The Football Player's Roommate

50.

I glanced up to Theo nervously, and he smiled down to me as if a single thing couldn't have gone wrong tonight. Hopefully he was right, but with my terrible luck? Yeah, we all knew this was going to end badly.

"Oh, Theo! You've finally arrived." Mrs. Thompson smiled as if this was the best discovery on the planet.

"Yes. Hello, mother. Father." He nodded to each of his parents in a polite but distant greeting.

He took my hand and led me down the row of fashionable seats until we ended up beside the one man, whom I still had no idea of's identity. Theo pulled out my seat for me and I silently thanked him while seating myself.

"And Mr. Freeman, is it?" Theo asked as the one unidentified man seated across the table from me came into our view.

"Yes. That would be me." The man confirmed with a growing smile.

"Nice to meet you, sir." Theo carefully leaned over the table to shake the man's hand.

"Nice to meet you as well, young man. My family's actually a big fan of your team."

"Well, I'm glad to have you as a supporter, sir." Theo gave him one of those charming smiles that always resulted in a swoon from me, but it seemed like a swoon was coming from Mr. Freeman as well. Theo was able to schmooze just about anyone apparently, no matter the person's gender.

He wrapped up the conversation with stats about his team and how they were getting prepared for the next big game. After about five minutes of the talk, some maids and a butlers came through the double doors with what appeared to be a salad of some sort.

Theo took that as his cue to take his seat. He grabbed the back of the chair directly beside me and pulled it out for himself. But just as he sat, his mother looked up with an astonished look in her eyes.

"Theo, why don't you come and sit beside Mr. Freeman instead?" She offered kindly but I could tell by her narrowed eyes that she had a different motive in mind.

With a glance up at Theo I could already see the annoyance growing in his facial expression. I didn't know if Theo would explode in front of two strangers or not. I knew he would do it with just his parents, but with their potential clients in the room? I had no idea what the outcome would be and that was a risk I didn't want to take.

"Actually mother I'm goin—" attempted to start his long rant, which could only end badly.

Which is why I immediately grabbed ahold of his right hand, and within a second his glare softened. He looked slightly confused but then saw my face. I gave him a curt nod telling him to just do as she says and not cause any problems.

It was actually kind of ironic that I still had no idea what Mrs. Thompson or her husband's names were since they probably knew every single thing about me, but that was the last of my worries at the moment. My main goal was to get through this meal without someone winding up in jail or someone getting stabbed with a shrimp fork.

Why must there be so many different forks? They all perform the same task, so why not just cut back and use one for everything?

I'm getting off topic, but my mind returned to the present when one butler set a magnificent salad in frontfq of me.

"A blue cheese ceasar salad for your first course." The butler announced with a pleasant look on his face, but in my prospective it looked quite forced.

Knowing I couldn't ask him what was wrong in front of everyone I settled for looking down at what had been set in front of me.

This wasn't any ole salad with lettuce and veggies. Oh, no. It's like the chef had sprinkled in some magic or something. Just the smell of it was already making my mouth water. Who knew that salads could smell good? Every part of me was ready to dive right in, but I had almost forgotten my manners.