Boys and Girls, Part II: Prince Charming

Chapter 5 – Something Good

Stephanie had spent all of Sunday morning as an antsy little sprite, busily packing a picnic lunch for her date with Jack. She was well aware that there was something invariably pathetic about a twenty-year-old female gushing over her impending date with a twenty-one-year-old male, but she didn’t care.

Mainly because she had a date with a total hottie.

Stephanie had decided to show Jack some of the sights around the NMU campus so that he could learn to give peace a chance. He had agreed to meet her at the beach near her apartment.

After finally calming down without the aid of Ritalin, Stephanie was currently sprawled out on a beach towel in the pleasant Sunday morning sun with her Fendi sunglasses guarding her eyes from the rays. She wore her green string bikini top with white athletic shorts. She had an invisible “DO NOT DISTURB” sign around her. Stephanie was in another dimension with the sounds of the fierce waves crashing against the shore and the palms swaying with the gentle summer breeze. Even the squawking seagulls couldn’t wake Stephanie from her current bliss.

And then her cell phone rang. Sounds of “Fergalicious” abruptly awoke Stephanie from her peaceful slumber. “Hello?” she answered.

“Hey, Steph.” It was Jack.

“Hey,” she responded, rising up to a sitting position. “What’s up?”

“Got some bad news.”

Uh-oh.

“What?” Stephanie asked a tad warily.

“I’m not going to be able to make our little rendezvous over in the enemy territory.”

“Scared are we?”

She could hear him laugh on the other line. “No. I’ve got some unscheduled business to attend to at my dear old man’s request.”

Stephanie tried to hide her disappointment. “Oh, that’s okay. Some other time then.”

“Absolutely, Steph. We’re still on for Tuesday, right?”

“Yeah, definitely,” she answered. They exchanged good-byes before hanging up. Stephanie plopped her phone on her blanket and brought her knees to her chest. She leaned her cheek on her knee and looked disappointedly at nothing in particular.

What a letdown. After her steamy date with Jack on Friday, she had been looking forward to taking him around North Mission and hopefully introducing him to her friends…okay, more like showing him off to her friends. But now, she was left with a full picnic basket and nothing to do on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Obviously, she couldn’t ask Jacy over to share the picnic lunch because she was all the way in San Diego. Stephanie picked up her phone and dialed Delaney’s number. The automatic voice messaging system picked up after four rings.

Hi, you’ve reached Delaney. Sorry I couldn’t get your phone call. If you leave a name, number, and message –

Forget it, Stephanie thought crankily as she hung up and threw her phone back on the towel. She forced herself to finish sunbathing, even though she knew it was probably better if she packed up and went back to her apartment.

“You girls and your tanning,” a voice scolded from somewhere nearby. A shadow fell across Stephanie’s lying form, and she leaned up on her elbows and lifted her sunglasses to glimpse a pair of strong, tanned calves. As her gaze moved up, she caught sight of a pair of navy blue swim trunks, strong fit abdominals, a hulking big tanned chest and bulky, muscular arms, and finally…the face of a grinning Joe Estes.

Whoa, Stephanie thought, where did he come from? Stephanie angrily took her sunglasses off. “You’re blocking my sunlight.” She hadn’t meant for the statement to come out so bitchy, but she wasn’t in the greatest of moods, and Mr. un-Romantic wasn’t exactly the person she was dying to see at the moment. Plus, she didn’t want to appear affected by the sight of Joe’s fairly impressive body.

“Well, I think you’ve had enough,” Joe answered, disregarding Stephanie’s current cattiness. He made himself welcome on her beach towel. As he sat, his tight abs formed a sexy muscular crease in the front. Joe didn’t have a six-pack, but his abs were well sculpted anyway. Stephanie tried her best not to notice, but it wasn’t easy.

Joe noticed the picnic basket. “You eat all this on your own?”

“No,” Stephanie answered. “There is a meal for two people in there.”

“So where’s the other person?” Joe asked innocently enough.

Stephanie wanted to lie and say that he was on his way so Joe would hit the road, but that would’ve been mean and petty. So she just admitted the truth. “I got cancelled on.”

Joe winced. “By loverboy?”

Stephanie tried to appear cool about it. “Yes, as a matter-of-fact. He had business with his father.”

Joe snorted. “Sounds like total crap to me.”

Stephanie scowled. “You don’t know him.”

