He wiped a hand across his lips, and I felt my underwear dampen. Why did his every move look like it belonged in a rugged advertisement for designer cologne?
“So you’re drunk?” he queried.
I hesitated, and he said, “I was serious, I’m not going to punish you.”
“Yes, I’m drunk,” I admitted, then hurried to add, “But I’m twenty-one, so it’s legal. I mean, stupid, definitely stupid, but legal.”
He gave me a once-over. “You handle your liquor like an American.”
“This may surprise you, but that’s because I am an American.”
Simon laughed. “Touché.”
He took another sip of his beer, and seemed lost in thought. I watched his brow furrow and resisted the urge to smooth out those lines with my fingertips.
“So what you said today,” he began slowly, “that was all because of the beer?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said with total honesty. What was he referring to? Much to my own mortification, it appeared I’d lost bits of the evening. Or maybe I’d said something casually that he took to heart? It wasn’t clear.
He eyed me intently. “Are you being serious?”
I nodded, and then watched with a heavy heart as he exhaled, a long, deep puff of wind. Oh, oh no, I’d let him down. That was the wrong answer. Obviously, he’d desperately wanted me to remember whatever it was that I’d said. I racked my brain for the answers, and came up only with blurry, Tilt-a-Whirl booze recollections. Shit.
“What are you talking about, Simon?” I asked, needing to know the answer, to account for my actions.
“Never mind.”
“No, really, tell me—”
“It doesn’t matter,” came his short reply.
What had I said?
Nobody likes blacking out. At best, it was a little embarrassing. At worst, it was ruinous. In my case, it was vital that I knew what I’d said, or done, to the hot coach who I’d been fantasizing about. Not knowing was worse than knowing.
“You won’t tell me?” I pressed.
His lips tightened, deepening the hollows of his cheeks. In the moonlight, he looked like a fallen angel, chained too tightly to the earth, his face a mask of torment.
“No,” he murmured, his resolve firm. “I won’t.”
I wasn’t ready to abandon this discussion, but Simon evidently was, as he continued, “You have to do better.”
“What?”
“For the team, you have to be a better example.”
Well, I remembered enough about the night — my short-term memory hadn’t been completely shot — to know that he’d just said this in front of the whole team. Why was he belaboring the point?
“I know,” I whispered. “You already told me that.”
He laughed at my consternation. “Yes, I suppose I did.” His hands twitched and tightened around the beer before he said, “But it bears repeating because… because… because, Catya, you’re an incredible player.”
My heart fluttered. “Thanks.”
He shook his head, and spoke more firmly. “I mean it. You’re a hard worker, and you’ve got a gift. And you’re—”
He cut himself off, as if physically swallowing whatever the next thought had been. I ached to know what words had laid inside his mouth and almost been given breath.
“You’re wonderful,” Simon finished, and I wondered if we were still talking about my soccer abilities.
“So are you,” I returned.
We were clearly going into uncharted territory, and while I desperately wanted to visit those new lands, Simon had other plans. Why was he being so good when all I wanted was to be so, so bad?
That’s the alcohol talking, my brain offered, but that wasn’t true. It was every part of me crying out in unison to jump into his arms, press his lips to mine and ride him until dawn.
Simon interrupted my crazed thoughts to say, “I think you could go to the Olympics.”
This shower of compliments was getting to be too much. I could resist him when he was scolding me, but not when he was praising me.
So before I knew what I was doing, my subconscious took hold of my mouth, and blurted out, “Could I get some private training sessions with you?”
His brows quirked. “What?”
Oh man. I’d started this, and there was no pretending like it hadn’t happened. I forced myself to finish the thought. “Private training. I want to get better, to be Olympics-eligible, like you said, but I don’t wanna take time away from the team. Could you maybe — and it’s okay if you can’t — but could you, um, train me alone?”
I’d said it. I hadn’t really thought it would emerge, fully formed, from my body, but it did, it did and now all I needed to do was sit back and wait for Simon’s inevitable rejection. I’d gone too far, this was the line in the sand and—
“It would be my pleasure,” he replied, his words heavy with implication.
What had I just asked him for, really? Was ‘private training’ a code word? I knew what my drunk self thought it meant, but he was unreadable. By the way he said, ‘my pleasure,’ though, I was pretty sure I had the answer.