His face drew with chagrin as his eyes roved over the pictures of all the women. When he looked up at her, he looked more serious than she could ever remember him being. “What are you really asking me, Tia? You want to know if I’ve slept with all these women?”
She stepped back from him, her expression shocked and horrified. “No, Eli. I’m asking you if it’s always going to be like this. If your past is going to be thrown in my face? If I’m going to be constantly, publicly compared to women you’ve been linked to in the past?”
“No.” His answer was blunt, and he meant it. “No, Tia. This is a particular moment in time. Where we’re new, nobody knows anything about you so they’re like vultures for the gossip. And where nobody knows if I’m playing again or not. I’m on everyone’s mind. That’s why they’re pulling this shit.” He tossed the tabloid away, into the other room.
Eli took her by the shoulders again. “Tia, I can’t protect you from every aspect of the spotlight, but if I told you I could dim the light a little bit, would you want that?”
She drew her eyebrows. “What are you saying to me?”
Eli had no idea what he was saying. Was he about to tell her that he’d retire? That he’d let the spotlight naturally fade away from them if only it meant that she was happier? That she’d agree to stick around? All he knew was that she’d said the word always like she couldn’t even stomach the thought. He didn’t want that. He wanted her to rejoice at the thought of Eli and always.
“Am I interrupting?” Ryan’s voice came from over Eli’s shoulder.
“Oh,” Tia squeaked, one hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry to make a scene at your house.”
“That’s alright,” Ryan replied easily, although his eyes flicked back and forth between Eli and Tia. “Sometimes scenes are avoidable.”
Glancing over at the tabloid flapped open on the floor in the other room, Ryan sighed deeply. He moved forward and took Tia by the hand. “If you’re still up for dinner, you could probably use a glass of wine right about now.”
Eli could have kissed his father in that moment. Because he’d known Tia was one second away from leaving the house and tearing home. But a few magic words from Ryan Bird and she was walking hand in hand with Eli’s dad into the kitchen.
“You don’t have to talk about it, of course, but I assume the troubles have something to do with that tabloid on the floor of my living room?” Ryan asked as he poured Tia a glass of wine and pulled out a chair for her at the dinner table.
Tia sighed and brushed her hair back from her face. Eli realized with a little shock that her hair was longer than it was when he’d first seen her in the hospital. They’d known each other long enough at this point for her hairstyle to have changed. He couldn’t say why that surprised him so much, but it did.
“I’m a very private person,” Tia said in a low voice. “And I have a lot to protect. My little sister for one.” Tia’s eyebrows raised in sudden horror. “Who’s dating Jace Overshire. Oh god. I can only imagine what they’ll say about the Camellia sisters when they realize that we’re dating the two highest paid players on the Stingrays.”
Ryan’s hand squeezed her shoulder lightly as he sat down next to her at the table. “Well, don’t write the story for them! I imagine dreading the story would be just as bad as reading it.”
Tia looked up, surprised at how much that made sense. “I guess you’re right. I’ll need to get better at ignoring it. The way Eli said that he does. I guess, it’s just hard because I’m not used to people looking in the first place. My whole life I’ve been able to fade into the background. And I liked it that way. That way you’re never underwhelming to people. Either they didn’t notice you or they’re impressed.”
Eli’s eyebrows shot up too. “Tia, I find it very hard to believe that people haven’t been noticing you your whole life. You’re stunning. Inside and out.”
Tia’s cheeks went peachy. “Eli, you know very well that it’s easy to miss me. Hell, you yourself didn’t even notice me in high school. And we did an entire project together!”
“What’s this?” Ryan asked, his mouth quirking up in a half smile, sensing that they were moving away from the choppier waters of the tabloid conversation.
“What can I say?” Eli asked, face palming. “I was an idiot in high school.”
“You two knew each other?”
“I knew Eli,” Tia corrected. “And had a huge crush on him. Like, epic.”
