WILLIE WAS HANGING OUT WITH KEELEY AND REBECCA. They were discussing how the Welton woman had dumped her guy after Roy went on this whole speech about how she deserved someone that made her feel like she had been struck by lightning. He was right. Rebecca was an incredible woman that deserved an incredible man.

"Okay, Rebecca. I'll call Terry and talk to him about setting up that dinner," she informed her boss after Keeley left, and Ted walked in just as she was headed toward the door. She raised her eyebrows at everyone in the room. "I'm headed out for some lunch. Does anyone want anything?"

Rebecca shook her head and waved off her employee. "No, thank you, Willie."

"That's mighty kind of you, Willie, but I'm all right," Ted responded with a shake of his head. She grinned at him. The sound of that accent always reminded her that she was not the only foreigner there.

Higgins — who had been using any random table as his office because he had to give up his real one to make room for Dr. Sharon — told her, "I'm good." Dr. Sharon was a psychiatrist that they had hired to help Dani through his problems, and it seemed that a lot of the other players on the team were benefiting from her services.

She then headed out, driving to this area not to far from the club so that she could go for a walk for a while before going to get some food. She had an hour for lunch, so she had a little bit of time. She finally made it to this cafe towards the end of her hour.

Once she ordered her food, she turned around to head out when she noticed a familiar figure standing behind a plant. He was wearing a black suit with weird sunglasses perched on his nose. She furrowed her eyebrows. "Jamie?"

"I'm not stalking ya," he informed her, stepping out from behind the plant. "I've been following you for a few blocks now, and I couldn't text you 'cause I realized that I never had your number. So, I was in town, and I wanted to talk to you 'cause I left Man City to do this reality TV show thing, and I got kicked off of both. So now I don't know what I'm doing, but I just wanted to talk to someone about it 'cause... And whenever I think of talking, I think of you... So I've been following you for the last few blocks. No, I'm lying. I've been following you for your whole lunch hour. But I've just been trying to build up the courage to say hi. So... hi." Her confused look remained on her face, and when she never answered, he asked, "Is that okay?"

"I'm going to ignore how creepy that is. Hi, Jamie," she laughed out. She only caught a few lines of that entire speech because he was talking so fast, and the Mancunian accent made him a bit hard to understand sometimes, especially when she was barely able to hear the traditional British accent and translate.

He waved. "Hi."

"You already said that," she reminded him, and he seemed extremely nervous. He was playing with his fingers and shifting on his feet, and she wondered what she ever did to make him so anxious around her. She gestured to one of the tables. "Do you want to sit?"

"Yeah, sitting's good," he responded, and he pulled out a chair for her to sit in. She thanked him and watched as he shuffled over to the other chair and sat down across from her. Their knees brushed under the table, and it gave Wllie an unfamiliar feeling.

She raised her eyebrows once they were all settled, and she leaned forward, ready to talk business. She was pretty sure that she already knew what Jamie wanted to ask her, and she knew that she was not going to be able to answer the question. "You've got yourself into quite a pickle."

"Yeah, I know that," he told her because he had been turned down by pretty much everyone. HE sighed and ran a hand through his hair, removing his sunglasses that did not even seem to protect against the sun. "But how do I fix it?"

"I think you know how to fix it," she said. He knew what he wanted. He remembered where he was happiest, and that was on the team with his best friends and Ted Lasso, even if he pretended to hate the coach.

He looked really upset and scared because he knew that if he did not get this, then he was nothing. If Ted did not let him back, then he had no place. He needed a place. "Do you really think Lasso'll have me back?"

"I think you're asking the wrong person," she replied. She had no power over whether he was let back on the team or not. The only person that could do that, really, was Ted, probably with the permission of the rest of the team.

He processed that for a moment before nodding at her. "Right. Thanks, Willie."

"You're very welcome Jamie," she replied before gathering her food and climbing to her feet. Her hour was almost up, and she still had to get back to the club. "Now, I have to go get some work done because I have a hot date tonight."

