by Vivian Lux
I loved them together. But I wasn't blind to the complications they had. Away games, long practices...all that time apart. Waiting for each other. Candace was still adjusting to getting stalked by the paparazzi. Not to mention the press coverage and having to share him with the fans. If you asked me, the whole thing pretty much sucked, though she seemed really happy. I was glad for her, but I wasn't about to try it out myself.
"Listen, Candy, I'm just not a monogamy type, okay? I'm not a swan. I'm a bonobo."
"What the fuck?" Candace sighed. It was a familiar sigh.
"I was doing research..."
"Of course you were." She pinched the bridge of her nose but fell silent anyway, ready to listen to me. She was good like that.
"I like to know about these things," I told her. "I'm a scientist of sluttishness. Anyway, bonobos are primates, just like we are. Only, they don't form monogamous pairings and all that crap. They fuck with abandon and they fuck a lot. Hell, they even fuck just to say hello!"
"To say hello?" Candace echoed weakly.
"Just walk right up and hop on. Because it feels good. They give and take with no hang-ups. In fact, scientists say that sex is the backbone of their society. Isn't that awesome?"
"You're not a monkey, Olivia."
"Bonobos are primates, not monkeys."
"Whatever." She waved her hands, frustrated. "Let me try this again," she said, clearing her throat. "Olivia, you're my best friend..."
"Damn straight," I interrupted. "And you're stuck with me, bitch."
Candace chuckled. "Yes. I know."
"I'm Auntie Olivia. I'm the one who will show up drunk at your baby shower bearing a completely inappropriate gift."
"Yes, you've mentioned that.…"
"And I'm the one who's going to take your little prince or princess around the back of your pretty little house and teach them how to smoke." I reached out and patted her stomach. "This little one can come to me with all the questions about sex and how the world actually works that Mama is too busy blushing to answer...."
"Sounds wonderful," Candace interrupted tiredly. "But you're talking too much and I'm trying to say something important here."
I grinned proudly. "That's what I do best."
"Brad is Ian's best friend," she went on, her voice dropping significantly.
I swallowed. "Well. Uh. Yeah."
"Yeah," Candace echoed. "You can see how this will be a little complicated."
"What's complicated about it? We're all adults. We can still hang out and not want to kill each other, right?"
"I want to kill you a daily basis," Candace interjected.
"Of course," I said. "But you and I will get over this, just like he and I did. This is our version of bros before hoes, Candy. Besties before testes."
"Ugh." She stood up. "Don't think you're off the hook here. I'm only stopping this conversation because I really have to pee. I love you Liv, but I think you made a bad call here."
I smiled up at her. "You know what I'm going to say, though, right?"
She rolled her eyes. "Don't," she sighed, and turned to leave.
"No regrets!" I shouted down the aisle at her anyway.
Several balding heads poked up from the surrounding cubicles, like gophers out of their holes. "Sorry," I giggled and turned back to my screen. I wiped my forehead again and took a sip of water from my jug. I felt pretty damn satisfied with myself in spite of Candace's lecture. She could harp on this all she wanted and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. It was done. I had made the right decision.
And even if I hadn't, I was over it already.
Chapter 2
Brad
There was always a moment - just before waking - when I felt completely safe. Suspended in that moment between dreams and wakefulness, it was easy for me to imagine that everything was okay. That I wasn't the living embodiment of Murphy's Law, and that everything that could go wrong hadn't gone completely ass-up yet.
Then I woke up all the way. And everything that could go wrong already had.
The spot in bed next to me was empty.
We had only been fucking for a few months - and unofficial fucking at that - but already I was used to thinking of it as Olivia's spot. Olivia's spot in my bed was empty. She'd left me last night, and what was worse was that I told her it was 'fine with me' that she went. I told her she could go, that it 'made sense' that we broke up, that my focus needed to be on the upcoming season and I 'couldn't give her the attention she needed, no, deserved.'
Actually, I didn't say any of these things. I didn't get a word in edgewise.
I sat there, like an asshole, nodding as she said all of these things to me. At me. Agreeing with her that 'yes, this is the right decision.' Acting like I believed that we were making the right call.
We were.
Probably.
Maybe.
I had no fucking idea.
Whatever her reasons for leaving me, at least we left on a high note. I fucked her one last time and left us both smiling and satisfied, and then walked out the door. It was better that we broke up when we did. Before things started going wrong. Before they went south, like they inevitably did.
Before she started hating me.
I got out of bed and wandered into the kitchen. The calendar on my big, empty fridge had tomorrow circled in black Sharpie. The start of training camp. The off-season was over. Today was my last free day for a long-ass time and I wasn't spending it with Olivia. She had to work today, so we agreed that our final fuck would be on a Sunday night. All officially negotiated and signed on the dotted line and shit.
Now I was realizing that our timing completely sucked. What the hell was I going to do with myself today? Today was my last taste of freedom and while I should have spent it buried between Olivia's thighs, we'd jumped the gun, and now I had nothing to look forward to except a whole long day of blankness.
