The Love Game

by Emilia Beaumont

  “Oh my god. Tell me this is not yours.”

  I turned to see Cara holding up the most god-awful skirt that had spilled out of one of the boxes, the striped colors clashing with the black velvet. “That is definitely not mine. Give me some credit? That was Mom’s.” I remembered when she had purchased it right after her diagnosis, declaring that as long as she wore something that hideous, she would never forget who she was. Too bad it hadn’t worked. But in a way she was still there, deep down. She was so comfortable around Lucia’s children. More than once I had caught her rocking them in the chair, singing the lullabies of my past.

  “Well it’s F-ugly,” Cara decided, throwing it in the box. “There’s a lot of stuff in here.”

  I looked around. It was a mess. There was stuff from the bar that my dad had moved in here over the years, coupled with the random items from Tim’s and my childhood. There was a lot, probably too much. I would need to throw half of it away and sell what we didn’t need. Anything we got would add to the small nest-egg of savings that was going to keep us fed until the insurance company coughed up. I was so relieved and pleased that I’d had the foresight to start a little savings account when I first took over the bar, but now I wished I had the money I’d spent on my trips abroad, as well. That money would definitely come in handy right about now, I thought. Damon’s face floated into my mind, and I forced it out, not wanting to have that same battle again, my head and my heart at odds with each other. Only at night before I drifted off to sleep did I allow myself to think about him and what we had and how much I loved him. But during daylight hours, the memory of him and the daydreams were off-limits. Strictly forbidden.

  Wading through the boxes, I tugged on a blanket that was covering a large piece of furniture—my mom’s old chest of drawers that had been in my parents’ bedroom in the old house. The blanket caught on the side of the dulled wood. I yanked harder. It finally relented, but I went flying back. A stack of boxes cushioned my fall. The old cardboard sides split and spilled out their contents like a piñata.

  “Damn,” I said, turning around.

  “You OK?” Cara came over and grabbed my hand to pull me up.

  “Yeah.” I rubbed my butt.

  I turned to look at the carnage. I’d made even more of a mess getting back up. I grabbed the first damaged box and straightened it. Papers of all kinds had fallen out and spread themselves across the concrete floor. I knelt down to gather them up. It had to have been another box from the old house. Unopened bills that had the familiar address on them. I shuffled what I could together when an envelope with my name on it caught my eye, the flap still sealed shut. My Darling Ginny, was printed in neat handwriting on the front. And old birthday card I’d forgotten to open, or one that somehow over the years resealed itself? Frowning, I broke the seal and pulled out a few sheets of paper.

  “What’s that?” Cara asked, eyeing me over the box as she gathered the rest of the papers.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, as I suddenly recognized my mom’s handwriting. It was dated a few years ago, right before she’d moved in with me.

  “Ginny, my baby girl,” it started.

  I’m losing my mind. It’s a difficult pill to swallow, but it is what it is. But not once do I want to be a burden on you, my darling daughter. I know it will be you that will stay by my side, looking after me. We both know it’s not in Timmy’s repertoire. Yet you alone will be lumbered with the responsibility, and I’m so sorry for that.

  But I want you to know how proud you have made me. And how honored I have been to be your mom. You have grown and matured since your father died. You took on the bar when you didn’t have to, but regardless you put your heart and soul into it and made it a successful business. He would be so proud of you, too.

  You were always my dreamer, my wanderer who couldn’t go anywhere, wanting to travel the world and see everything. I remember the year you asked only for an atlas for Christmas. You spent hours studying its pages, going to places in your mind because we couldn’t afford to take you abroad. But it’s about time you did. With everything that is happening to me, I know I am fading fast, but I would never want to keep you from your dreams. So please, promise me, when this disease gets the best of me, Ginny girl, put me somewhere safe. You know what I mean. I’ll be OK. Keep me in your heart, but tuck me away so that you may continue to live your life unburdened. My affliction is no reason to keep you from living your life to the fullest.

  And before you think otherwise, I’ve lived a great life. I met the love of my life, had two wonderful kids, and I couldn’t have wished for more. My time is over, but yours is just beginning. And please know that no matter how bad I get, I could and never will forget you. You will forever be in my heart.

  Love, Mom.

  “Oh no, is it bad news?” Cara asked softly.

  I clutched my chest and let the tears stream down my cheeks and shook my head. No, it wasn’t bad news.

  In her last lucid moments, Mom had given me the world all over again. She’d managed to make everything seem possible again. It killed me that she’d known how it was all going to go down. But with a few words, echoes from the past, she took away the all guilt, all the worry. She was giving me permission to put her in an assisted living facility. She was sacrificing herself for her child.

