The Game by Vi Keeland by Vi Keeland

I sighed. “Okay…well, my friend Miller is here with some friends, so I’m going to go back up. But I’ll come back down in a little bit to keep you company.”

“You enjoy your friends. I’m fine right here by myself watching the game.”

I smiled. “I’ll be back anyway.”

The second half had already started by the time I made my way back to the fancy skybox. “Is everything alright with your grandfather?” Miller asked.

“Yeah, he’s fine. Apparently he lost a bet, so that’s why he’s sitting on the opposing side, wearing a T-shirt with Christian Knox’s face on it.”

“Sounds like something we would do.” Miller sipped his wine and motioned to the private seating area outside where his new boyfriend, Trent, and Trent’s brother, Travis, were sitting. “So what do you think of Trav?”

I squinted. “I thought you said this wasn’t a fix up.”

“It’s not. But he has a great smile, doesn’t he?”

Sadly, I hadn’t even noticed. Though I had noticed, from all the way up here, that Christian Knox had a fantastic one as he stood on the sidelines. It was less of a smile and more of a smirk. On his official player photo, you could see one dimple. But in some of the interviews I’d watched this week, a second one made an appearance too. And no, I hadn’t stalked. I’d done research. I was the team owner now and needed to know who my players were. At least that was what I’d told myself on more than one occasion as I clicked on his photo in the team portal.

I shrugged. “I guess so. But you know I just started dating Julian.”

“Not dating. Date. You had one. Speaking of which, has he called yet?”

“No, but it’s only been a week.”

“I called Trent five minutes after our date ended to see if he wanted to go out again. He was literally still on my block, walking to the train he takes home.”

“Not everyone likes to go at warp speed in relationships like you do. Besides, I’ve known Julian a long time. He’s not the type of guy to rush into things, even with projects when we worked together. It was one of the things that gave us a lot of compatibility when I was doing the math on us.”

“The math on us.” Miller scoffed. “I know you’re a math genius, but not everything can be solved using a formula. If you’re going to pick men to date with some sort of dumb algorithm you developed—”

I interrupted. “I didn’t develop the algorithm. I used the Gale-Shapley model. It’s been proven to work for dating apps like Hinge, college admissions, and matching residents to hospitals. It’s a solid solution to stable matching problems. The developers won the Nobel Prize for it. Besides, you’re the one who pushed me to find someone I could have a long-term relationship with so…” I made air quotes. “I don’t wind up an old maid.”

“I meant to go out and meet people or go out with a guy more than five times, not feed all the men you know into a database.”

“You have your ways of doing things, and I have mine.”

“Fine. But if you’re going to score men, you should at least know the deets on Travis. He’s single, a contractor, has an eight twelve credit score, drives a Tesla, and owns his own home. He also doesn’t purchase single-use plastic bottles because he’s concerned about the environment.”

“And you’re telling me this because today was not a setup.”

Miller grinned. “That’s right.”

“I’m going to grab a drink and go back outside to watch the game.”

He guzzled the remnants of his wine and held the glass out to me. “As long as you’re at it… I need to tinkle.”

Travis smiled when we joined them outside. Miller was right; his smile was nice. But I found myself comparing it to Christian’s. Which was absolutely ridiculous.

“So, what’s it like running a football team?” he asked.

“Well, it’s only been two weeks, but it’s pretty much meeting after meeting. I’m not used to that. I think a lot of people really like to hear themselves talk.”

Travis chuckled. “I’m not a meeting person either. I actually changed my career because of that.”

“Miller said you’re a contractor. What did you do before?”

“I went to school to be an architect. Once I graduated, it took me less than a year to realize that while I loved building things, I wasn’t cut out for the job. I spent more than half my time in meetings with owners, inspectors, the building department, or my bosses. So I quit and bought a house that was falling down near me. Moved into one room while I fixed it up, and then I sold it. A friend of my dad’s loved the renovations I’d done and asked me to work on his summer home. Things snowballed from there, and I transitioned to being a contractor.”

“Do you like owning your own business?”

He turned in his seat to face me. “I do. The good thing about being the boss is that if you don’t like parts of your job, you can assign those to someone else. My assistant handles all the building-department issues, and my site manager handles all the homeowner issues. So I pretty much get to focus on the building part, which is what I like.”

“Well, that’s something to look forward to. I’m pretty sure I don’t even know all the different parts of my job yet.”