A couple months later, the friend group of Tyler, Ella, Joe, and I had gotten larger. One day, Tyler insisted we invite one of their teammates, Ja'Marr, over to watch all of the Harry Potter movies. Ella and Joe were big fans, and apparently Ja'Marr was too, so naturally we had to binge watch them all before training camp started.
Instead of knocking on the very intimidating front door, I walk right through and to the kitchen.
Ella insisted that their house is mine, and I took it to heart. I have a toothbrush here.
"Honnies," I sing, "I'm home!"
Ella comes walking in and gives me a quick hug, "Hello wife." She then drags me into the living room where the remaining people resided.
"Look who decided to show up," Tyler jokes and I roll my eyes.
"Traffic was really bad," I shrug, and take a seat on the couch next to the boys.
"I'm Ja'Marr," the guy on the other side of Joe smiles at me and nods.
"Hey," I smile back, "I'm Cam."
"Camden," Joe murmurs.
I give him a look and he glances at me through the corner of his eye, "What?"
"Why are you so grumpy today?" I throw a blanket over my legs.
He keeps his gaze on the tv, which is some super boring show about tree houses, "I'm not."
"I'm not," I mock him, and he finally turns to look at me.
"Why are you so happy today?" He says as he squints.
"Um let's see," I put a finger to my chin and pretend to think, "baby Rosie is due in 7 months, I'm with my friends, and I just finished a tour. I'd say I have a lot to be happy for."
"No need to brag," he sasses.
"I'll brag to my hearts content," I give him a pointed look and turn my attention back to the tv, where someone had turned the first movie on.
About halfway through, Ella had to throw up and Tyler went with her, and Joe went to the bathroom, so it was just Ja'Marr and I.
"So uh," he starts, "Joe told me that you sing. Are you any good?"
I tilt my head for a second, but respond to him, "Yeah I think so. My target audience is girls from the ages 13-30, so I don't think you'd like my music."
"Joe does," he has a mischievous look on his face, and with one probing look from me, he continues talking. "One time when me and him were working out, I look to see what he was listening to in his headphones, and I saw your name as the artist."
"Shut up," my jaw literally drops, "you're sure it was me?"
"Yeah, because the title of the song was something all cute. Nothing like him at all," he chuckles and shakes his head.
"Please tell me you remember what song it was?"
He looks away in thought, "It was something with Feels Good, or In my feels. At first I thought he was sad, but the album cover sold him."
"Feels Like," I nod and smile, "yeah I know what song it was."
"You didn't hear it from me, though," he gives me a pointed look and I lift my right hand.
"Scouts honor," I nod and he chuckles, sitting back just as the trio walked back in.
Ella and Tyler snuggle back into the loveseat while Joe makes his way back to me. When he sits down, our legs are touching. It shocked me.
But, instead of being weird about it, I threw the blanket over his legs too, except it didn't reach all the way down them.
"Freak," I murmur, and he chuckles, "your legs are too long."
"Whatever," he chuckles.
"I'm kidding," I whisper.
He leans down to my ear and whispers back, "I know."
The rest of the binge session, it became abundantly clear to me. After weeks of being able to control myself, I caved into Joe's charm. He wasn't doing it on purpose, but it worked.
I had feelings for Joe, and there was no doubt in my mind. And I hated it. He made me feel like a teenager all over again, overcome with emotions.
I start humming a tune and lyrics started to flow with it.
"I'll be right back," I say quickly to the group and go into the nursery. I swipe through my phone for the voice memos app and start recording.
"Idea for new album, song about um- there's one guy that everyone wants, but the lyrics are saying how she doesn't want him so much because he's so desirable.
hmm hmm hmm hm I don't like that everyone would die to feel your touch
Everybody wants you, everybody wonders what I would be like to love you hmm hmm
Okay I think you get it."
I nod to myself and head back into the living room. Joes arm is draped across the back of the couch, but I pay it no mind, taking my previous seat.
Although, on the inside, I almost had a stroke. Surely he wasn't doing this on purpose. He's got long limbs, they're probably uncomfortable from being so crammed.
However, I did inch closer to him, just so that our legs were touching again.
By the end of the second movie, Ella was crying, Tyler was trying to console her, and Ja'Marr was passed out.
"Do you want to go get food?" Joe leans down and whispers to me.
I look between the crying couple and the guy passed out on the couch, "Yeah, that's a good idea."
We both stand up and Ella pauses her sobs, "Where are you going?"
"To get food," I walk up to the loveseat and sit on the armrest, "would you like anything, dear?"
"All I want is Baskin Robbins," her face turns up in a pout, "mint chocolate chip, please."
"You hate mint chocolate chip," Tyler says, but it's more of a question.
Ellas face drops and she turns to Tyler, "But I want some right now."
"Ty," I nod to him and he looks at me, "don't argue with the pregnant lady."
He bites back a smile and nods.
"Do you want anything, Ty?" Joe asks him, and he shakes his head.
Joe and I leave in his car.
"What do you want?" He asks.
I think for a minute, "In-N-Out okay with you?"
He silently nods and begins pulling out of the driveway. His phone automatically starts playing his recently played songs. Most of them were rap, but at one point, a beat to one of my songs begins to play.
He quickly presses skip and returns to normal.
"Was that....?" I start but he shakes his head.
"No," he says, way too quickly.
I nod, and look out the window, but quickly press rewind to go back to the other song.
"Oh," the song starts, "we almost got away-"
"Cami," Joe turns the volume all the way down and growls in annoyance.
