by Alexa Martin
“Really, Chris? You’re going to be that petty? You hate my car.”
“My car,” he says.
I guess I’ll take that as a yes.
“You’re such an asshole. I’ll call my dad, but you might want to make yourself scarce. I told him about the pictures of Ava wearing my ring, and he wants to kill you.” I throw it out there casually while I’m looking for my phone in my purse. Chris might be a big bad NFL player, but around my dad he’s still the same skinny, stuttering kid he was eleven years ago. Actually, having my dad come makes this even better. The thought causes the first hint of a smile since I found out about Ava . . . and Rachelle and Monique and Livvy and . . . well, you get the picture.
“I can take you if you need a ride,” says a new, deep voice. And with one short sentence, the smile is long gone.
Chris told me last night that Gavin was coming over to go over some plays with him, but I guess discovering years of betrayal caused me to forget. Clenching my eyes shut, I send up a silent prayer Gavin cancelled and it’s another person witnessing this personal low point in my life. My hands stay frozen in my bag, like maybe if I make no sudden movements I’ll be able to vanish into thin air. I turn as slowly as I can to identify our new guest.
When I manage to convince myself to open my eyes, my gaze is met with Gavin’s hard, angry one before he shifts it to Chris. Even though I’m standing still, I can’t get my breathing to slow down.
“No. She’s not going to burden my boys with her shit.”
“You’re not my boy, Alexander. And this shit you’re pulling right now is why you never will be.”
Welp, that gets my attention.
Chris sucks in a breath so deep, it’s a wonder he doesn’t pass out.
“You can go to my truck, Marlee,” Gavin says. “I’ll get your bags.” Locked tight in a glare-off with Chris, Gavin doesn’t even look at me when he offers.
“Thanks.” My answer is quick and quiet, and I’m out the front door before Chris can even register that I’ve left.
Or before I realize I’m leaving with Gavin.
That escalated quickly.
Seven
“Everything you needed was by the door, right?” Gavin asks.
I’ve been sitting in the nice air-conditioned cab of his pickup truck—yes! An actual pickup truck!—while he loaded all of my bags from the house in the bed. When he’d first said “truck” I’d figured an SUV.
I didn’t want to be stuck in the house with Chris while I waited for my dad to drive all the way out here, but sitting on the leather seats while Gavin climbs in next to me? Well, maybe I would’ve been better off waiting.
“Yeah, thank you for doing that.” I can’t look at him. It’s embarrassing enough to realize you’ve invested a third of your life to a total fucking dirtbag, but doing it in front of the man who has managed to sneak his way into your fantasies for the last four years takes it to a whole other level.
I’m not sure what takes up more room in the car, his presence or my shame.
“Not a problem. I’m glad I was here.” That makes one of us, I guess.
“Yeah, lucky you.”
“Marlee.” The way he says my name is almost my undoing. I was prepared for Chris’s reaction. I was ready to listen to my dad rant. What I did not brace for was the gentle way Gavin whispers my name. I promised myself no more tears, and he’s about to make me break my promise only minutes after making it.
“What?” I hate that I can’t even say one word without my voice breaking.
“Can you look at me?”
“Can we please go?” I’m not doing this on my—nope, not mine—Chris’s driveway.
“We can, but first I need you—”
“Fine!” I cut him off, narrowing my red, puffy eyes his way. “Is this what you want to see? Listen, I really appreciate you doing this, but I don’t want to talk right now. I. Want. To. Go.” I take a deep breath, reminding myself that Gavin isn’t the person I’m mad at. “Can you please just drive?”
“Yeah, I can drive.” He leans over the center console, his face mere inches from mine, and tucks a stray curl behind my ear. His hand lingers next to my face, but he doesn’t touch me again. He doesn’t retreat back to his space either. “But I’m gonna need you to put the address in my navigation so I know where I’m going.”
My address. Of course he needs my address.
My cheeks start to heat, but I can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment or lust. The tiniest hint of contact—I mean, does touching my hair even count as contact?—has my body humming. Like I’ve been in sleep mode for the last four years and with a graze across my ear, a whiff of his cologne, the heat of his breath against my cheek, he has woken me up.
“Oh. My address. Yeah . . . of course.” I lean in and start tapping on the screen, but Gavin never moves. He just sits there, invading my space while I’m praying my hands stop shaking so I can stop pushing the wrong letters.
Only once I hit enter and a voice comes through the speakers informing us a route is being created does he sit back in his seat. The little bit of space sets my nerves at ease, and I’m able to buckle my seatbelt on the first try.
Gavin shifts the truck into reverse, and I pull my attention from him to the monstrosity I’ve called home for the last three years of my life. Chris is standing in the doorway, back straight, shoulders back, with his phone to his ear, eyes to the truck as we start to pull away. For a hot second, I wonder if Ava or one of my other replacements is on the other end of the phone. I force those thoughts out of my head.
