he knew I was awake or was just too focused on watching. I realized the film was on the Georgia defense - the team Clemson was playing on opening weekend. We sat in silence for a while, but it wasn't an awkward silence. Rather, it was almost as if we were just trying to preserve the peace of whatever this intimate moment was between us.
"The way Georgia does a Cover 2 is ridiculous," he eventually muttered, but loud enough for me to understand he was speaking to me.
"They don't play man-to-man or 1-high?" I asked, squinting at the video on the screen.
"Rarely. Their defense is essentially tailor-made for a quarterback like me who relies on the deep ball. Their pass rush tears through any decent offensive line, so there's basically no window for me to throw the ball cleanly, and their safeties are a bunch of ballhawks. I'm gonna get picked off like a fucking cherry tree."
I snickered as I leaned into him a little bit more and it wasn't lost on me how well my body fit into his. "That must be some kind of Southern euphemism. Never heard that before."
"See, see, look at this." He ignored my playful jab completely as he shifted up slightly, pointing at the film still playing on his phone screen. There was almost an excitement to his voice, not in the kid in a toy store way but more of a kid who solves rubix cubes for fun way. "They play this zone high, and then when the ball is snapped, they come down fast on the receivers. And if it's a running play, the cornerbacks are already there by the time the guy breaks through the line. Their entire secondary is big and fast, and they know it."
There wasn't one moment where he hesitated or asked me if I needed clarification. Everything he said was as if he was speaking to a teammate.
"Well, you're big and fast too," I mused.
I felt his chest vibrate as he chuckled. "Are we still talking about football, or...?"
I scowled. "Walked right into that one, didn't I?"
"Couldn't resist," he grinned.
"Point being," I deflected, rolling over so that I could look up at him, my head still resting on his chest. "Looks like you're going to have to do a lot of designed runs. Or run some kind of empty shock fade out."
There was a beat of silence as Reid ran his tongue along his lower lip. Designed runs meant that Reid as the quarterback would be purposefully keeping the ball and running it, as opposed to a running back or fullback that typically took that responsibility. It wasn't something a lot of teams did because of the life-and-limb type risk it posed to the most important player on their team. While Reid was bigger, faster, and stronger than the average quarterback, he knew all about that risk first-hand, and I wondered how much of that he was replaying in his head in the lingering silence.
"I just hate one-dimensional offenses," he finally grumbled out, setting his phone down to the side. "They're boring and they don't win games against good teams."
I offered him a soft smile. "Sometimes you just have to accept it when it's the only solution."
"Did you play any sports in high school?" he asked, his tone softening. "I mean, you're athletic. Good stamina...flexible..."
"Now who's walking into innuendos?" I arched an eyebrow at him.
"Except I did it on purpose," he smirked. "And you didn't answer the question."
I sighed and rolled over again, gently running my finger across the dips and ridges of muscle in his chest. "No. The school TV station and newspaper were my extracurriculars. Even if I wanted to play a sport, I wouldn't have had time. I did tee-ball in elementary school like everyone else did. That's about it."
"I didn't. I played soccer until I was 11. Good for hand-eye coordination and agility."
I felt him reach over and gently run his hand through my hair, and with a sigh I eased my eyes closed, content with just listening to him ramble on.
"Plus, my mom didn't want me taking hits to the head so young because your brain is still developing and stuff. Which is ironic because they made me play up with the older kids because I was so much bigger than everyone my age, and those older kids bodied the hell out of me every game. I took so many shots to the head without a helmet."
I barked out a laugh. "That explains so much."
"You're mean." Reid chuckled as he gently flicked my ear.
I rolled over to face him again, the morning sunlight coming through the blinds and creating a halo-like glow around his head. "You can handle it."
The corners of his mouth lifted into a faint smirk, and the prolonged silence was enough to get under my skin. I wanted to know what was going on in that head of his.
"What?" I asked.
He reached over and gently ran two of his fingers along my bottom lip.
"I like your lips," he replied in almost a whisper.
"I like yours too." I told him. "You're a good kisser...among other things."
He arched an eyebrow at me. "Really?"
I rolled off of him entirely, sitting up on my elbows and propping my chin up in my hands. "Why do you sound surprised?"
Reid scoffed and shook his head, averting his gaze out to the slivers of light cutting across the rug. "I don't know, I guess I don't really hook up with a lot of girls, okay? And I can count on one hand how many girls I've gone down on."
He held up two fingers.
"Is that including me?"
He nodded. "And trust me, the first girl made sure to tell me everything I did wrong."
I scoffed in disbelief. "Coulda fooled me. You're either just as coachable as scouts claim you are, or she doesn't know what an orgasm is supposed to feel like."