"You," I give him a pointed look, "Joe Burrow. Joe Cool. Other nicknames that I can't remember but they're badass, listen to my music."
He shrugs, "I felt bad for you, so I put one on my playlist so you'd get more streams."
"Right," I nod, "yet it's your go to work out song?"
He looks at me through the corner of his eye, "How'd you know that?"
"Ja'Marr told me that he caught you listening to it when you were working out," I say quickly, but realize my mistake and cover my mouth.
"You two meet, and right away he gives away my secrets. What a pair you'll be," he tsks and shakes his head.
"So it's true?"
His eyebrows furrow, "What?"
"You actually listen to this when you're working out?"
He shrugs and his cheeks turn pink, "Why does it matter?"
"Because," I put my hand over my heart, "it means that you like it."
He throws one of his hands in the air, "It's a good song."
"Thank you," I smile and sit up straight as we enter the drive through of In-N-Out.
Joe asks what I want and he repeats it to the lady over the intercom. When it's his turn to order. He doesn't say anything.
"Your total will be $10.79, thank you!" The lady says, and Joe starts pulling up.
"Why didn't you get anything?" I ask him and he begins digging in his wallet.
"Training camp starts next week," he chuckles, "you think I can be downing cheeseburgers?"
"Uh-" I start, but cut myself off.
I quickly grab a 20 dollar bill out of my purse and hand it to him.
"It's okay," he shakes his head, "my idea, I pay."
"It's just 10 dollars," I shake my head.
"Exactly," he nods, "I got it."
Before I can argue any more, he hands his card to the lady who opened the window.
"Oh-" a girl standing behind the first lady gasps, "Camden Conners? Can I take a picture?"
I smile to her and wave a little and she snaps a quick picture through the window without my response. No doubt that she got Joe in it too.
He gets handed the food and gives it to me. After he thanks the lady and rolls up his window, he sighs, "Shit."
"Shit indeed," I say, causing a chuckle to come out of him. We weren't naive. Obviously people were going to see us together and think all kinds of things. It's not like we were doing anything though.
"How long do we think until that's in the press?" He starts driving to the nearest Baskin Robins.
"30 minutes," I nod confidently.
He shakes his head, "You give them too much credit. I say a day at least."
"I can see it now 'Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow spotted with pop-star Camden Connors. What does this mean? Are they friends? We have so many questions!' Is what it will sound like," I say in a ridiculous voice.
"Probably," he nods.
"Question," I put my elbow on the console and put my chin on top of my hand.
"Shoot," he shrugs.
"Can I snoop?"
"I don't care," he chuckles, "I'm not a man with secrets."
I start going through his console and find a hat, a charger, a granola bar, rings, and a necklace.
"You are asking to get robbed," I put the hat on my head and investigate the rings.
"Oh shit," he takes a peak at the things I found, "I've been looking for those."
"You should get like a jewelry case or something," I murmur and he nods.
I pick up a binder sitting in the very bottom and start flipping through it.
The first half of it is a bunch of plays, but the second half looks like notes he took from a bunch of other teams. They were separated by colored tabs that were associated with each team.
"These are your plays and a bunch of handwriting that I cannot read," I hum, and he chuckles.
"Yes," he smiles.
I nod, "I wonder how much I could sell this for."
"You're not going to sell it," he takes the binder away from me, "and we don't use those plays anymore, so it'd be worthless."
"Joey, you are brave for keeping all this very valuable stuff in your car," I carefully put everything back in the way it was.
"I didn't know half of that stuff was in there," he raises a hand in defense.
"Fair enough," I nod, right as we pull into Baskin Robins.
After getting Ella's mint chocolate chip ice cream and taking it to her, more people had shown up to the Boyd residency.
"What are all these people-" I start but I'm cut off by a notification on my phone. It's Olivia asking if that picture the girl took was me. I answered her and she sent an entire paragraph about how it's bad for me to be seen with a guy right now since I'm working on an album.
She thinks it'll be bad for my reputation if I let real life experiences influence my music.
"24 year old pop-star Camden Connors seen in an In-N-Out drive through with Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow. The two appeared to be holding hands and were seen hugging in a Baskin Robins down the road. Neither have spoken on matters, so we're left to assume there is indeed a spark there," I read, putting emphasis on certain parts.
"We weren't holding hands though, right?" He jokes and I laugh.
"No, and we weren't hugging in a Baskin Robins either," I say, and we both get out of his car, "I like that they introduced me first though."
"Mm," he hums.
When we step inside, there's shouting and laughter coming from the living room.
When we walk into the room, whistles and oo's break out through the group of guys and several other girls, which I assume to be their girlfriends or wives.
"What?" I chuckle and look to Ella, she has her phone extended out to me.
"You are trending," she giggles.
The article that she showed us was completely different than the other one. This one claimed that we had been dating for months and I was pregnant.
"Holy shit," I bust out laughing and cover my mouth, "who told them this?"
"I don't know," Ella can barely say anything outside of her laughter, "but it is killing me."
"I'm not pregnant, I swear," I start laughing with her.
"Jesus," Joe rubs his eyes with his hands, "we leave for one hour. One hour and everything turns to hell."
"It's fine," I shake my head at him and text Olivia to tell them that none of it is true, "I got it handled."
"Hallelujah."
⇜⇝
Don't hate me for them moving so fast! I'm kind of just trying to get the story to football season.
Love you all!
Comment and Vote if you'd like to!!