Ryan leaned forward, charmed by her honesty. “And you never told him?”
“Oh, she told me,” Eli cut in, a smile creasing his face. “In the most frustrating way possible.”
Tia smiled shyly for a second, shaking her head at herself. “I wrote a note in his yearbook. Telling him about my feelings.”
“But she scribbled her name so I’d never figure out who it was. I only made the connection a few days ago.”
“Wow.” Ryan looked back and forth between them, delighted at the story itself, but more so at the way they told it together. They had rhythm, chemistry.
“Wait.” Eli cocked his head to one side. “When did you write that note? How did you manage to get my yearbook without me noticing?”
Now Tia went desperately peach with the blush that stained her cheeks. “It was during your senior year party.”
“Oh, you mean the one that you threw while I was out of town?” Ryan asked dryly, one eyebrow raised.
“I still maintain that it was worth it. Even if it did lose me my car privileges for the summer.” Eli grinned at his father, long since able to see the humor of the situation. He turned back to Tia. “So you snuck in my room and signed my yearbook?”
Tia covered her face with her hands for a second. “Yeah. And oh man, I almost spontaneously combusted with nerves. I even had a crush on your room. I thought it was so cute. The blue walls and—”
Eli cut her off when, grinning, he stood and yanked her up out of her chair. “Be right back, Dad.”
“Take your time,” Ryan murmured to the now empty room.
Eli dragged Tia down the familiar hallway. She saw that the room that had had a sewing machine was now changed into a library area. She wondered if that room had been Eli’s mother’s domain.
But her thoughts cut off as Eli kicked open a door and led her into his high school bedroom. Almost exactly the same as the day she’d last been in it.
Tia’s mouth fell open as she looked around at the photos on the walls. The Keith Haring print. His desk was cleaned and there was no more laptop, but everything else was exactly the same.
“I can’t believe it,” Tia said, sitting down on the neatly made bed. “He kept it exactly the same, huh?”
Eli shrugged and sat next to her. “I guess so.” He smiled sadly as Tia picked up the photo that was next to his bed, the same one that had been there since he was a boy. The picture of Eli and his mother, grinning at the camera and covered in popsicle. He loved that photo.
He cleared his throat. “So you just snuck in here and signed the yearbook and snuck out?”
“Well, I looked around a little bit. And I sat in that chair.” She pointed to the desk chair. “You had a sweaty shirt flung over it that I thought smelled so good.”
Eli grunted. “It was a pool party. Were you wearing a bathing suit?”
She nodded. “Yeah. A red one-piece with a t-shirt over top.”
Eli grunted again, shifted a little bit where he was sitting on the bed. “One-pieces are hot.”
Tia raised an eyebrow as she observed the effect this conversation was having on Eli. She decided to up the ante a little bit.
“You had a pair of running shoes right there on the floor and I took my sandal off and put my foot in one of them.”
This time he outright groaned. “You put your little foot in my big, sweaty shoe? God, why is that so hot?”
Tia laughed. “I don’t know, but I remember thinking it was hot at the time as well.” She frowned. “And then I heard you coming down the
hall with Sara Humphrey and I panicked.”
He frowned. “I don’t remember that. But I remember she kept irritating me the whole party, asking for a million things, trying to get me alone every other second. But we didn’t come into my room, I remember that much.”
“Right,” Tia nodded. “You didn’t. But I thought you were going to. So I hid right there.” She pointed to the space between the bed and the wall. “I was terrified you were gonna come in and start getting freaky on the bed. And I’d have a front row seat.”
Eli’s mouth dropped right open. He had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.
“But thank god, you just went to the basement. So there I was, alone in your room, sad that you were off doing whatever with Sara Humphrey. And I saw your yearbook. And I just thought, you know? Better that than nothing. So I wrote the note, went out to the party, grabbed Laura, and we went home.”
Tia sighed. “That was the last time I saw you, except for on TV.”
