Bachelors In Love

by Jestine Spooner

  Her father looked up when she greeted him. He squinted his eyes and almost rose up, like he wanted to embrace her. But then he looked back at Eli, his eyes blurred, and he sat back down.

  “Dad, this is my boyfriend, Eli. Eli, this is Roger Camellia.” Tia took Eli’s hand in hers and his chest squeezed when he felt the slight tremor of sadness run through her.

  “Mr. Camellia,” Eli said as he held his hand out to shake. Roger looked blankly at it.

  “Elijah Bird,” Darlene’s voice rang out clear as a bell from the other side of the room.

  Eli and Tia turned and were surprised to see that she’d turned away from the television and was looking at Eli with a shrewd, cunning look in her eye. She crossed her arms and rose.

  “Three years ago you had 35 touchdowns, only ten interceptions, two of which came on drops.” She cocked her head to one side as Tia’s mouth dropped open and Eli started to grin. “You’ve got a big arm. And they say you’re a deep ball thrower at heart but your fifteen-yard out route is the best in the league. Or at least it was, when you could manage to keep your ass off of Injured Reserve.”

  Tia stiffened but Eli’s grin could have split the sun. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Darlene blinked at Tia. “Hi.”

  Her eyes weren’t clear, but she wasn’t belligerent or distraught either. She turned back to Eli. “Take a seat, Elijah Bird. I don’t suppose a high and mighty football player would know anything about tennis.”

  Eli pulled up an armchair beside Darlene and leaned forward to the tennis match she’d just flipped to on ESPN2. “I know that Serena Williams is the best athlete in the world right now.” He turned and grinned at Tia. “And that she’s almost as fun to watch as me.”

  Tia stood a few feet back and watched in stunned silence while Eli and Darlene talked sports.

  “What are you doing here?” Roger’s voice asked, so quietly, from behind Tia.

  Tia ignored the slicing pain at her father’s resigned confusion. “I came to visit you, Dad.”

  “Oh.” His eyes went back out the window and he watched the trees buffet in the breeze.

  Tia smiled gently at the quiet chatting of Eli and her mother. She turned to one of the large bookshelves and perused. She didn’t want something that would tug her into another world, that’s not why she visited here. She needed something she could rest her eyes on while she sat next to her father. So he didn’t feel pressure to chat with her if he wasn’t up for it. She trailed her fingers along the shelves and pulled a big coffee table book of photography down.

  Her heart squeezed at the sight of it. It had sat in her childhood living room for as long as she could remember. It was such a prop from her childhood that Tia had never quite looked at it with an adult’s eye. She opened it now. It was portraits from around the world. Incredible photographs by a famous photographer. Each picture was astounding. Had she ever really looked in this book before? Each subject was captured in a moment, seemed to be flung between two emotions at once. The photographer took each photo at the perfect second when the subject felt more than one thing.

  She sat at the small table beside her father and started leafing through, each picture as clear and heart rending as the last.

  Her father leaned over the book next to her. “I always liked that one.”

  Tia’s head snapped up at the clear tone and sound of her father’s voice. He wasn’t confused, for the moment. Her heart softened at the look on his face. Thoughtful, serious, awed by the beauty of the photograph before him.

  She dropped her eyes to the image he was talking about and smiled through tears that pricked at her eyes. The photo was of an old woman in a straw hat, smiling back over her shoulder, a curl of dry dust rolled over shoulder, and Tia could almost feel the hot sun at the woman’s back.

  Her father absently turned the page of the coffee table book and then another. Tia gasped as he turned to one that took up two pages. It was of a young man, maybe 17, holding a baseball bat out to the side as he grinned at the camera, a look of triumph and exhaustion on his face. The image was visually stunning, rich sepia tones and harsh detail, but that wasn’t what had Tia gasping.

  “Dad, this is you! That’s a picture of you!” She would have recognized that face anywhere. Not only was it almost an exact replica of her own, her father just had one of those faces that hadn’t changed all that much over the years. Aged, sure, but changed? Not at all.