I opened the refrigerator and peered inside. There were a few odds and ends on the shelf; a container of takeout, some of that weird hummus shit Olivia liked. Maybe my grocery bill would go down now without Olivia eating me out of house and home. God, that girl could pack food away like a champ. Sometimes I would just set my fork down and watch her, a big dumb smile spreading across my face, the pleasure of watching a pretty girl devour her food with reckless abandon. Olivia devoured everything whole; food, life, my fucking heart…
No.
I shook my head, reminding myself to put that shit aside. It wasn't love. She and I had fun together. We fucked like crazy, but that was the extent of our connection. The few conversations we had, the ones that usually happened after we'd fucked ourselves stupid, consisted mainly of arguing over where we were going to eat. Olivia was not one for post-coital pillow talk. We'd been fucking on the regular for four months, and I still didn't know her middle name. She had never met my mother, never see me play hockey…
And I wasn't even sure she cared about any of it.
That woman had a wall around her at least fifty feet high. The few times I tried to knock it down, or even find a crack in it, she deflected me with sarcastic, biting humor and such a whip-cracking condescension that I just fell silent, my words abandoning me, subdued by her lashing tongue.
No. The breakup was a good thing. I didn't miss her, just her pussy.
Oh, and the way she didn't give a single fuck about anything. That was fun too. She was fun.
A fun, flirty, fucking insane piece of ass.
I ate the rest of her weird hummus - it was actually pretty tasty - for breakfast and headed out of the door.
Without anything to do with all of my restless energy, I headed to the gym. Nothing like a righteous sweat to drive the thoughts from your brain. No one talked at the gym. It was a good place to escape.
It was still early in the morning and I had the place to myself. Which was good. I didn't feel like seeing any of the guys yet. I'd see plenty of them tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that for the next six months. I
knew how it would go. First, we'd be thrilled to be back at it, the newness of the season, the wide-open possibilities making us giddy as hell. We'd practice all day and then go out with each other at night, unwilling to let go of the connection we were forging.
Teammates.
It was a special kind of bond that people on the outside just couldn't understand. There was closeness there that was unrivaled, almost like a brotherhood.
But that didn't mean I didn't get sick to death of them sometimes some days. Especially days like today. On days like today, even Ian would be too much.
My best friend was a swaggering asshole and totally proud of it too. He liked to give me shit and watch me clam up and turn red, too tongue-tied to fight back. He knew just how far to push me before I'd snap and deck him.
I fought with my fists. Not my mouth. The stutter I'd struggled with all through my childhood had cleared up with speech therapy, but I still always waited to talk until I was certain I actually wanted to speak. Until it was necessary and worth it. And when I did talk, I chose my words carefully; picking ones I knew wouldn't betray me.
Six miles on the treadmill flew by in a heartbeat. I immediately switched over to deadlifts, working on my explosive power. I was pushing myself hard, way too hard for the day before practice started. I was going to exhaust myself and have nothing left for tomorrow.
But I couldn't help it.
I was completely out of breath when my phone rang.
For one brief second, I thought it might be Olivia, calling me back, telling me that she fucked up, babbling on about how breaking up was actually a really stupid-ass idea, that we could totally make things work during the regular season. For just a second, I could almost hear her voice - low and powerful for a woman's - and the way she hit certain words with everything she had, smacking her consonants around like they owed her money and waving her hands for emphasis.
I smiled as I imagined what she was calling about. Life on the road is tough, she'd say but we can make it work, right Brad? We're good at this, let's just keep going. It doesn't have to be over. I'll just have to wait for you.
That's where the little fantasy evaporated.
Olivia would never wait for me.
I shook my head, and answered the phone with a gruff, "What?"
The sound of the recording on the other end had me sitting up straight on the weight bench. "You have received a collect call from an inmate at Metropolitan Correctional Center. Do you accept the charges?"
I swallowed, licked my lips. "Yeah," I grunted.
The disembodied female voice chirped in my ear. "Please state your intentions clearly using the words 'Yes' or 'No.'
"Oh goddammit, yes. Yes, I accept."
There was a loud clunking, and then suddenly the line was filled with the sound of voices in the background. "Hello?" I called into the echoing din.
There was a scrabbling sound, and then the noises died away as my brother lifted the receiver to his ear. "Brad!"
Every feeling in the world suddenly invaded my chest at once. Joy at hearing my older brother's voice. Rage at, well, everything about him. Frustration with his arrogance in thinking he was above the law, and his stupidity in getting caught. And irritation that he was choosing today, of all days, to call me up out of the blue and drop his shit into my lap.
Because that was what Marcus did. His shit was my shit no matter how much I railed against it. Marc always tangled me up in the convoluted shit show that was his life and I let myself get tangled up in it because...well...because it was Marc and I missed him.
I wanted to hug him and also murder him. We were brothers. That was how these things went.
I was really happy he'd called.
"Dude! It's good to hear from you!"
Marcus laughed. "You don't have to lie," he said. "You won't hurt my feelings, believe me, I've been through worse."
"Oh stop complaining. Federal prison is a total walk in the park compared to St. John's and Sister Rosemary and you know it."