“I know he’s a guy,” Joe responded, “and when a guy uses a line like that, he’s trying to get out of doing something.”

“Oh yeah?” Stephanie asked skeptically. “And what other pearls of wisdom do you have to share?”

Joe lifted the flap of the picnic basket. “I also know that the quickest way to a guy’s heart is through his stomach.” With that, he turned to Stephanie and flashed his most charming smile. Because she had neither the intention nor the appetite to finish the entire contents of the picnic basket, Stephanie let Joe dig in.

Within half an hour, Joe polished off nearly all the food himself. He occasionally offered a bite to Stephanie who refused; she was trying to digest the fact that one person could consume so much food.

“Do your parents feed you?”

Joe chugged an entire water bottle before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I just ran before we met. Plus, I’ve conditioned my body to eat like a linebacker.”

‘Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask. What is a linebacker?”

“Are you kidding me?” Joe asked incredulously. “You live in one of the biggest college football towns, and you don’t know?”

“I know what quarterback means,” she answered unapologetically.

Joe rolled his eyes before answering. “Well, a linebacker is kind of like the quarterback on the defense. He calls the plays to make sure the quarterback on the other team can’t make his plays.”

“Well, you don’t look like a quarterback,” she responded. “You’re bigger than Jason.”

“Well, guys like me gotta stop guys like Jason, honey.”

Stephanie tried her best to ignore Joe’s subtle endearment, but she was pretty sure she blushed anyway.

****

He should have just walked right on past her, but the sight of that little pixie body taking in a nice tan in the sunlight was too much to resist. Stephanie was really a hot little number, and if one – she wasn’t the boss’s daughter and two – she wasn’t so goddamn annoying all the time, Joe would have considered jumping her. But it didn’t matter. Even though Stephanie clearly had admired his body, Joe was fairly certain that she didn’t like much else about him.

Still, Joe did enjoy hanging out with Stephanie as friends. Her total ignorance with football baffled him, considering how much she admired football players. After cleaning out her picnic basket, Joe helped carry it to her apartment.

The building was impressive. A doorman awaited in the front foyer past the revolving glass doors. Through those doors, Joe glimpsed a spectacular modern black marble décor accentuated with classical white marble statues.

“Well, home sweet home,” Stephanie said, taking the basket from Joe. Joe pulled the basket out of her reach. “I’ll carry it up for you.”

Stephanie regarded him suspiciously. “Why?”

“Well you’d have to take all those stairs carrying the basket,” Joe responded. It was a shameless excuse to see the inside of the place. Joe just couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Oh,” she answered. “I only take the stairs on the way down. We have elevators here, you know.”

Of course you do, Joe thought.

“And frankly, the basket was a lot heavier before you tore through it. I think I can manage.” She went for the basket again, only to have Joe move it out of her reach once more. With a panther-like grace that Stephanie couldn’t believe a guy as big as Joe possessed, he maneuvered himself past her and through the glass revolving door. Stephanie clumsily followed.

“Good afternoon Miss Kaelin,” the doorman greeted.

“Hey Charles,” she said, a bit winded. Stephanie couldn’t understand why he wanted to go inside the building so badly. She was tempted to have Joe removed, but not wanting to create a scene, she slid her key card through the entrance to the elevators and let him follow her.

****

“Holy shit,” Joe said, walking into Stephanie’s apartment. The décor was very similar to the main foyer of the building, but with less Greek statues and more furniture befitting to a twenty-year-old female.

“Be it ever so humble,” Stephanie mumbled as she walked toward her bedroom. She stretched her arms, and her green top seemed to ride up ever so slightly on her small breasts. Joe was momentarily distracted from his observation of the room. He shook himself out of his ogling.

“Where should I put this?” he asked, gesturing to the basket.

“On the kitchen counter, please,” she answered from her bedroom. Joe walked into a stainless steel kitchen and plopped the empty basket on her counter. Without thinking, he walked over to her refrigerator and opened both doors. Stephanie must have gone shopping for this picnic separately because all Joe saw was chick food and low-fat crap.

“What are you doing?” a voice called from the kitchen doorway.

Joe snapped up all of a sudden. “Uh…fridge inspection?”

Stephanie crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the doorway. “No, I mean why did you want to come up here?”

Joe sheepishly ran a strong hand through his short, brown hair. “I wanted to see how the other half lives. This is a pretty impressive place.”

