A Lova' Like No Otha' by Stephanie Perry Moore Page B

all his junk. Before I could calm myself down, the phone rang again. I grabbed the receiver. I didn't even have the chance to say hello before Aisha started screaming into the phone. “How dare you hang up on me. I got somethin' to say to you.”
    “Well, I got nothin' to say to you, girl,” I yelled back, holding the phone so tight my knuckles hurt. “And I'll hang up on you anytime I like!” I slammed the phone so hard this time that I wondered if I'd broken the receiver. It didn't matter—I didn't care.
    Almost immediately, the phone rang again. I thought about jerking the cord from the wall and throwing it across the room, but instead I took a deep breath, trying to regain my composure. Aisha obviously wasn't getting the hint.
    I picked up the phone on the third ring and hollered: “Why aren't you getting this, you moron? I don't want to talk to you!”
    Just before I slammed the receiver back onto its base with a thud, I heard Chase's sexy voice floating through the line. “Man,” he said, “I thought you'd be missing me by now.”
    I pulled the phone back to my ear.
    He said, “Well, since you don't wanna talk to me, I guess I'll just hang up.”
    “Chase,” I cried. “How are you? How's camp? What's going on? Do you like Seattle? How does the team look?”
    He laughed. “Hey, let me answer one question before you throw out seventeen more. And anyway, who did you think I was? Calling me a moron!”
    “Never mind about that.” I had forgotten all about Aisha. Chase had erased that situation, just with the sound of his voice. I wanted to climb through the phone line and hug him. “I've been waiting to hear from you. How have you been?”
    “It's been something,” he declared, but his tone was full of cheer.
    I sat on the couch and listened intently as he told me about his routine: waking up at five in the morning for meetings, then going out on the field for practice. Then it was back to meetings. After the team dinner, the day ended with more meetings. “The night meetings usually last till around ten,” Chase said. “Sometimes twelve, depending on what the coach thought about the workout.”
    It sounded grueling to me. But I could tell Chase was loving it. “So, the Seattle Storm, huh? You know, I've always been more into college football than the NFL, but if I recall, that team's not too pitiful,” I teased.
    He chuckled. “They used to be great. Until about three years ago, when they lost their best receiver to free agency. Still, working out for this team is a great opportunity. They have twelve wide receivers here in camp, and they're probably only gonna keep five or six. So neither the politics nor the statistics are on my side. But I'm grateful to even be here.”
    “You're a great wide receiver, Chase. Probably better than any guy out there.”
    “Thank you, Zoe. You know I believe that,” he said with confidence. “But the pro league is different from college. They got the best of the best here. I know I'm good, but everybody here is great. And some of these guys got big signing bonuses and contracts already. So I don't know how this is gonna work out. But you know what? The Lord knows, and that's good enough for me.” Without waiting for my reaction to his comment, he said, “But that's enough talk about football. How are you doing?”
    “I'm good,” I said. Part of me wanted to tell him that I'd been thinking about him constantly, but I didn't want to appear too aggressive. Besides, I still didn't fully understand where all these feelings for Chase were coming from, and I didn't know what would happen if I revealed my feelings to him. We'd been good friends for a long time, and I didn't know if taking our relationship to another level was what he wanted. If we did get more intimate, could we still remain friends?
    “So, are you going to tell me why you answered the phone the way you did?” he asked again.
    “Oh, don't worry about that.” I really didn't want to talk about