Free Rags 2 Pitches: A Secret Baby Sports Romance by Jessica Evans Page A

that to her as she replied, “So, what if I do? Are you going to dump me for one of those WAGS?”
    I hated that expression; it was the names of those chicks that were professional footballers’ wives or girlfriends. Besides it had nothing to do with how I felt about her, it was just that we had had sex before and she would never be whacked the way she had been yesterday.
    She was exhausted and I had done most of the work. Not that I minded, but it just felt a bit weird. She hadn’t made any effort at all. Even the BJ she’d given me was half-hearted. I decided that maybe she wasn’t feeling so sexual and that I was forcing her into it. But as we walked to the stadium at a slow pace, she kept asking me if we could stop and I didn’t have long before I had to be at the match and I wasn’t leaving her.
    “Nah babes, I don’t care about what you look like.”
    “Thanks,” she took her hand away from mine and crossed it.
    I grabbed her hand back and said, “Just that you’re acting a bit weird. If you’re not crying, then you’re tired. We’ve only been apart a couple of weeks, but right now it feels like a few years.”
    She sighed and I wished that I had kept my big fat gob shut.
    “Just that this thing with my Mum has been stressing me out.”
    Nicola wasn’t a good liar. I had seen her on the phone with her dad a couple of times when he had called to find out where she was and she had been with me. She would do this thing with her eyes - roll them then look at the floor as if she was avoiding eye contact or something and now she was doing that with me.
    “What is it really?”
    Suddenly, I didn’t give a shit about the game, I just wanted to know what was up with her. Then it hit me like a lightning bolt. She was worried about uni. I was just being selfish asking her to come up here. She had exams and right now, she had to pass with flying colours. Medicine was tough and I had been a distraction, I was getting on with my life and stopping her from getting on with hers.
    “It’s your exams, right? You’re worried about them.”
    She smiled and kissed me on the cheek, still avoiding my eyes, which meant that that was another lie. I didn’t like the fact that she felt that she couldn’t tell me what was going on, but as we reached the stadium, I gave her the ticket to get in to watch the match. I decided that we needed to talk big time. I hated trying to have deep conversations on Skype or on the phone. It was never the same. Right now it was the perfect opportunity to get everything out in the open.
    She kissed me on the lips and said, “Good luck.”
    If I didn’t know any better I would think that she was trying to get rid of me. Well, it wouldn’t be for long and then later we would talk.
     
    ***
     
    “Ryan, good, you made it!” Tony smacked me on the back. He came from Birmingham and had been on the team since September. He was a reserve like me and we instantly hit it off the moment I’d joined the team.
    “Funny mate. Very funny,” I said as we headed to the changing rooms.
    “Did your girlfriend make it then?” His brown eyes seemed concerned about it all. He had told me from the start that I shouldn’t get distracted at least not for the next two years. Two of the reserves had already dropped out this year due to girlfriends; one of them got knocked up and the other had said that she was pregnant. It was only later on that he had found out that it was a lie. The poor guy gave up being a reserve to get a job in the local take-away. She complained about it all and said that she only made it up so that he would stay with her. Well, he was an idiot and she was just as stupid. Hadn’t she thought that he would find out in nine months’ time when there was no baby?
    Tony said that it was all about football until we got signed up professionally, and sometimes girlfriends were like a welcome distraction until things go horribly wrong.
    “She made it.”
    I said hello to the rest of the