As the distance grows between me and the house, the reason I’ve always hated this place hits me. Nothing in there was for me. Every single thing Chris brought into that house was to impress other people. Whether it was his dad, teammates, or women I’d pretended not to know existed, Chris didn’t try to make it a home for us. He didn’t care if I felt comfortable. If he did, I wouldn’t have been able to fit everything important to me in the back of a pickup. If I would’ve opened my eyes at all, I would’ve seen what Chris was practically screaming in my face. He was never going to marry me, and if he ever did, that would’ve been as fake as everything else he gave me. Our entire relationship was an act. I was a showpiece he wanted to be able to dispose of whenever he felt like it.
And that realization freaking sucks.
My chest tightens, my breathing comes quicker, more painful, and I’m trying to find anything to distract me from the volcano bubbling inside of me. So when I think I hear Gavin mutter something under his breath, I latch on to it like a life raft.
“What did you say?” It comes across panicked, almost accusatory.
“Nothing.” He stays focused on the road, turning up the music with the controls on the steering wheel.
“No. You said something. What did you say?” I turn the music back down.
“It was nothing.”
“If it was nothing, then why won’t you tell me?” I’m a dog with a bone, and I’m not letting this go. Nothing he could’ve said could be worse than the thoughts bouncing around my head.
“I said Chris is a fucking idiot.”
“Oh. Okay.” I got the idea he wasn’t Chris’s biggest fan, but I still wasn’t expecting that. I reach my hand to the radio to turn the music back up, but Gavin turns the radio off before I get the chance.
“You wanted to hear what I was going to say, Marlee, so let me say it.”
Well, crap. Can I call take backs?
“Chris is a dick. Everyone on the team knows—hell, everyone on other teams know. You didn’t want to waste your life away with a guy like him. When TK said he’d marry you? You laughed, but you were the only one because every other person at the table knew he was serious. None of the guys can figure out how a fuck-off like Alexander got you, and we ask him about it often. So yeah, sucks you found out the way you did. Bu
t it doesn’t suck, you finding out.”
While a poet he is not, the sentiment’s there. And it’s there at the time I need it the most. If I hadn’t made a blood oath to myself to never date another athlete in the event that Chris and I ever broke up for real, for real, there’s a good chance I’d be climbing across the front seat and onto his lap. Highway be damned. #ClickItOrStickIt
“I think that was sweet.” The shakiness has left my voice and for the first time in a long time, I feel like a giant, 215-pound man-baby weight has been lifted off my shoulders. “Thank you.”
Gavin glances my way, taking his eyes off the road for what’s on the verge of being a second too long, and squeezes my hand before turning the radio back on. The music fills the car seconds before Future tells me all about never apologizing for cheating.
I can’t hold it in.
My eyes, still sore from crying, crinkle. My lips, bruised from how hard I was biting them, curl up. And a laugh slips out at the irony of “Low Life” being the first song I hear after leaving Chris.
Even the universe knows what’s up.
Or it’s mocking me . . .
Eight
Pulling into my childhood home, a sense of peace settles over me. The flowers my mom obsesses over every spring until fall brings their demise are the perfect accessory to my dad’s flawless, manicured lawn. The bright buds line the walkway and hang from every corner of the quaint front porch. The turquoise rocking chairs we painted when I was a freshman in high school are still sitting in the same place, though they have faded and chipped over the years.
But before I can reminisce any further, the screen door swings open and my dad comes out, already in the middle of a full-blown, on-the-verge-of-gloaty rant.
“I told you, Marlee. I told you when you came home with hearts in your eyes at sixteen I didn’t like that damn kid. He was a squirmy little fucker then and he’s still a squirmy son of a bitch today. Flying girls out here like he didn’t already have the prize in that ugly-ass palace he stuck you in.”
I love how my dad goes all papa bear for me. “I know, I know. You were right.”
“Damn straight I was.” He says the words, but it’s clear he takes no joy in this as he walks to me and wraps me up in a tight hug. “You all right, baby girl?”
“I’m fine. It’s been a long time coming. I’m just grateful I found out before I wasted more of my life on him.” It’s the truth. Crazy how fast perspective can shift over the course of a car ride. “Where’s Mom?”
“She went to the store to get some of that healthy crap you like to eat.” His lip curls up in disgust.
“It’s not like I’m juicing kale all day, but margarine isn’t real food.”
“You say tomato, I say ketchup.” He’s totally where I get my elegance from.
We’re both laughing when he looks over my shoulder and almost as fast as he grabbed me, he lets me go, straightening to his full, six-foot-three-inch height (how I’m only five foot two is still a family mystery). He growls at somebody behind me. “Who the hell are you?”
“Gavin Pope, sir.” Gavin, more swoon worthy than ever, holds his hand out to shake my dad’s. “I happened to be there when Marlee was ready to leave and offered her a ride.”
“The new quarterback, huh? Good first game. Everyone around here was glad to find out Jacobs still has some sense, bringing you in.”
What in the fresh hell is this?
Never, not once in my twenty-seven years on Earth, has my Dad ever straight-up complimented a person. Not even me!
“Thank you, sir. Hopefully he’ll get a new receiver I can throw to.”
“My man.” My dad slaps him on the back and laughs. Laughs! “Call me Jarod.”
Okay. What is this trickery?
“Nice to meet you, Jarod. I’m going to grab Marlee’s bags, where should I put them?”
