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.

Her reply came just as they were leaving for the airport, so Joe didn't have a chance to read it until they were all on the plane.

Since Elle was on Bus 4 and sitting in the back of the plane with the rest of the staff, they were allowed to board first and since they were only allowed to be in their assigned seat on the plane because of Corona, Joe didn't get a chance to see her.

When he was finally in his seat, he immediately pulled out his cell phone and finally read Elle's message.

I'm ok. Probably had my head somewhere else with all the stress. Tell Ja'Marr it was nothing personal. You don't have to worry, nothing happened. I still have to cancel for tonight though. Still have to work, sorryyyyy

Sighing, Joe put the cell phone away. While he was relieved that nothing had happened to Elle and that she was okay, he would have liked to have her with him tonight and analyze the game with her. Besides, she certainly would have been a good distraction, because now he would probably be fretting about his mistakes all evening.

Maybe he would call his dad and talk to him about the game so he wouldn't have to spend the whole evening worrying about what had gone wrong in the game, it would even be shown to him in detail with footage in the video analysis tomorrow.

When he got home, he first felt how everything hurt him. The adrenaline had by now stopped numbing the tension and other aches and Joe felt like a heavy potato sack as he flopped down on the couch.

He definitely felt every single collision with the opposing players and even more the falls to the ground when he was sacked. So he decided to stay on the couch for now and pulled out his cell phone, he would try to reach his dad now.

His dad immediately picked up and told him how happy he was to get Joe's call. Afterwards, they talked about the game. His dad tried to build Joe up and tell him that next game he would just have to show everyone again that he had it in him.

After the call, Joe made himself something to eat, realizing that would be easy starting tomorrow, since tomorrow Jose would officially start cooking for him and Joe was really looking forward to it.

He strolled back to the couch with his plate and turned on the TV. While the late NFL game played in the background, Joe scrolled through Instagram. yes, he had downloaded the social media apps again after training camp.

He skimmed the feed on his home page, most of the posts were from the Bengals' official Instagram page or his playmates who had posted about today's game.

Suddenly, it struck him that he had never searched for Elle on Instagram before, and before he knew it, he had already typed her name into his search bar. Elle's profile was the first to pop up because, as Instagram told him, Ja'Marr, Sam and a few others on the team were already following her.

He looked at her profile a bit, had to smile when he saw the tiger and football emoji in her bio. If you didn't know she worked for the Bengals, you wouldn't know it from her profile either.

He also really hadn't pegged Elle as the kind of person to make a big deal about the fact that she was now working for the NFL.

Curious, he looked at the pictures and recognized Celine, Elle's best friend, whom she had already told him so much about. How long would it be before he met her?

Finally I can post the fake profile I did for Elle lol. I just took random pics from Pinterest but the vibe is the important thing hahaIm so sorry for not posting yesterday but thank you so much for all the comments and likes over the last few days! It's so amazing and I always try to answer everyone who comments!I don't know how active I will be in the next week because I'm running out of pre written chapters because I'm at a point where's hard for me to continue writing cause I don't like the scene hahaha. Hope you don't mind if chapters are coming less regular and more when I have enough time to really write them!

Question: are you a rational person (head person) or an emotional person (heart person)?

My answer: I'm an emotional person and i always listen to my heart or my feeling. I wish I could be more rational because many people are using you when you're too kind or emotional and unfortunately I learned that the hard way.

Comment your answer and leave a like!

WHO-DEY🧡