Fuck’s sake, I was getting sappy. I should have gotten my rocks off with Elise last night. I was hot and restless and pretty desperate for a good fuck.
“She calmed down for you, then?” My brother Gabe wandered out onto the porch wearing nothing but his boxers.
“Yah Bro, she’s chill,” I said. “But she’s starting to stink, so if you want to take her and take care of that…” Gabe came and gently lifted Katie out of my arms. If you looked at my brother and me side by side, you’d never guess we were related. Gabe’s at least four inches shorter than me, and I’ve got about fifty pounds of muscle on him. He’s always been quiet, soft spoken, where I tend to be louder and more assertive.
I stood up, cracking my neck and flexing my shoulders, stiff from sitting still.
“You heading out?” asked Gabe, as I walked off the porch.
“Going on a run. Then I got some business to take care of.”
“Business in town?”
I pretended I hadn’t heard him. Instead, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, put my earbuds in, and began to jog.
There are two parts to Serenity, the mainland and the island. The mainland stretches inward and is a real mix of socio-economic statuses; the island costs big money to live on and has the fancier restaurants and bars that we were never able to afford as kids. Gabe doesn’t live on the island, but he’s not far from one of the bridges.
The Mangroves, on the other hand, was seated on the island in the shadow of the Barton Bridge, which connected the island to the mainland. It’s right on the water and, on one side, has a dock where boaters can park and order lunch. It has a huge wrap-around deck with an overhanging roof and paddle fans, and there’s an enormous inside seating area. I didn’t remember it being so big back in high school and, when I reached the restaurant about forty sweaty minutes later, I wondered if Courtney had renovated it.
It was only eight o’clock – way too early for The Mangroves to be open, but I figured that, if Courtney was running the place, she’d be here. The Courtney Hart I knew was wild, but she never slacked on anything a day in her life.
Upon discovering the front gate locked, I wandered around onto the back porch.
“You looking for the boss?” called a women, standing in the doorway to the main dining room.
“Courtney Hart,” I said, in case my information was wrong and she wasn’t the boss.
“I’ll see if I can find her,” said the woman, “have a seat wherever,” and she closed the door and disappeared.
I looked around, realizing quickly that I wasn’t the only person on the deck. There was a skinny, dark haired girl maybe ten or eleven years old, who was sitting at one of the high tops coloring. As if she sensed me, she looked up, beamed a crooked-toothed smile and gestured at me with her crayon.
So I wandered over. “Whatcha drawing, kid?” I asked, staring down at her paper. I blinked. She was drawing a football field – I could definitely make out the yellow goal posts and the green rectangle of the field. She’d no sense of dimension, but the shapes were clear enough.
“Hey that’s pretty good,” I lied. “You watch football?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “You play football?”
“Now how’d you know that?” I pulled out the chair and sat down with her, snatching the paper out from under her fingers and stealing a crayon. This is my move: insert yourself into the conversation physically – it works with women and little girls worldwide. I began to draw a stick-figure, and expected the girl to object, but she watched me with interest.
“You’re big, and I’ve never seen you before. So you might be in town for that coach’s funeral. So. One plus one…”
“You’re pretty sharp, kid,” I said, glancing over to the door to see if the woman had come back yet.
“I’m Lea,” she said, and she stuck her hand under my nose so that I had to look up at her and take it.
“Mac,” I said.
Lea frowned, pursing her lips. “Oh.” She looked dejected. “I thought you were him.”
“Who’s him?”
The girl shrugged. “No one.” She snatched back the paper and her crayon. “Wow,” she said. “You suck at drawing.”
“Thanks.” I looked back at the door, in time to see Courtney breeze through the dining room on her way elsewhere. “Hey, I gotta run. See you later.”
“Sure,” said the girl, but her tongue was already sticking out of her mouth, face screwed up as if to determine how she might fix the picture I’d ruined.