“You watched my games?”
Tia nodded. “All of them. Even the college ones.”
Eli flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The same ceiling he’d stared at for the first 18 years of his life. “God, I wish I’d known you, Tia. I wish I’d been able to see you go through college and med school, even from a distance, the way you did with me. I feel robbed of all those years.” He sat up on his elbow and watched her. “And it’s so clear to me now that I was lost without you. I didn’t know it then, but the way I feel now? So grounded? Well, it just tells me that I needed you.”
Tia rose from the bed. Her stomach was flipping. Because she didn’t feel the same way. She felt the opposite. She felt like her life had been grounded before she’d gotten with Eli. In fact, she felt as if her entire life had been flipped up into the air like the loose contents of a drawer. Part of her desperately wanted to close that drawer up tight again.
That was the part of her that couldn’t help but read that whole, gruesome tabloid. The part of her that wanted privacy and calm and just to be a respected surgeon. And she couldn’t help it, that was truly a part of who she was.
But there was another part too. The part of her that liked her life all tossed to pieces, because it meant that Eli was there, with her, doing all the tossing. She didn’t want to go back to a life without Eli. She just wanted both. Eli and a closed drawer life.
The feeling twisted in her stomach. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say. So she fixed a smile on her face and turned to Eli, hauling him up off the bed with her hand clasped around his. “Let’s not leave your father for too long.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I’m gonna ask her to marry me.”
Marcus immediately started hacking and coughing up a storm while Jay just simply stared at Eli with a wide open mouth.
The three of them floated on their surfboards far out from shore, the slow roll of the waves had them relaxing and enjoying the sunrise. Until Eli dropped that little bomb.
He raised an eyebrow at Marcus, who was still hacking up a lung. “It’s not that shocking, dude.”
“First of all,” Jay said, slapping Marcus on the back, “yes, it is. Second of all, you can’t spring something like that on us when we’re surrounded by all this saltwater. You could have drowned the man.”
Marcus pounded on his own chest and took a deep breath. “Are you fucking serious? You’re proposing?”
The word sent a shivery thrill down Eli’s spine. He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Like, with a ring and everything?” Jay asked.
“Yeah. My dad gave me my mom’s ring last week.”
“Holy fuckin’ shit.” Marcus shook his head as if he could clear it back to reality. “This is really happening.”
“What, you guys think it’s a bad idea?” Eli frowned at his friends, letting his feet swirl in the water where they dangled over either side of his surfboard.
“Nah, it’s not that,” Jay replied. “Tia’s cool. And you guys are good together. It’s just that it’s so fast, man. Like, so fast.”
“I know,” Eli agreed. “But we’re on that path. And it’s gonna happen anyways, someday. So might as well be now.” Eli avoided his friends’ eyes for a second as he squinted back toward shore. “Besides. She hasn’t been quite the same since that fucking tabloid came out about her. And I just want to be steady for her. Have something she can rely on. Especially as preseason starts up and shit gets even crazier.”
Marcus and Jay exchanged looks with one another.
“So, you’re proposing in order to reassure her?” Marcus asked carefully.
Eli ripped a hand through his wet hair. “Nah, man. I love her. I wanna be married to her.”
“But you’re proposing so quickly in order to reassure her,” Jay clarified.
Eli frowned. “I guess.”
“And that’s what she wants?” Marcus asked, again as carefully as before.
Eli kicked at the water. “She wants to not feel disposable. Or compared to all the other chicks I’ve associated with. And on a personal level, from me, she gets that loud and clear. But on a public level? Not so much. Everywhere she goes there’s somebody asking her what it’s like to be my flavor of the week. If I put a ring on her finger then people will just shut the hell up about it already.”
Eli glanced at his two silent friends, their reticence was irritating the shit out of him. He was nervous enough about this already, he really needed them to be happy for him so he could gain some of the momentum he so badly needed. “What?”
