That was until I f**ked up by taking offense at her joke.
I was just tipping the last of the popcorn in my mouth when Molly ripped the bowl from my hands. “You’re meant to be an athlete! Isn’t that an overload of starchy-carby crappiness for you or something? You’ve polished it all off, you greedy bugger!”
Snorting out a laugh, I flexed my bicep, catching Mol’s small, impressed gasp, and said, “I’m a f**king machine, Shakespeare. Popcorn’s no match for me!”
“Sorry, I forgot I was talking to the Bullet!” she quipped, but her words felt like a cold bucket of water being dumped on my head.
“Don’t,” I hissed, losing all humor.
“Allaaabbbaaammmmaaa!!! Get to your feet for your hometown quarterback, Romeo… ‘Bullet’… Prince! ‘There’s a bullet in the gun. There’s a fire in your heart. You will move all mountains that stand in your path…’” Molly was laughing as she sang that damn song the IT guys always played in Bryant-Denny whenever I was on the big screen, but all I felt was annoyed. She wasn’t getting the hint that I was serious.
Taking hold of her wrists, I pulled her forward until her eyes met mine and growled, “Quit it, Shakespeare. Fuck!”
Almost choking on her words, she sat back. “I’m only kidding. You don’t have to be so bloody grumpy with me.”
Shit. I hadn’t meant to be, but I hated that bastard name. Bullet, it was almost as bad as Romeo. I hated the football hype so damn much; it’d always just made shit at home that much worse.
Taking another look at Molly’s hurt face, I sighed. “I know, sorry, but I f**king hate all that shit. You don’t know how much. I don’t want to be the Bullet to you. You’re the first person to ever not be affected by all the football fame. To you… I just want to be Rome.”
Molly got me. She got I didn’t want to go into why the football fame bothered me so much, and moving us away from that uncomfortable topic, she asked, “So… MVP?”
“Yeah. Crazy considering I couldn’t hit a truck for the first half.”
How did I tell her that seeing her in the stands changed everything, without revealing too much about my feelings? How could I tell her she was the first person to ever pull through for me without having to explain my past and my folks?
I just couldn’t find the words. So instead, I just filled her in on the locker room talk. “The fans and team are pumped, saying it’s because of you. That you’re my good luck charm, all from that one sweet kiss.”
And then she flipped the f**k out, shooting to sitting position, fighting for breath and rubbing at her chest. It looked like she was having a damn heart attack.
“What? What’s wrong? What did I say?” I asked frantically.
Her eyes were as big as the f**king moon and she tried to speak but nothing came out. My heart took off beating too fast, so I held her hand, and watched as she calmed the heck down, color coming back to her pale face. I stared down at our joined hands in confusion, wondering what the f**k had just happened?
“What is it, Mol? Tell me.” I pushed, needing some explanation of why she just nearly collapsed.
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’m sorry, it’s just something my Grandma used to say to me. It took me back to those days. I panicked. I-I just… I was just surprised when you said it. Of all the ways to say what you did, you quoted her word for word.”
“What did she say to you? What did I say?”
Smiling a broken smile, she said softly, “That I had sweet kisses. Grandma would say one sweet kiss from me would make any problem just that little bit easier.”
“I believe she might be right. She must have been a wise woman because that’s exactly what you did for me tonight at the game.”
“She was. She was everything to me.” Tears fell from her eyes as her fingers tightened against mine. “We used to say we were a matching set. When she died, she took half my soul with her. I don’t like to think of my past too much… It kills me to remember all that I’ve lost.”
I stayed silent. There are no words to comfort someone who’d lost those closest. So I just let her get it all out as I pressed her into my side, lying back against the bed, using my touch to keep her calm. Fuck. My touch had kept her calm.
“So you walked out of your own party?” Molly eventually asked as I stared at the ceiling, realizing she actually may be as f**ked up as me.
“You weren’t there.”
Molly shuffled her legs to face me and nervously asked, “Do I matter that much to you?”