5
Courtney
“I swear to god, if that damn busboy used all the lemons for the bar garnish…”
I ducked behind the bar to open the bar fridge. Sure enough. There was a bucket of lemon wedges – way more than were necessary. “Shit. Someone is going to have to go out and get more.”
“Is someone down there with you, or are you expecting the fridge to respond?”
I snapped my mouth shut. My heart leaping. What was he doing here?
I shut the fridge door, hoping my face didn’t betray the fact that my heart was pounding hard against my ribcage. I stood up and looked right into the dark and devastating eyes of Ryan Mcloughlin. Men should not be allowed to have eyes that beautiful.
“What are you doing here?” Great Courtney. Start by being antagonistic.
Ryan must have heard the snap in my voice, because his warm smile turned a bit brittle. “You didn’t call me last night,” he said, resting his forearms on the bar and leaning so that our heads were on level. I resisted the urge to take a step back, to put distance between us.
“Was I supposed to?” I asked.
Ryan’s smile turned flirtatious. “Yah.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I had other things going on.”
“I get that,” said Ryan, nodding. “Though I have to admit I was disappointed. I was hoping we might hit up Reds, or take a stroll on the beach for old-times’ sake.”
I rolled my eyes. “Since when were you ever interested in old times’ sake? I honestly can’t believe you’re here. You said you weren’t ever going to come back.”
“Ah,” said Ryan. “My brother moved back home, had a kid. Coach died…seemed like a good enough reason to come back to Serenity.”
Right. I vaguely recalled hearing that Gabe Mcloughlin had moved back into town.
“Well,” I said, reaching down into the fridge and pulling up the tub of lemons. “What I’m hearing is: Courtney, I came back for a lot of reasons – none of them was to see you. So why are you here?”
Ryan’s smile faded. “I didn’t think you’d still be in town,” he said. “Or I would have tried to reach out. I figured you left a long time ago.”
I shot him a glance. “Really? Because if I’m remembering our last conversation correctly, you were pretty sure I was never going to leave Serenity.”
Ryan had nothing to say to that. The silence turned awkward. I was about to walk off when he cleared his throat. “So I hear you’re running the restaurant now. I never pictured you running a restaurant.”
“No. What did you think I was going to do?” What I wouldn’t give to be a bit more cool-headed. I wished I wasn’t still angry at Ryan. Angry meant I still cared. I didn’t want to care.
“I don’t really know. I didn’t really worry. Whatever you were going to do you were going to kick ass at it. Look at this place,” he said, looking around, giving me a view of that perfect, all-American, profile: face carved from marble, thick, dark brows, slightly dimpled chin… “How much of it did you renovate?”
The restaurant was a safe subject. “The boat bar,” I said. “The back dining room.”
“Looks good. You guys get a lot of business?”
“Yah, we’re doing really well.”
“Can I say that I’m happy for you?” He was smiling at me the way he used to smile at me. Everything was a joke to Ryan – he took nothing seriously but football. And then all of a sudden he’d look at me, and I knew he was taking me seri
ously. I’d once been the only other thing in the world he’d taken seriously.
Trapped in his gaze, I felt like a fly caught on spider’s silk. I licked my lips.
“Can I take you out?” he asked, softly. “I’d really like to take you out. To The Point. Remember that summer we worked there? Have you been back?”
“Once or twice.”
“I haven’t. I want to go. Will you go with me?”
So open, so easy. No games. He wanted me to go with him. And I wanted to go. Badly. And for all the wrong reasons. Goddamn it. This is what I get for never letting go, for keeping those damn year books, for watching his games, and reading his interviews, and following his social media: He comes back into Serenity, and I’m putty in his hands.
“I’m not interested in rekindling an old flame,” I said. There.
I could see that my response surprised him. He’d expected me to agree to go. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Well maybe I’m not either. Maybe I just want to catch up.”
I shrugged.
