Free Scrimmage Gone South (Crimson Romance) by Alicia Hunter Pace

horrified.
    “No. I was for a short time during my senior year.” Nathan had spent a lot of time on the phone that fall — with Arianna, with Townshend, with sports agents begging to represent him. And it had all stopped at once.
    Lou Anne’s face blanched and Nathan knew she was wondering how much he knew. The answer to that was too much and not enough.
    Not that he cared. Arianna was not a factor in his life, never had been.
    “Gotta go. Practice.” He picked up the milkshake that he knew better than to offer to pay for and controlled his going.
    But not before Lou Anne got the last word. “Nathan, lighten up on Tolly.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” But Lou Anne didn’t know that Townshend had been just as addicted to the limelight as Arianna had been.

Chapter Seven
    Tolly settled down with a cup of coffee and the bright blue shopping bag. She tossed the rah-rah kit to the other end of the sofa. She had already put out the yard sign and stuck the magnet on her car, but she wouldn’t need the shirt, button, stadium seat, and pompoms. The fat manila envelope labeled “parent packet” was at the bottom of the bag. Summer schedule. That was past. Calendar of events. Practice schedule. Rules and academic requirements. List of booster club officers. Ah, there — the holy nutrition plan, according to the Pope of football, Nathan Scott.
    It was written in paragraph form. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, pre workout snack, post workout snack, post game meal — it went on and on and on. Four ounces of this, six ounces of that, plenty of water, no energy drinks, only this sports drink, make sure it’s whey protein powder — her head began to pound. Clearly, Nathan had typed this himself, as it came into his head. No one with any organizational skills would have produced a document so hard to follow. What the hell was whey protein powder anyway? Tomorrow, she’d retype this information in chart form but for now she needed a grocery list. She picked up a legal pad and began to write. What kind of milk? Did it say skim? That didn’t make sense since Nathan wanted Kirby to gain some weight.
    She had filled one column with things to buy and started on a second when the door opened.
    “Hi, Miss Tolly.” Kirby sat down across from her and tossed his backpack and the blue drawstring mesh bag that held his practice clothes on the floor beside him.
    “Hi, Kirby.” Tolly flipped a few pages back to the choices for post workout snack. “Let’s see. You’re supposed to have a protein smoothie and a banana,” she read, “or some peanut butter on a whole wheat bagel and a glass of skim milk.”
    “It’s okay. I already had it. They give it to us after we shower.”
    “That’s good,” she said, “because we don’t have any of that stuff except maybe the peanut butter. But we will.” She held up the legal pad.
    “It’s okay,” he said.
    “No, it really isn’t, Kirby. I ran into Nathan today. He mentioned that you aren’t eating correctly.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry.”
    “What are you sorry for? You can’t eat what’s not available to you. I am sorry that you have not been getting enough to eat.”
    “It’s not like I’ve been hungry.”
    “But you knew you weren’t eating right, didn’t you?”
    “I guess.” He shrugged his shoulders.
    She sighed. “Okay, Kirby, here’s the thing. I promised to take care of you but you’ve got to help me. If this is going to work, you have to tell me when you need something. I don’t know how to do this.
We
don’t know how to do it. We’ve got to figure it out.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Okay, there are lots of choices for what you are supposed to eat. Look at this and tell me what you like and what you don’t.”
    He took the papers from her and flipped through. “I like most things but not salmon and not tuna. And I’d rather not have any beets.”
    “Okay. That’s simple enough. What do you especially like?”
    “I like chili made with turkey. You can’t even tell.