“Thanks,” Stephanie said automatically. “I work hard for it.”

“All that daughterly manipulation, huh?”

“Precisely,” she answered unashamedly. “What are your living quarters like?”

“Nothing like this; that’s for sure,” he said, closing the fridge door. “My apartment is about the size of your living room, to be exact.”

“Hmm, no wonder you’re such a grouch,” she teased.

Joe laughed. “It’s part of it.” He regarded her seriously. “I’ve always wanted to live in a place like this.”

“Really?” Stephanie asked. Sure, she liked her place, but Joe sounded really serious about this. “Why?”

“The comfort. When I was growing up, we always had things like chipping paint on the walls or holes in the roof to worry about.”

Stephanie’s features turned sympathetic. “Well, nobody’s home is perfect.”

“Plus,” Joe continued, not seeming to have heard her, “my dad was always sick most of the time. My mom’s a social worker, so she had to spend most of the earlier part of my dad’s illness worrying about other families.” Joe didn’t seem bitter, but he did seem a tad regretful about the memory.

“How’s your dad now?” Stephanie asked innocently.

“He’s dead,” Joe said without much emotion. “He died about a year ago.”

Stephanie shifted awkwardly. Oh, great, she thought. Now I made him remember about his dead daddy.

Joe saw Stephanie’s concern. “He died peacefully.”

“Still,” Stephanie began. “It sucks when you lose someone you love.”

“That’s true,” he answered. He leaned back against the wall and smiled. “But I only have good memories of the guy. He was a cop, so he was always preaching stuff about doing the ‘right thing.’ He was a no-bullshit kind of guy, so he didn’t take crap from anyone, including his senior officers at the force.”

Stephanie smiled, and Joe continued. “He always wanted to be a lawyer. He had been on the force for several years to earn money for school. When he found out that my mom couldn’t have kids, his plans got delayed.”

Stephanie froze. “You’re –

“Adopted,” Joe finished. “I was a little five-year-old brat when they adopted me, but my father completely whipped me into shape. I always addressed him as ‘sir.’”

Stephanie imagined addressing her own father in that way but figured he would just laugh.

“My dad planned on going back to school when I was around ten, but they got sidetracked again. Both of my parents fell in love with this five-year old named Maxine. They adopted her, and now all of a sudden, we had an extra mouth to feed.”

Stephanie was shocked. “So did your dad ever get a chance…to…

Joe shook his head slowly. “School got expensive, and Mom’s pay got cut in half even though her workload doubled.”

“What about football? How did that come into all of this?”

“My dad loved to watch me play. I didn’t have that much trouble pulling off good grades, but I knew that I had to work my ass off to get good at football. I always wanted a full ride to this school because of their undergraduate law curriculum, and the athletic scholarships covered so much better.”

Stephanie hesitated but finally said what she had been thinking since their first meeting at her dad’s office. “Playing football professionally would solve a lot for you.”

Joe shook his head again. “I can assure you, it wouldn’t. My dad probably would have been thrilled for me, and I’m sure my mother and sister would be happy…but, I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself if I turned down this opportunity.”

It wasn’t completely unreasonable, Stephanie thought. Yet, she felt that Joe was missing the bigger picture and making things much more difficult than they should be. He had the talent to go pro and get paid more than he’d get paid as a lawyer. Living the life he so desperately seemed to want appeared more of a reality in that respect. He could make his father proud, and he could provide for his family so much sooner. Maybe she was just being simple though. She decided to stop prying into Joe’s life and change the subject.

“Do you, umm…do you want a tour of the rest of the place?”

Joe looked a little stunned by Stephanie’s non sequitur. He looked at her intensely with his dark brown eyes, as if he was trying to read her.

“Maybe next time, Steph,” Joe answered slowly. He awkwardly made his way past her through the kitchen doorway. “Thanks for lunch,” he called out as he made his way to the front door.

Stephanie followed him. “Sure.”

As Joe left, Stephanie experienced a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was the feeling she got when she had missed her flight to Paris over spring vacation her junior year of high school. It was the feeling she got when something good was slipping away.

****

A/N: I had a very hard time convincing myself that any guy would be stupid enough to turn down a chance to play pro ball because he has some emotional issues, but since this is fiction, I figured I can make my guy do whatever the hell I want. In all honesty, I love that Joe is someone so persistent in his dreams. I hope you guys bear with me in that respect, too.