Touchdown Read Free Page B

first ball?”
    Austin, his suit now full of blue paint, was left holding the ball. “She’s right, Clay, it’s nearly midnight.” He turned and threw the ball to Carolyn. “Your turn!”
    Carolyn jumped back, but too late—the blue-stained ball hit her pink dress. She gasped and started to cry. “Austin, you moron! How could you ruin my dress?”
    Austin ran over to Carolyn. “It washes out. It ain’t ruined.”
    “But still! How am I supposed to lead cheer when I am blue? This is so not appropriate!”
    Her sorority sisters stopped cheering and crowded around her, horrified.
    Clay walked over to Carolyn. “Are you all right?”
    Carolyn exhaled and ran her fingers through her long, perfectly sculpted blond hair. “I’ll be fine. But I must wash out the stain before it sets.”
    “Throw the ball!” the crowd cheered. “Throw the ball!”
    Clay shrugged. “Are you sure, Carolyn? It would be nice to have you here. Can’t that wait a minute?”
    She shook her head, and then addressed the ladies congregating around her. “I’m fine!” she assured her sorority sisters and waved her hands. “It’s nearly midnight, ladies, so kindly take your places beside your dates. ”
    “Carolyn, please don’t go,” Clay said. “Don’t leave me now.”
    “I’m sorry to disappoint,” Carolyn said and batted her eyelashes. “But it would be wrong for me to be here in a stained dress. You’ll have to be brave without me, Clayton,” she said, and then left him alone on the field.
    Austin picked up the ball and handed it to Clay. “Do the honors, buddy.”
    All the sorority sisters took their places and stood beside their boyfriends—the other football players—as they waited for Clay to start the season.
    “Ten! Nine!” The crowd cheered down the seconds until midnight.
    Clay got his arm ready to throw.
    “Eight! Seven!”
    “Clay needs a date!” Trina, Austin’s girlfriend, pointed out the horror of breaking tradition.
    Austin nudged Clay to get Leigh.
    “Six! Five!”
    Clay caught Leigh’s eye and gestured for her to come stand beside him.
    She shook her head no.
    “Four!”
    “Yes!” Clay ran toward Leigh and lifted her over his shoulder, then deposited her right beside him.
    “Three! Two!”
    Clay smiled at Leigh, who looked very uncomfortable standing beside him in front of his school, and then he wound his arm into position.
    “I can’t kiss you, Clay!”
    “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It won’t mean a thing.”
    “One!”
    He threw the ball.
    At midnight, the football hurtled through the air, soaring above the crowd toward the end zone as one of Clay’s teammates, Ricco, jumped to catch it.
    “Touchdown!”
    The crowd went wild as each student turned to kiss their date, as was their school tradition.
    Go Bullfrogs!
    Clay laughed, then turned to Leigh, grabbed her into his embrace, and was about to kiss her. They’d been friends since they were kids but had never gone beyond that.
    The lights went off for a moment as the crowd cheered in the dark.
    “It won’t mean a thing, right?” Leigh asked.
    “Right,” he said.
    Fireworks exploded overhead as everyone in the crowd kissed their dates, but Leigh Truitt broke out of Clay’s grasp and stepped back. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
    Clay stared at her.
    “A kiss could make us . . . awkward, Clay. And nothing is worth the risk of losing you,” she said. “Ever. You’re my one, true friend.”
    The band played their school anthem as Clay and Leigh moved further away from each other and tried not to acknowledge that even though they hadn’t kissed, their world had changed.

CHAPTER THREE
    Goldie threw her hair back as she adjusted the collar on her handmade ivory wedding dress. The gown glittered from the dots of iridescent sequins that were sewn into the full skirt, which cascaded past her feet in pools of silk. Standing in front of an antique French chevalier mirror in her bedroom, she smiled.
    “You look