Jay sighed. Ultra honesty. It was what their friendship had been founded on for damn near 30 years. “Look. Dude. I really want you to marry Tia. She’s so awesome. And you two totally make each other better. Honestly, I’m kind of jealous. But, I gotta be real, the timing of all this is really suspect to me. You don’t propose to somebody because you want to reassure them that you’re not gonna cheat on her during the season.”
“What the fuck?” Eli whipped around and faced Jay, fire in his eyes. They’d been in one physical fight their entire lives. It was in the fourth grade and it had been over whether or not Eli was cheating at Uno. Looked like it was about to be twice in their lives. “Why would you even say that shit?”
“Hold on,” Marcus clapped a hand over Eli’s shoulder. “That came out ugly, but come on, Eli. You have to see the truth in what he’s saying.”
Eli rounded on Marcus as well. “Are you kidding me?” He stared back and forth between the two of them. “You honestly think I’m worried about that? That I’m gonna cheat on her? Don’t you know me at all? This shit isn’t to prove anything to myself, it’s to prove it to her!”
Jay took a deep breath. He’d already stepped in it. Might as well drown in it. “Eli, you think you’re actually ready to get married if she’s still worried you’ll cheat on her? Don’t you think that’s some shit you iron out before you get engaged? Not via getting engaged?”
Eli had heard enough. They didn’t understand. Neither of them had felt this way about a girl. Neither of them knew how complicated these feelings were. How it felt to want to marry somebody and have her have doubts about you.
Without another word, Eli flattened to his board and started the swim toward shore. He had no doubt that after he and Tia were engaged, Marcus and Jay would be there to support him. They’d dance at his wedding. But right now, he couldn’t face another single word with them.
“Shit,” Jay mumbled as he watched Eli swim toward shore. Maybe he’d erred on the side of too much honesty. He supposed he could have found a way to soften it a little bit. “Shit.”
“Nah, man.” Marcus shook his head and looked back out towards the ocean, towards the waves. “Don’t beat yourself up. He needed to hear it.”
***
Tia took a shaky breath as she looked at herself in her bedroom mirror. She wore a long, red dress, high at the neck and tight at the waist. Laura had picked it out for her and Tia knew she looked good in it. But she couldn�
�t stop feeling like she looked like a commoner dressed up like a princess.
The simple truth was that she didn’t belong in clothes like this. She wasn’t like all the other girls Eli had been with. She didn’t go to the salon to get blow outs, or Brazilian waxes. She didn’t wear red-bottomed shoes.
She wore scrubs. And leggings. And thick glasses. She liked beer and ESPN, with Ham on her lap, snoozing.
But, she also liked Eli. And she was trying to teach herself how to carve out a space in her life for him. Which was how she ended up in this here dress.
He’d called and told her to wear something fancy tonight. Because he was taking her somewhere special. Tia took another shaky breath.
They hadn’t been seen in public together since that horrible article had come out about her and honestly, Tia was terrified of what would happen tonight. Would there be paparazzi wherever they were going? What would the tabloids make of her in this dress? Would they think she was trying too hard to impress Eli? To “land” him?
She grimaced at herself. She knew how damaging that line of thinking was. She wanted to banish those thoughts and just have a good time with him.
Her living room clocked chimed the hour and Tia jumped. She was going to be late. She was on call tonight so they’d agreed that she’d drive herself, just meet him at the restaurant.
She patted Ham goodbye, slid into her car, and made record time to the address he’d given her. She hadn’t meant to drive so fast. She was just nervous. She let out a long breath when she saw Eli’s car parked in the lot. She didn’t recognize the restaurant, and honestly, the building looked more like a fancy apartment complex than a restaurant.
There wasn’t any parking where he’d told her to, in the back of the dark lot, so she parked on the street and scurried in through a back set of doors.
“Evening, Miss Camellia,” a man in a uniform said as he pulled the door open for her.
Bachelors In Love Page 22
