Play by Play (A Play Makers Novella)
Read Play by Play (A Play Makers Novella) Online
Authors: Kate Donovan
Tags: #blog, #NFL, #football, #sports, #Romance, #sportswriter, #preseason football
Play by Play
Former college football star Jake Dublin’s wildly popular sports blog also details his personal life. And lately it’s all about Sophie, the pretty young woman who just moved into his apartment building. His readers know her only as “Elevator Girl,” and they’re all rooting for Jake to score.
The blog posts and banter with his followers is all in good fun, and he fully intends to come clean with the woman he’s wooing and wowing. That is, until she confides that she grew up in a house full of jocks and even dated a few. Her verdict? Never again!
Jake knows he needs to confess. But somewhere along the line he fell in love with Sophie and can’t stand the thought of losing her. So he procrastinates, and blogs, and digs himself deeper into a hole, until it all leads to a showdown that’s so nail-biting, not even the best play-by-play guy could ever have seen it coming.
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
Copyright © 2013 by Kate Donovan
Material excerpted from
Trace Elements
copyright © 2013 by Kate Donovan
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
ISBN: 978-1-937349-77-6
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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To sportswriters and sports bloggers everywhere:
you guys are the best!
Thanks for all the analysis, inside info and laughs.
This story is dedicated to you.
Contents
Chapter One
Jake Dublin: THE OPINIONATED SPORTS GUY
July 14, a.k.a. three weeks before the official NFL preseason begins
Yep, we’re getting close, folks. For my preseason predictions, scroll down a few paragraphs, because today I’m opening with an ode to women. If you visit this blog often, you know that’s not something I normally do. Sure, I have opinions on (nearly) everything and I’m not afraid to embarrass myself by expressing them publicly. Dogs on the couch? Smoking in bars? Hybrid vehicles? Check, check and check, and the list goes on.
But girls/women/humans-of-the-female-persuasion? I try to avoid that topic. For one thing, my experience is limited since I married my junior high girlfriend. I never did the traditional dating thing before marriage, and truth be told, we got married
way
too young, stayed married way too long, and broke up way too painfully. Oh, and I didn’t cheat during the marriage, so no dating there either. After the divorce, I wasn’t interested in another committed relationship (to put it mildly), and I had the good fortune to meet a nice assortment of open-minded women who weren’t looking for romance, just a good time.
Once again, no need to date.
That worked great until yesterday, when I stepped into the elevator at my condo building and saw a girl. Something about her activated the long-dormant dating instinct. I gotta admit, I did
not
see this coming.
So there we were. She was carrying a big box of DVDs, and since I hadn’t seen her around before, I figured she was moving in. Since words are my business, you’d think I then said something witty, but it went something like this:
Me
: Just moving in?
Elevator Girl
: Yes, this seems like a nice place.
Me
: Do you need some help?
EG
: That’s sweet of you, but I’ve got it under control.
Okay, so that phrase—“that’s sweet of you”—kind of threw me. Any guy worth his salt knows it has tons of different meanings. Sometimes it’s out-and-out flirting, right? Sort of like when they marvel at how strong you are when all you did was pick up a twelve-pack of beer. But sometimes it’s a put-down, like “that’s so sweet of you to think you can score with a hot babe like me.” And then there’s the patronizing, mom-ish meaning: “That’s so sweet to try and carve the turkey at age 3, but let’s let daddy wield the big knife, shall we?”
I couldn’t get a handle on what the elevator girl was trying to say. It didn’t seem like a put-down, but not exactly flirting either. And to complicate things further, I actually
am
a very sweet guy (not that the ex would agree with me on that).
So we got to the 3rd floor, she said good-bye and walked down the hall, and I continued up to my place on the 5th. Which leads to my opinionated rant of the day—how can a seemingly normal girl turn an articulate bullshitter like me into a tongue-tied idiot? Why do we put up with it? Oh, and what do I do now? Because trust me, I’m going to date her or die trying.
Now on to the reason you stopped by—my pre-analysis of this year’s NFL battles. Everyone else is focusing on the potential Super Bowl contenders, but I’m hung up on the new expansion teams. Particularly the Rustlers . . .
Click
here
for more sports from Jake Dublin . . .
COMMENTS:
Anonymous from SD
:
Give it up, man. She’s not into you.
Tweetie Burred
:
Leave her alone.
Ed the first
:
Where are the stats, man? Tall, short? Blonde, brunette? Give us facts, or at least the closest Bond girl.
The Opinionated Sports Guy
:
She’s not the Bond-girl type. Maybe Christina Applegate in
Anchorman
. Except less ballsy. Or Naomi Watts in that horror film about the creepy kid stuck in a well.
Ed the first
:
Hot.
Tweetie Burred
:
Naomi Watts again? U really R hopeless.
Anon 2
:
What DVDs were in the box? Chick flicks? Better run, dude.
The Opinionated Sports Guy
:
Good question. It was sci-fi mostly, but not the artsy or animated crap. Some seasons of
Babylon 5
, for example. I was too busy noticing her
stuff
to really notice her stuff.
Freelance Critic
:
If she looks like C.A. and likes sci-fi, she’s already taken. Don’t waste your time. Try online dating. It worked for me (3rd anniversary coming up). As for the Rustlers, they’ve got years of mediocrity ahead. Not sure why you keep harping on them. Man crush on Coach Spurling maybe? You’ve got a better chance of scoring with him than the elevator girl, tho.
The Opinionated Sports Guy
:
You’re a riot. And you’re wrong. They’ll make the playoffs for sure. Mediocrity isn’t in Spurling’s playbook. But meanwhile, congrats on the anniversary.
1
2 3 4 5 6 ->
Chapter Two
Jake Dublin: THE OPINIONATED SPORTS GUY
July 19, Update on Elevator Girl
As predicted, the Giants blew the doors off the competition. Again. Scroll down for the play-by-play. The other top story is the brewing quarterback controversy in Dallas, which I chalk up to the current obsession with the pistol offense. I love the pistol, but let’s face it, it’s not the be-all and end-all. I’ll be covering that in an upcoming post, but for now, we’re leading off with
my
new obsession, then we’ll get to the sports stuff.
First off, thanks for all the advice about the elevator girl in the comments. Sorry I had to delete so many, but let’s face it, I’ve got some underaged readers, so let’s keep it clean, shall we?
Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to create an opportunity to “run into” Elevator Girl again, meaning I’ve been hanging out in the underground parking lot. Yeah, that sounds a lot creepier than it actually is. Anyway, I finally had my second shot around 5:30 p.m. yesterday. Wish I could say it went well, but here’s the transcript:
Me
: All moved in? [
It’s true, I’m an idiot around her . . .
]