Page 22 of Playing to Win
Chapter 8
Three hours later, Kyle found himself and Callie on the road headed back to the city. He knew the five a.m. practice and subsequent plane ride to Orlando was going to come way too early, but he didn’t care. He had had too much fun spending time with Callie and her dad to worry about sleep deprivation. It was the first time he had felt normal, without being reminded of his celebrity status, since the last time he had gone home to see his parents.
He thought the night had gone as well as it could have. Dinner was great. Callie’s dad’s burgers were phenomenal. Kyle tried to get the recipe from him, but Max said it was a secret that had been passed down from generations and he was not one to tell a family secret.
“Worchestershire,” Callie whispered in a loud voice behind her hand.
“Sunshine! Girly, it’s on now. Nobody tells my secret recipe without some sort of repercussion.” He then went on to tell about the time that Callie had gotten on an all-tournament team for basketball. It was a big deal because she was a freshman and it was really hard for freshmen to make the team because it was only the top six players of the entire tournament from all the teams that were in it. The all-tournament team was announced at the end of the championship game. Callie’s team had won the consolation finals earlier that night but were there watching the championship. When they called her name and she walked down from the stands, she tripped on her own shoelace and rolled down the final five or six steps to the bottom of the bleachers.
Kyle had laughed so hard he had gotten the hiccups. Then, to make it even better, her dad had pulled out a picture of the event.
“I even took this picture of the tumble, just so I’d have something to blackmail her with when she got older,” Max had said, taking it out of a drawer and handing it to Kyle.
“Dad! I can’t believe you saved that! It was so embarrassing. And it hurt. I had huge bruises all down my left leg for weeks after that. My knee looked like I had another kneecap.”
Kyle smiled at the memory of the look on her face as she remembered what had happened.
“Whatcha smilin’ about over there, Dimples? Glad to be in the driver’s seat again?” Callie broke Kyle out of his reverie, turning on that thousand watt smile he found so irresistible.
“Just thinking about how well the night went. Your dad is pretty great.”
“That he is. He did an awesome job raising me, considering he was a single dad stuck with a little girl he didn’t really know what to do with. He had help from his parents, my nana and pop, but mostly it was just him and me. Looking back on it, it’s funny the things he had to do for me that most dads wouldn’t ever have to deal with. Fixing hair. Matching clothes. Covering my eyes while he took me to the guy’s bathroom so I wouldn’t see men peeing in the urinal.”
“He did that?” Kyle laughed.
“Yeah, because the first time he took me he didn’t cover my eyes. When he saw I wasn’t behind him in the stall and turned around to find me, I was behind a man at the urinal asking why I couldn’t pee standing up.”
“No way!”
“Oh, yes way. Dad was mortified, but I think the guy at the urinal was even more mortified that he couldn’t shut ’er down before I got a look at what God gifted him.”
“That’s awesome!”
“Totally not awesome!”
“Okay, not awesome, but you have to admit, pretty damn funny.”
Callie smiled. “Yeah, I guess it was.”
“I can’t imagine being in a position like that. Your dad’s. I never even thought about those things.”
“Most men wouldn’t. Not because they’re bad or chauvinistic. It’s just something women naturally handle for their kids. My dad had to be a mom, too. He had to buy me tampons. Taught me about sex. It was a lot for him to handle.”
Kyle sat there and thought about that. There weren’t a lot of guys he knew who would do as good of a job at raising a girl as Max had done with Callie. However, he was beginning to think he was a little biased where the girl sitting in his passenger seat was concerned.
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the rhythm of the car’s tires on the highway. A soft, mellow tune by Jack Johnson came on his Sirius coffeehouse station and Callie began to sing along.
Kyle listened to her pure, sweet voice singing along like it was second nature to her. Listening to the lyrics of the song, he couldn’t help but thinking how much parallel the song had to his life since that moment Curly ran smack dab into him in the parking garage. His heart skipped a beat as he realized how close he was getting to the girl who made it more than known how much she would not date athletes. Yet here he was, listening to her sing lyrics of a song that made him think that he didn’t need anything more than her. He just had to get her was all. Kyle was in big trouble.
“You sure got a pretty voice, Curly.”Kyle’s hand tucked an errant curl back behind her ear and offered her a sweet smile. “I guess your momma gave you something other than her pretty looks.”
Callie blushed, not even realizing she had started singing. “Sorry.”
“No, no. I think I could probably listen to you sing all day and not get tired of it.”
“My nana had recorded all the times my mom sang in all her competitions. When I was little, I really remembered what she sounded like. When I got older, though, it got harder to remember. I’d pull out a tape and watch her sing, watch her smile. It was like she was a part of me, even though it was just the teenage version of her,” Callie said, a sad smile on her face.
“I’m so sorry, Curly. Where are her parents?”
