beautiful mistake - joe burrow

41

Although they lost the Friday night game in Washington, nothing could spoil Joe's mood when they got back to the hotel that evening.

Since the game had been in the evening, they would stay overnight and not fly back to Cincinnati until morning.

He hadn't been allowed to play again, though he had joined in warm-ups and had waited at halftime for the coach to send him to change, but it hadn't happened.

Still, he just couldn't stop grinning since he'd woken up Friday morning, which was quite possibly due to the attractive atheltic trainer standing off to the side during the game with a shoulder brace and smiling at him constantly, who'd told him Thursday night that she'd give their relationship a try.

"Dude, can you actually stop looking so stupid? You'd think we won the game the way you're grinning" Ja'Marr, standing in the elevator with Joe, sighed in annoyance.

"Because in case you didn't notice, since you had your eyes on someone else, let me be more specific, Elle, the whole time, we did NOT win"

"Sorry" Joe muttered, trying to stop his grin, which he managed for a full two minutes. No sooner had they arrived at their floor and stepped off the elevator than he noticed the corners of his mouth go up again.

Ja'Marr rolled his eyes and stopped."ok, you're pissing me off big time, so now I'm going to give you a choice..." he nudged Joe to stop as well.

"...Either you tell me right now what's going on between you and Elle or I'm going to get my cleats out of my bag and beat the shit out of you until you lose that stupid grin".

Joe looked at his friend in shock. A bit violent, but understandable after a loss, he thought to himself.

Thoughtfully, he looked at his cell phone. Actually, he had texted Elle and asked her if she wanted to stop by his room tonight, since they hadn't really seen each other since he had left her last night.

Elle had actually replied to him.

I can't tonight, got some stuff to do ugh, sorry.

He sighed before turning back to Ja'Marr. "Alright. In my room in ten minutes" he suggested.

Maybe it really was time to tell Ja'Marr about everything, especially if things were getting more serious between Elle and him now, and if Elle didn't have time tonight anyway, he could just take the opportunity.

Besides, he wasn't quite sure how serious Ja'Marr was about his threat.

When Joe opened the door to Ja'Marr pretty much ten minutes later, Ja'Marr seemed to have calmed down a bit, because excitedly he pushed his way into Joe's room and settled down in the little chair in the corner, crossing his legs and folding his arms behind his head, beaming at Joe with a curiosity as if Joe were about to tell him what the eighth wonder of the world was.

"So go ahead. What happened?" Ja'Marr urged Joe to start telling. "Okay, so here's the thing: Elle asked me yesterday if we could talk, so I went to see her last night after she got off work, and yeah... we decided we'd take it slow and see what came out of it" Joe summarized in short words the events of yesterday.

"Wohoo, wait, I feel like I skipped the entire middle part between getting to know each other and getting together in a romance movie. Could it be that you've been holding out on me quite a bit?" Ja'Marr asked, offended.

Joe shrugged his shoulder. "Yeah, seems so" he muttered. "Okay, then tell me about the kiss. There was a kiss or it wouldn't have all come to this" Ja'Marr suggested.

Joe suddenly had to grin. "Ok, which one do you want me to tell you about?" "there were more than one?!" Ja'Marr asked, staring indignantly at Joe. Joe just nodded with a smirk.