“I’m going. Tonight. I’m putting on a suit and tie and I’m going to sit out by the water and wait for you. If you don’t come, I’ll sit out there, sad and lonely, looking like a prize idiot.” He smiled at me again and reached out a casual hand, grabbing mine up before I could draw it back. He reached down and pressed a warm kiss to the tops of my knuckles. “I hope you’ll be there tonight,” he said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
And with that, he exited the restaurant.
Of all the bullshit emotional blackmail!
“Ohhhh I know that look. Someone’s about to get it,” Adriana took up the space on the other side of the bar that Ryan had vacated. “That was him, wasn’t it?”
“Would you mind your business for once?!” I snapped.
“No can do,” said Adriana, tossing her dark curls out of her eyes. “Especially not when he looks like that. Holy fuck. He looks like he’d be fun in bed.”
I was not going to think about Ryan in bed.
“So what did he want?” She asked. I sighed and told her.
“Girl! What the hell! He’s asking you out to The Point? Your inner high school cheerleader must be doing front flips!”
My stomach certainly was flipping.
“You should go!” Adriana pressed.
I pulled out my phone and hauled up Ryan’s Instagram. “Here,” I said, handing the phone to her. “Go ahead. Just scroll. And don’t forget to read the hashtags.”
Adriana scrolled through, the excitement in her face lessening with each caption she read. Ryan’s Instagram account was a laundry list of all the girls he’d ever fucked. Each photo was him with a new beauty and some gross caption like, #Igottafeelin #2nitesgonnabeagoodnite. Gross.
“So he’s easy,” she said. “When was the last time you had sex?”
“I’m not going to sleep with him.”
“Why on earth not!? I’ll watch Lea. Listen – who else better to get it in with than your ex who you know is leaving town in a few days. You have to go out tonight and sleep with him! What would eighteen-year old Courtney do? Revenge sex! Ride him hard, leave him wanting more, and then deny him!?”
“God, you really were a loser in high school,” I muttered. “No one actually does that shit.”
“Well I would if I had the chance. I would hop on his stick if I weren’t married…”
“I’m going to tell Brandon you said that.”
“You are not. You’re going to get over all your bullshit and you’re going to meet that hottie at the Point and you’re going to take him home, fuck him senseless, and throw him out on his ass! I’ll bring Lea to sleep over at my place tonight.”
“You’ll do no such thing.”
Adriana straightened and beamed at me. “You see if I don’t,” she said. “I’ll be over eight o’clock sharp. And I’m telling Lea. She’ll be packed and waiting to go and if you back out on her she’ll never forgive you.” And with that, Adriana straightened and sauntered away, tauntingly shaking her ample ass.
I watched her open the door to the porch and tell Lea about their sleepover. I watched my daughter light up and jump up and down. Shit.
6
Ryan
“Looking slick, brother. Where are you headed?”
“The Point,” I said, fastening my Rolex onto my wrist and smoothing the lapels on my Armani jacket. I clean up nice.
“Meeting up with some friends?”
“Meeting up with Courtney.”
Gabe was silent a moment, and so I turned around and glanced at him. “Got something to say about that?”
Gabe stared at the floor considering. Then he looked up. “I don’t know if you want to hear what I have to say.” Was he kidding? Why was he suddenly so serious?
“Gabe,” I said. “You look like Dad. Seriously. You’re giving me that fucking ‘Dad face’ he used to give me whenever I left the house.”
“I’m worried about you. When you broke up with Courtney you left home and didn’t even speak to anyone for almost two years.”
I shrugged. “I wanted a clean break.”
Gabe pressed his lips together. “And now you’re back here, picking up where you left off?”
“Gabe. No offense, but what the fuck does this have to do with you?”
My brother crossed his arms over his chest. “Courtney’s not the only one you bailed on when you left, Brother. And that shit wasn’t easy. Mom left, and then two years later, you left. And dad dragged me down to the Keys, where I had to finish high school with a whole bunch of people I didn’t know. That was terrible. I’m family, so I have to take you back and forgive you. But I can’t imagine Courtney’s going to appreciate you traipsing into her life and then traipsing out again.”