  Tia looked back and forth at the image, amazed that her father had been hidden in the pages of the coffee table book all those years and she’d never known.

  Roger grinned at the image. “Yup. That was at a neighborhood game, back home. We played on a lot out back all summer long. The photographer was passing through. None of us knew he was famous. Or about to be.” Roger smiled, his eyes dimmed and looking into the past. Tia could feel Eli’s eyes on her face from across the room but she didn’t look up, didn’t dare break the spell of her father’s memory. “I was the catcher. I’d just gotten Sunny Rosenfeld out at home. And for some reason I picked up the bat and just spun around. The photographer caught it. It was years before I realized the image was anything special.”

  “Did you ever see the photographer again?”

  “Yes, after your mother and I got married, we went to an exhibition in New York. I introduced myself. Your mother took a polaroid of the two of us.”

  Tia’s mind raced, raced because she was so excited to be having a conversation with her father and racing because she knew it was only a matter of minutes or seconds before he faded away again. “That framed polaroid that used to be in your old office? Of you and a man with your arms around each other’s shoulders?”

  Roger scrubbed a hand over his brow. “Old office? Ah…hmm.” He blinked around at the room. “What are you talking about, Greta?”

  Tia’s stomach pulled tight. Greta was Roger’s sister, and she did, admittedly, look a lot like Tia. But still, even after that moment of blazing clarity and memory, he still didn’t recognize his daughter.

  ***

  Tia was quiet as they left the retirement home and Eli completely understood. For his part, he’d been relieved at Roger and Darlene’s conditions. He’d found them easy to talk to. Confused at times, sure. But he’d heard that some people with dementia could be belligerent or despondent, either of which would have been much harder.

  He had the feeling though, that the quiet confusion and resignation that emanated from her parents made Tia just as sad as if they’d been explosive.

  He was beyond thrilled when she rested her head on his shoulder as they walked. She was bothered, sad, and she was leaning on him. Relying on him to comfort her. He wanted that. He really wanted that role.

  So he tossed an arm around her and strolled through the large parking lot like a man on an afternoon walk through a park. “Your mom sure knows sports.”

  “Yeah?” Tia smiled up at him. “I can hang with her on football, but whenever she starts talking other sports I get lost.”

  “She definitely knows what she’s talking about.”

  “She was making sense?”

  Eli considered softening the truth, realized that it wouldn’t do anybody any good and opted for honesty. He tipped his head from side to side. “Well, she knows the mechanics down cold. But she was blurry on timelines and who was retired or still playing. But it was a good conversation. I like them.”

  Tia suddenly smiled up at him with such sweetness, such a silver bright light that Eli’s heart caught dead in his throat. “Really?”

  Eli sucked in a breath. “Yes, of—”

  “Elijah!”

  Eli stiffened and automatically turned toward the voice. A flashbulb went off in his and Tia’s face, catching their surprised expressions. He automatically shoved her behind him as they strode toward her car.

  It was fucking Sid Eskey again. Twice in one day? Jesus. He must have tailed them to the nursing home. Eli was used to having h
is life picked over with a fine tooth comb. But this was Tia’s life. He felt a roaring protectiveness light up inside him. This was way over the line. Especially for Sid. Who was ruthless, but still one of the more human paps.

  “Elijah, who’s your girl?”

  “None of your business, Sid,” Eli called over the top of her car as he opened the passenger side door for Tia and helped her slide into the seat. He wanted badly to look at her face, to see how she was taking this, but he wouldn’t do that in front of Sid and his camera. He couldn’t afford having that moment stolen from him. So he just shut her door and strode around the car.

  “Come on, Elijah? Don’t you have any loyalty to your old friend?” Eskey stood to make a lot of money on any exclusive pics of Eli with a new woman, depending on who he sold it to. And if they came along with a name? Triple the money.