My brother whistled through his teeth. "That old bat hated me. I swear to god. I think she prayed the rosary every night that I'd end up dead. Or worse, an altar boy."
I chuckled. "So what's the word?"
My brother paused for a second. "I've got news, Brad."
A little alarm bell went off in my head. "Your hearing?"
"It was this morning."
I nodded, inwardly cursing myself that I'd forgotten something so important. "And?"
Marc let out a whoosh of air. "It was approved, Brad. Parole was granted. In the eyes of the state of Illinois, I've been rehabilitated."
I sank my fingers into the padding on the weight bench, not daring to hope. "So this means…?"
"This means they're letting me out. One more week, little brother. One more week in this filthy hellhole, and then I'm walking out of here a free man."
"That's incredible, Marc! Congratulation!"
"Thanks." He paused. "And...you know I hate to ask this, Brad, but I'm kind of in a bind here."
Here we go.
"It's gonna be a second before I can find a job, especially with my rap sheet," Marc wheedled. It sounded like he was reading from a script. "Find an apartment, get my shit together, all that. And I was hoping that my little brother the hockey star, with his big apartment that sits empty half the time... "
He kept talking, but I tuned him out. I could hear his sheepish grin through the phone, and could picture it perfectly even though we hadn't been face-to-face in months. My older brother, always the charmer, always with the avalanche of flattery and bullshit. He was the Scott brother who could talk your ear off, while I had to struggle just to string a sentence together.
Marcus was the one who had everything fall into his lap and what did he do with what he'd been given? Piss it all away. All that talent. All those words, for nothing.
He grinned that grin of his and spouted his bullshit, and that old feeling of wanting to punch him just to get him to stop talking came roaring back.
But what the fuck could I say? He was my goddamned brother. "Of course Marc," I sighed, cutting into his monologue. "You don't even have to ask."
"Well, I will anyway. Can I stay at your place?"
I took a deep breath. My tongue felt like it was tying itself up in knots so I had to keep it simple. "Y-yes."
There was a scuffling sound, then my brother's muffled voice shouting at someone that he needed more time and to fuck off. I wondered if he had even heard me, but then he was back on the line, sounding rushed. "Thanks, man. See you soon."
The line went dead.
Chapter 3
Olivia
I pulled down my favorite mug from the shelf. It was navy blue and at one time had announced - in a swoopy gold script - that I liked my coffee the way I liked my men - hot, full of cream, and able to keep me up for hours.
Now the lettering had rubbed off and there was a chip along the rim just aching to cut my lip open when I wasn't paying attention.
But it held half a pot in one go, so it remained my favorite.
I dumped a bunch of cinnamon roll creamer into the mix, grabbed my Kindle and headed towards the couch. I had a big day of doing nothing ahead of me and I didn't want to waste a single moment.
I walked into my living room and straight into a toxic cloud of stench. "Romeo!" I screeched, waving my hand in front of my nose and nearly spilling coffee down my front.
My pit bull didn't even look up from his nap. His tail thumped twice against the floor to show that he heard me say his name, and then he went right back to snoring like a chainsaw.
"Stop farting, you stupid mutt! It smells like a slaughterhouse in here," I complained, nudging his flank with my toe. He snuffled a little and the snores mercifully decreased in volume.
That's when I heard my door buzzer go off.
"Oh, shit!" I said out loud. "Romeo! You were supposed to remind me it was my turn this month!"
My dog finally deigned to look at me.
He cocked his head, like this was all very confusing.
"Oh, whatever. Just because I'm the human doesn't mean I have to be in charge all of the time, does it?"
"Uff," barked Romeo, and I swear he sounded sarcastic.
The buzzer sounded again. I looked down at my yoga pants with the hole in the ass, and then out at my dust and dog hair covered living room.
"Well fuck it," I declared, "I am who I am."
Then I went to the door and opened to greet my irritated looking mother.
"Hey Mom," I sighed.
She stood in the hallway and crossed her arms. "You forgot, didn't you?" she accused.
Whoops.
My mother was the one who had come up with this idea. "I moved back to Chicago so we could see each other!" she had huffed to me one Saturday morning, months ago.
"I know," I had squeaked. I was a touch distracted at the time, trying to pretend that I was having a proper, sit-down conversation with my mother - when I was actually lying naked in my bed while Bradley Scott was in the process of nibbling his way up my naked thigh. I was ready to say anything to get her off the phone before he reached my pussy.
"Well, then let's make a point to see each other," she went on, ever practical. "Once a month. That's all I ask. Brunch and a chat, is that so hard? We can even alternate locations. Your place, then mine."
"Sure Mom. Sounds great!" I had to get off the phone pretty quickly once he started sucking on my clit.
So monthly Mom-brunches became a regular thing. And actually, it was pretty nice spending time with her. My mom was young, only just entering her mid-forties, and she'd long ago given up on being embarrassed by her only child. In fact, I think she regarded me as a cheap form of entertainment. Better than cable.
And I found I enjoyed one-on-one time with her. Growing up - and right into my adulthood - she had been distracted by the series of unreliable boyfriends that paraded in and out of our house like it had a revolving door.