I glared at my brother. “What the hell man? This is heavy shit. I’m just going out for drinks.”
Gabe was silent a moment, watching me. “You know what sucks?” he asked after a second.
No. I didn’t know what sucked, and I didn’t much feel like hearing about it.
“Being lonely,” said my brother. “It sucks.”
Fuck, Gabe. Hit me right in the gut, then.
“You know what makes it better?” He asked.
Would he just leave already?
“Sharing your life with someone. It’s hard, but it kills the loneliness. And it doesn’t have to be a lover. Who are your friends, Ryan?”
I refused to answer him if he was going to be a dick.
“I think Courtney’s the last person you ever let get close. I can’t help but feel like the reason you never even tried to make it work with someone is because of Mom…”
“Listen Doctor Phil. If you don’t mind, I’m trying to get out of here…”
“Doesn’t he remind you of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast?” Ellie appeared in the doorway holding Katie, a burping cloth thrown over one shoulder. She’s cute, my brother’s wife. Short, curvy, dark-haired. A bit oblivious though. She was grinning at me and didn’t seem to realize that she’d interrupted what was about to be a killer argument.
“That’s not a comparison I’ve ever put together, no,” said Gabe, dryly.
“Where are you going looking so fancy?” asked Ellie. “The Point?”
There were a few fancy restaurants in town, but The Point was known more for fancy cocktails than fancy dinners. It was a place where wealthy locals and snow birds went for drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
“Who are you meeting up with?” asked my sister in law, looking wistful. She and Gabe don’t really get a chance to go out much anymore. I should probably volunteer to stay in one night and watch the baby.
“An old high school honey,” I said, trying to shake my brother’s words off. I turned away from the mirror and moved into the kitchen. Gabe and Ellie followed.
“Courtney Hart,” Gabe clarified for Ellie. “She’s the woman who owns The Mangroves.”
I blinked at Gabe. “You’ve been keeping track of her?”
�
�I’ve eaten there before and seen her.”
“You never said anything to me about it.” I don’t know why I was feeling suddenly defensive. I suppose it was because Courtney had seemed annoyed that I hadn’t come back into town to see her.
“Would it have made a difference if I had?” asked Gabe, looking at me pointedly. “I didn’t think you were interested in knowing about your high school girlfriend. Also, brother, we don’t really talk that much. I didn’t find out you were coming down until about a week ago.”
True. I hadn’t visited Gabe and Ellie since they’d moved to Serenity. And I don’t make a lot of time to chat with my brother. We’re just not that close. Would it have made a difference, if I’d known Courtney was living in Serenity?
If I’m being honest, probably not.
Knowing that Courtney was in Serenity and seeing her with my own eyes were two different things entirely. I hadn’t thought about Courtney in ages. Now? I was having trouble not thinking about her. What had she said to me all those years ago? I tried to remember. There’s no one out there better for you than me. Was she right? I certainly hadn’t found anyone. Then again – had I been looking?
“I gotta run,” I told my brother.
On the way to The Point, I couldn’t help but think about what my brother said about our mother and about not letting anyone get close. My mother had left us when I was sixteen. She’d worked for an engineering company and travelled to Delaware on business. One day she came home, told my father that she’d met someone in Delaware, had been seeing him for two years, and was moving there to be with him. She’d packed her bags, left two days later, and hadn’t come back. Though she had reached out to Gabe and I, she’d stopped about five years ago when I just flat-out refused to respond to her. Don’t need that kind of bullshit in my life.
It upset me that Gabe accused me of doing something similar. But I guess I had.
When I arrived at the point, I headed out onto the back deck. Fuck. There went my plan of sitting all by myself.
Bad Ballers: A Contemporary Sports Romance Box Set Page 20