  Eli didn’t even dignify that with a response. He just slid into the driver’s seat of Tia’s car and slid the seat back to fit him. Sid stood in the window of the car and lifted the camera again.

  Jesus, he was about to take a picture of them inside the car. Eli had had that kind of thing happening for a long time, but it sickened him to have it happening to Tia.

  Without even buckling his seatbelt, Eli threw the car in reverse and was peeling out of the parking lot before Eskey could get another shot.

  “Put your seatbelt on, Eli,” Tia’s voice was even and calm, but when he glanced over at her, he could see her face was tight with tension.

  He buckled. “Tia—”

  “Does that happen a lot?”

  Eli paused, fumbling for words as he tried to get a bead on her. “Sure. Less lately, but I imagine interest in me is picking up again now that everyone is trying to figure out if I’ll be off Injured Reserve this season.”

  Tia nodded and cleared her throat, looking out the window. “Will you?”

  “Be off IR?”

  She nodded again, still not looking at him.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  She was quiet. And so was he.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Come on, Eli, you can do better than this,” Ricky growled as he loomed over him, spotting him on the bench press. “Three more.”

  “Fuh-uck.” Eli ground the word out through clenched teeth, his rib cage on fire. But for once in a good way. He pushed through the reps and his arms fell like jelly to his sides as Ricky set the weight back.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Ricky grinned at Eli. “You’re really improving!”

  “Yeah,” Eli growled, scraping a towel over his sweaty body.

  “Seems like you have some motivation,” Ricky said, tossing Eli a bottle of water.

  Eli looked up at him in confusion. “You mean trying to get back on the roster this season?”

  Ricky shook his head. “Nah, I was talking about your new girl. Seems like she’s doing your body good.” Ricky said it casually, but seeing Eli with some chick on the cover of the tabloid had stomped Ricky’s budding crush into a hundred million pieces. He knew better than to catch feelings for his clients. And star athletes.

  Eli’s head snapped up. “What did you hear?”

  Ricky shrugged. “Not much, just what I saw on the cover of a tabloid in the checkout aisle. The picture spoke though, man. Seems like you’ve got it bad for each other.”

  Eli’s mouth had hardened into a thin line. He didn’t respond to Ricky’s comments about Tia.

  He was showered and pulling into her driveway not an hour later. He knew she was off tonight.

  “Hi!” she said as she pulled the door open, surprised and flushed and happy to see him.

  He had to grab her and bring her in for a kiss before another thing happened. There she was, happy to see him. He wondered if that would be the case if she knew that a tabloid had been released with her face on the cover. All because of him. “Hi, baby.”

  “I was just making soup. You want some?” She sniffed at him. “You smell like the gym shampoo. You must be hungry if you came from rehab. How did it go?”

  Eli followed her into the house and found his eyes glued to her bare feet. Her gorgeous ankles where they disappeared into deep blue leggings. She wore a baggy patterned tunic over top and her hair in a messy bun atop her head. He always liked seeing her in her home. Her natural habitat. For as proper and put together as she was at work, Tia was the master of relaxing in her own house.

  Case in point the half drank glass of wine on the island counter and the Alabama Shakes playing over her small kitchen speakers.

  “Am I intruding on a date with yourself?” he asked, a grin going wide on his face. One that abruptly fell away when he saw what she had laid out over her counter. A tabloid.

  She had her back turned to the stove, serving up soup and slicing big chunks of bread.

  “A little bit,” she called over her shoulder, unaware that he was now staring at the tabloid like it was a black widow spider. “But you’re infinitely better company.”

  She turned back and skipped a step when she saw what he was staring at.

  “They didn’t waste any time, huh?” She kept her tone light, even though she was plenty confused about what she’d just read.

  “No. They usually don’t.” He carried the bowls of soup to the table and plunked down beside her. “Tia, I’m so, so sorry.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his apology. “They didn’t know my name, the nursing home representative that they talked to wouldn’t give any information. But whoever wrote the article said that it’s safe to assume that we’re serious since we were obviously visiting sick relatives in the nursing home.”