"A–A what?" Jamie asked, and she pretended not to be hurt by how shocked he sounded that she could actually have a date.

She paused for a moment, wondering why he was so confused because she knew for a fact that the Jamie Tartt had been on plenty of dates in his life, with Keeley especially. "A date. I assume you've been on one."

"Oh, yeah," he responded, and he shook off whatever trance he was in that made him lose focus. He put a smile back on his face as he stood up as well, ready to head out because he was only there because of her. "Uh, have fun. Thanks."

"Bye, Jamie Tartt," she called behind her, and he watched her leave with an unreadable expression on his face.

《❂》

WILLIE SAT ACROSS FROM HER BOYFRIEND AT THIS NICE RESTAURANT. She had honestly never been to a restaurant like that on a date ever. She had only dated a handful of guys, and none of them were very rich. Alex came from family money, and he had a pretty high-end job in Chiswick.

Her nerve level shot up when she noticed two very fancily dressed old people walking into the restaurant, and Alex stood to greet them. She followed his lead, smoothing out her dress as he smiled and said, "Hey, Mum. Hey, Dad. Uh, this is Willow."

"It's so nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Turner," she told them with a welcoming and tight smile. She had honestly never seen more judgy-looking people in her life, but she realized that it was judgy of her to think that. They just had fancy clothes and jewelry and watches, and his mother's hair was folded into a perfect bun.

"Nice to meet you too, Willow," Mrs. Turner replied. Her voice was not that of a normal old woman. It was more cold, but Willie just tried her hardest to act normal and not judge a book by her voice. "Alex never told us that you were American."

She nodded and informed her, "Yeah, I moved here a couple of years ago."

"Welcome to England," Alex's father said, and she smiled at him gratefully as he and his wife sat down at the table across from the couple. He raised his eyebrows at her while placing his napkin in his lap. "What is it you do for work again?"

"Well, I—" she started.

However, Alex swiftly cut her off, answering his father's question for her. "She's a paralegal at this law firm in Richmond." She froze and shot him a confused look, but he just waved her off. She was most definitely not a paralegal. She had no clue what the hell he was talking about.

"That's good work for a girl like you," Mr. Turner told her, and she then turned to him, wondering what this family was on.

She raised her eyebrows at the man because she did not know what he meant by that. The way he said it to her did not sit right with her, and she felt bad for the woman married to him. However, it could just be a misunderstanding that she was overreacting to."What do you mean, like me?"

"Dad, she's a Richmond fan," Alex pointed out, quickly changing the subject before an argument broke out.

The older man just laughed, and it made her even more mad when he did that than when Alex bullied her about the game between Richmond and Man City. "Ooh, that must have been a tough loss for you last season."

"Yeah, it was," she replied, and her lips twisted into a very obviously fake smile. She just looked down at her food and tried not to freak out at the dinner table. However, she did freak out when they got outside and away from his parents. "What the hell was that? I'm a paralegal?"

"My parents just wouldn't understand what you do. They'd probably think you were just some kind of groupie for Richmond," he explained, and as soon as he said it, he seemed to regret it. He should have because that meant that that was what he thought of her job that she worked hard at.

Instead of debating that, she kept on the fact that he just lied to his parents about what she did for a living, the job that she loved more than anything that she had ever done. "So you just lied to them?"

"It was for your own good," he sighed exasperatedly.

"No, Alex. It was for your own good," she insisted because he did it to make it seem like he was dating the kind of girl that his parents wanted him to be with, the perfect trophy wife. "It was to make you look good in front of your parents."

He grabbed her arms that she was about to flail and took her hands in his. He shot her his best puppy dog eyes and smiled kindly. "Hey, hey, hey. I'm sorry. I didn't know it would be such a big deal. Why don't we just head back to my place and eat some ice cream and watch a movie?"

"Yeah, that sounds nice."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

We're gonna ignore the fact that I accidentally named Alex after the lead singer of the Artic Monkeys, Alex Turner.