beautiful mistake - joe burrow

55

In the meantime it was Sunday again and thus game day. Joe and Elle had spent the rest of the evening together as usual, except for yesterday evening when they had not been together because of the trip to Chicago.

It hadn't been a long trip and they had arrived in Chicago at noon, but Elle had had to work and take care of a few players, while Joe and the others had had run-through rehearsals and more meetings in the individual teams.

In the evening they hadn't even been allowed to eat together because of Corona, so Elle had gone with the ATs to Chick-fil-A near the hotel, Joe and the players had eaten at the hotel. When Elle had been back in her room, they had talked on the phone for over an hour, but somehow it just wasn't the same.

Everything had been a little too stressful this morning. The game would be at 1pm, which meant they were going to the Bears' stadium pretty early and that was when the stress started for Elle and the ATs.

She had seen Joe only briefly at the taping, but could not exchange a word with him, then she had to go with the others immediately again to the meeting of the medical staff and then to the warm-up, where she had peace, but Joe was of course busy.

Unfortunately, the game did not go well for the Bengals. They managed to allow just one touchdown in the first half, but didn't score a single point themselves. In the third quarter they finally scored at least one field goal, but it didn't get any better.

Joe threw interception after interception, one of which led to a touchdown for the Bears, and was sacked so many times that Elle was worried about his knee.

While Ja'Marr and Tee did manage to score a touchdown each and the game ended 17-20, it just hadn't been a good game and Elle knew Joe wouldn't be happy at all.

"Jo, Elle, you probably need to calm Joe down quite a bit today. He's pissed" Ja'Marr grinned at Elle as they happened to meet in the hallway to the locker room. Elle's stomach suddenly turned and she felt sick all over.

"I...I can't. I have to...work" she mumbled, muttering an apology to Ja'Marr and sprinted into the next room.

Confused, Ja'Marr looked after her and went into the locker room shaking his head. Every once in a while he just didn't understand this girl.

"Do you know what's going on with Elle?" he asked Joe as they finally got on the bus and headed back to the airport.

Joe took out his one AirPod to better understand Ja'Marr and looked around to see if anyone was listening to the conversation. But everyone around them had their headphones on and no one really seemed to be paying attention to the two. The defeat had pretty much tilted the mood.

"no, what's supposed to be wrong with her?" Joe asked, a little concerned as he finished his observation and looked back at Ja'Marr.

"I don't know. I met her briefly before and just joked about calming you down tonight because the game was upsetting you so much, then all of a sudden she got all weird and just mumbled something before almost running away from me" Ja'Marr shrugged.

Joe sighed. "I haven't really seen her at all today, and I haven't said a word to her. Maybe I should go check on her"

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the chat with Elle. She had just wished him a nice day this morning and good luck at the game, otherwise they hadn't texted today either.

Hey, are you okay? Ja'Marr said you were a little weird before. You know you can be honest with me, I'm just worried. Do you want to come over to my place later?

He sent the message and waited impatiently for the answer. While it reassured him a bit that she was definitely with Nick right now and that he could judge her even better than Joe, so she wasn't alone if there was really something wrong with her, he still worried if she might have had another panic attack.