“I’ll help—dropping them by the front door will be fine.” They start down the stairs, laughing and talking and going on their merry way together. I stand in the same place my dad left me, watching them, catching a few flies with my open mouth, and decide that of all the not okay things that happened today, this is the most not okay.
My dad and Gavin are not allowed to be buddies.
They’re walking back together, the perfect yin to the other’s yang. Gavin’s olive skin and blue eyes are the direct opposite of my dad’s chocolate on chocolate features. They’re both about the same height, but Gavin’s broad shoulders and defined arms make him look larger than my dad.
“Why didn’t you just drive your car, Mars?” Dad asks.
“Ummm . . .” Crap. Gavin and I started talking about the merits of country music verse hip-hop in the car and I forgot to figure out a game plan for when this question inevitably came up.
My non-answer gives away more information than I hoped. I know this because the happy-go-lucky guy who laughs and tells people to call him Jarod is long gone. His nostrils flare, and his lips are pulled in a thin, straight line. I instantly revert to my fourteen-year-old self who got caught sneaking Old Lady Jenkins’s cigarettes. My palms are sweaty, and I’m desperately searching for any plausible reason I wouldn’t have a car when Gavin decides to speak up.
“Chris told her she had to leave it.”
My nerves disappear, and I turn my hard eyes to him. He must not feel my anger—or know about my boxing skills—because he just shrugs a shoulder my way.
Traitor.
And that’s the moment my Dad loses his ever-lovin’ mind.
“He what?” He’s so loud, I swear I can feel his words. I look around to see if our neighbors rush to stand in their door frames, mistaking Jarod Harper’s wrath for an earthquake.
“It’s not a big deal, Dad. I didn’t want anything he bought me anyways.” Except my shoes. I might not care about many material items, but shoes are like mini sculptures. And what kind of designer (graphic still counts!) would I be to deny such an art form?
“I’m gonna kill him.” His volume has decreased, but the low, menacing tone manages to make the words come out ten times scarier. I think the only reason he lowered his voice is so the neighbors can’t tell the police what they heard.
I shoot a glare Gavin’s way, trying my best to say look what you did now without having to say it. Again, he just shrugs. Jerk.
“Dad, really. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. You had a car. One you bought yourself and were almost finished paying off. That fuckin’ scumbag convinced you to sell it when he gave you that ugly thing.”
“Whoa now. No need to insult Honey-Blossom. She’s innocent in all of this.” I try and pull the anger away from my car, who’s a victim just as much as I am.
“Honey-Blossom?” Gavin asks.
“Her hippy-dippy Prius,” Dad says at the same time I tell him, “My Prius.”
With this new bit of information, I can’t tell if Gavin is going to laugh at me or join my dad in his quest for blood.
“You named your car Honey-Blossom?” Gavin’s eyebrows reach his hairline, and his jaw comes dangerously close to the pavement.
“Yeah . . .”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because it’s an awesome name for an awesome car.” Am I missing the real question here? Why would anybody not want to name their car a name they found on a list for “Top Hippy Baby Names”?
“Alexander is such a fuckin’ idiot,” Gavin mumbles.
I’m not really following how he got there after asking about my car.
Dad seems to get it though. He turns his wide, brown eyes on him and says, “You get it!”
“Of course I do. The only one who didn’t is Alexander. Everything around her and all she wanted was a Prius she named Honey-Blossom.”
Ugh. And men say women are confusing?
“You guys are so strange.” I ign
ore the weird tingly feeling I have watching these two get along so well. I won’t be going to games anymore, and there’s not a chance I’d ever move back toward where the players live, so the chances of running into Gavin after this day are slim to none. But I still think about it.
“You wanna ride with me to go get it?” That is Gavin . . . Gavin asking to give my Dad a ride to Chris’s.
“Yup. Let me grab my bat first.” That’s Dad agreeing to go, but only after he gets a potential weapon.
Oh sweet lord, where is Dixie when you need someone to pray for you?
“Oh no. It’s really not that serious, you two.” Not as serious as five to ten, that is. “I have money in savings. I’m not loaded or anything, but I’ll have enough for an apartment and lightly loved car. I’m thinking I’ll name this one Bluebell Sparkle.”
“Bluebell Sparkle?” Gavin asks incredulously.
“This damn girl. You see, Gavin, you see what she does to me?” My dad sounds defeated. Like he’s accepted I’m the reason he will have a heart attack one day.
“Yes, Bluebell Sparkle, and you’re going to love her, Dad. So stop whining and let’s get the rest of my bags. And, Gavin.” I get his attention, my voice changing to a conspiratorial whisper. “If you stop encouraging my Dad, you can see my room. And if you’re really good, maybe I’ll even let you sit on my twin bed.”
“What’d I tell you? This damn girl’s gonna put me in an early grave,” Dad says to nobody and everybody.
Then the three of us get busy grabbing the rest of my bags. After we drop them in our entryway, Gavin says he has to leave, even after my Dad’s multiple attempts to keep him around for longer. I’m okay with him going, but I think I see my dad wipe a few tears as Gavin’s taillights disappear through our neighborhood.
He might’ve been a good guy today, but I’ve been around this life for too long to be tricked.