"Are you...complimenting me?" he asked, his voice threaded with amusement. "On my mouth, no less?"
I heaved out a sigh as I lifted myself to rest on top of him completely. "Don't let it get to your head, big guy."
Reid grinned and shook his head. "Alright then, your turn. Tell me something I don't know about you."
I sighed again. "Like what?"
He shrugged casually. "I don't know. Anything. You've spent days asking me all kinds of stuff about myself, but I feel like I still don't know you all that well."
"You do know me," I grumbled, tracing lines of faded freckles across his chest. "I'm not that complicated."
He took another pause, stretching his arms up and eventually interlocking his hands behind his head. "Okay, Jo."
He wouldn't stop looking at me, and the way his deep chocolate brown eyes made my heart ricochet around in my chest had me diverting in more ways than one. "Well...I don't know, Reid. What do you actually want to know?"
I always knew there would be a degree of closeness to us given the type of intimacy this project on him required, but I assumed it would have been more one-sided. The problem was that Reid wanted to know me in the way I wanted to know him, in the kind of intimate way that only comes with laying in bed naked with someone.
"What's your family like?" He'd reached over again and had a lock of my hair gently wrapped around his finger.
I shrugged. "My parents are...well, my parents. They're normal. They're all social now and stuff since none of their kids live at home full-time anymore. I've got two older sisters who have normal, white-collar jobs and definitely make me feel like the youngest sister when we're all together."
He snickered. "You definitely seem like the youngest sister."
I reached over and playfully slapped him in the chest. "What would you know about being a younger sister?"
"Because I have one."
I lifted my head up in surprise. "Really? How did I not know that?"
"Well because according to you, family stuff is for the second article." He gave me a casual shrug. "She's only 10, but she's just like you. Whip-smart, sassy, and keeps my ego in check."
I lowered my head back onto Reid's chest and smirked softly. "I bet she has you wrapped around her finger, doesn't she?"
"Oh yeah." He nodded. "When I'm home, I'm not Clemson Star Quarterback Reid Donahue. I'm Reid can you build me a pillow fort, or Reid can you get me the Oreos on the top shelf, and Reid can you play horses with me, and spoiler alert, I'm always the horse. I can't say no to her, and she knows it."
He noticed me watching him, and he paused, his cheeks turning pink. "Shouldn't you be like...writing this down or filming this or some shit?" he chuckled.
"Nah," I shook my head, and the ease in which the admission came out of me told me all I needed to know. "You're not the only one who just wants to get to know someone."
We laid in silence for a little while longer, but unfortunately the outside world did not stop spinning just for our sake. There were only 10 days of preseason left, and soon the world would be spinning so fast, I risked losing my footing entirely. I had to remind myself who we were in that outside world.
I threw on an oversized Clemson t-shirt to walk Reid to the door, his tiger printed button down shirt now wrinkled from spending the night on my bedroom floor.
Before he turned to walk out the door, he leaned down and kissed my cheek just like he had last night, this time taking a measured step backwards after he pulled away. "I'm gonna go for real this time."
"Okay Reid," I nodded with a faint smirk.
I closed the door behind him with a soft click, my smirk widening into more of a smile as the feeling of that last kiss still lingered on my cheek.
"So you finally gave in, huh?"
Bree's voice should have startled me, but as I firmly believed, the first time for everything was always inopportune. I'd never had a guy spend the night at our apartment until Reid, so it only stood to reason that Bree would be standing there when he left.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean." I replied casually as I turned around to face her. She was still in her silky floral pajama set, her black hair in a messy, slept-in braid.
Bree let out a hollow chuckle as she made her way into the kitchen. "So I just imagined the 6'5", broad-shouldered, swoopy haired dude leaving our apartment?"
"Okay look, I didn't give in." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I made a choice. We're clearly both attracted to each other, and we just happened to act upon it last night."
Bree pinched her lips into a thin line and gave me one short nod of her head. "I see."
"What does that even mean?" I groaned.
Bree pulled out a box of Cheerios from the cabinet. "You're smart, J. I feel like you know that short term choices could have long term consequences. Just...think about that the next time you make a choice about Reid Donahue."
I heaved out a sigh as I wordlessly trekked back into my bedroom. While that was true, Bree's tone was starting to make me wonder if the choice I made was a bad one. But we weren't children, and sleeping with someone once didn't have to make things complicated. Hook-ups and one night stands in college were normal, even if we weren't exactly normal college kids.
I couldn't worry about Bree's disapproval, because no matter what had or hadn't happened last night, I had an article to finalize about the guy that just walked out of my front door.
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do you agree with jo? can things stay normal between her and reid, or is our denial meter at solid 100? 😅