  Her eyes were serious and sober and a lick of panic kicked up Eli’s spine.

  “I’m so sorry, Tia,” he said again, this time reaching for her hand. “It makes me sick. Truly sick, that they intruded on your privacy like that. And that it taints a really special moment between the two of us. A moment when you let me into your life even further. I’d never want anything to spoil that.”

  Tia’s expression softened. “It’s not your fault, Eli. It’s just, this is something I’m gonna have to get used to, isn’t it?”

  Eli wanted to give her any other answer than the one he had for her. Any answer. “Yeah. It’s part of the Elijah Bird package.”

  “How do you handle it?”

  “I ignore it for the most part. And there are parts of my life that I’ve kept completely, almost desperately private.”

  Her silver eyes searched his for a second. Ham waddled up to Eli’s leg and set his heavy head on his knees, staring up lovingly. Eli couldn’t help but smile down at the little meatloaf, breaking off a hunk of bread and feeding it to him.

  “You invited me to meet your parents,” Eli reflected, almost thoughtfully. “You let me into your life in a real way.”

  “Yes…” Tia’s eyes searched his, not exactly knowing where he was going with this.

  Eli cleared his throat. “Tia, I can’t promise that I can keep the paparazzi away from us, but if I’m concentrating on it, I can really avoid them. I did it for a long time after my knee surgery.”

  “I remember,” Tia said, her eyes holding his but a bit of peach colored her cheeks. “I was really anxious for information on how you were doing, and there was basically nothing. It was like you went dark.”

  Eli nodded. “When there’s something that I really, really need to keep private, I can do it. I know because that’s what I did then.”

  “You were trying to keep your recovery process private?”

  Eli nodded. “Yes and no. I needed to keep my recovery process private, but not from the knee surgery.” He raised his eyes to hers, knowing that he was about to tell her something that his dad, Kat, Jay, Marcus, and Coach Best were the only people on earth who knew. That and a highly specialized team of doctors. He blew out a deep breath. “After I blew out my knee, the surgeon who was performing my reconstructive surgery noticed a tumor on my tibia while in surgery. I was diagnosed with osteos
arcoma within the week.”

  Tia’s eyes went ice still. But her hand tightened on his. Eli knew she was likely racing through everything she’d learned about the cancer in med school.

  “I went through two more surgeries that week and then started chemotherapy soon after.”

  “Was it completely resectable?” Tia asked in a voice Eli had come to recognize as her doctor voice.

  Eli nodded. “They removed all of it, it hadn’t metastasized. And I responded well to the chemo. I mean, as well as anyone can respond to having low grade poison constantly pumped through your body for months.” He scraped his hands over his powerful chest. “But I’m cancer free now. The chemo drastically reduces the risks of a recurrence, though you never know. So diligence is the name of the game for the next decade or so.”

  Tia was quiet, staring him in the eye but not really seeing him. All she could think was that he’d been sick, so sick, and she hadn’t been there. Of course she hadn’t, considering they hadn’t reconnected yet at that point. But still, the doctor in her winced at the fact that he’d needed her and she hadn’t been by his side. “Oh, Eli.”

  “It’s okay, Tia. Honestly, I think it hit the people around me harder than it hit me.”

  “Oh, Eli.” Her hand found its way to his cheek. “Don’t belittle what you went through. It must have been terrible.” She paused, wondering if she should say what came to her next. “Your mother had osteosarcoma.”

  Eli’s eyes shot to hers. “You remembered that from high school?”

  She nodded. “I wish I had been there with you, Eli.”

  Neither of them knew if she was talking about when his mother died or when he’d battled cancer. Maybe she meant both times. He leaned in to kiss her, found that he simply had to. “I had good surgeons working on me, baby.”

  “I wish I had been there as your girlfriend.”

  And he had to kiss her again. “You had plenty to deal with at that time, trust me. I think it all worked out for the best.”