  “My mom. It’s her wishes before she got really bad.”

  Cara came over and touched my shoulder. “That’s good news then. Are you doing what she wanted?”

  “No,” I said, folding the letter up and tucking it back in the envelope. “She wanted to be put in a home.”

  “Huh, but you just said… What are you going to do?” Cara asked as I stood, running my hands through my hair.

  Maybe if the bar had still been standing and prospering, I would have considered revisiting some of the facilities near here. But it wasn’t. Even if I wanted to put her in a home, I couldn’t. I had no money, nowhere near enough to cover the cost of her stay anywhere. She would stay with me, like always, and I was OK with that. Sighing, I gave Cara a wobbly smile, and shoved the letter into my back pocket.

  “Nothing’s changed. Let’s get this cleaned up.”

  Later that night we all attended one of Jacob’s pre-season football games. The sitter who was watching over Lucia’s and Cara’s kids was also watching over my mom so I could have a night out. Since Lucia’s dad owned the team, we were able to sit in the owner’s box above the field—a rare treat for me, considering I couldn’t even afford regular tickets. The Jupiter Suns football team had taken off over the last two years and were raring to go again.

  Lucia plopped in the seat beside me, her protruding belly covered in one of the jerseys that proudly displayed her husband’s name on the back. “I can’t do this much longer. Jacob had to roll me out of the car.”

  “Well, you are the one who keeps on getting pregnant,” I remarked dryly, tipping my beer bottle toward her. “Keep your legs closed.”

  “Ha, you are hilarious. You sound like Cara before she met Luke,” she answered, pushing at my shoulder. “Besides, I can’t help it that my husband finds me hot.”

  I kept my smile on my face, thinking how lucky she was to have such a man. I’d experienced a small sliver of that happiness with Damon and lost him. And for the thousandth time that day, I tried to picture what he was doing. He would definitely be in the States, getting prepared for the next Grand Slam, so he was probably training, on the court right now, I thought. Able to get in a good session without a horde of reporters getting in his way. Thankfully the talk about his heartfelt speech at Wimbledon in his last interview there had finally died down. New stories were taking priority since nothing had come of “Damon’s mystery woman.” At times, I thought the reporters had gotten close and figured out who I was, but it never happened, and I was glad that they hadn’t been able to identify me, and Damon had kept my name to himself.

  The last thing I needed was cameras in my face, trying to pry into my personal life. Though that
didn’t change the fact that I missed him terribly, couldn’t stop thinking about him, no matter what head games I played with myself. I would do anything to have a do-over with him, but in the end I had to settle for the morsel of happiness I’d gotten in Paris and London. Damon was at the pinnacle of his career, his future full of possibilities while mine was uncertain. I didn’t even know what I was going to do. The thought of rebuilding the bar held no appeal for me, but it was what I’d probably do. For Dad’s sake. And to keep a roof over Mom’s head.

  “Um, Ginny?”

  I looked at Lucia. Her face was in between a frown and an uncertain smile, her lips twisting from side to side.

  “What? Please don’t tell me you’re going into labor! They haven’t even started yet.”

  “What? No,” she said with a laugh. “I have, well, I need to confess something to you.”

  “OK,” I answered, wondering what it could be.

  She fidgeted with the sleeve of her jersey, not meeting my eye. “Ah, hell. Just don’t kill me, OK?”

  “Spill it.”

  “Well, those tickets you got for London? They came from Jacob and me, but mostly me.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, surprised that she would do such a thing. All the time I’d thought Damon had sent them, but it never occurred to me that he hadn’t. He had been so excited to see me in London that I just assumed he had gotten his agent or someone to deliver them personally.

  “I know what you thought, but there was no way I wanted to burst your bubble,” Lucia continued. “If we told you we got them, you wouldn’t have gone. You wouldn’t have let yourself fall in love.”

  “I wouldn’t have fallen in love,” I said softly, echoing her words.

  Lucia reached over and patted my arm. “Love is fickle, but I think we both know you’re not about to change your mind anytime soon, are you?”

  “No, I’m probably not. Thank you,” I said. While my love life was in the toilet, I had the best of friends. They looked out for me, did things for me that I would have never expected. How could I be mad at them for wanting to help me have the life they thought I deserved?

  Lucia gave me a soft smile, patting her stomach. “You’re welcome. Now if I do go into labor over this game, let’s wait till after they win to tell Jacob, OK? I need for him to kick this team’s ass.”

  I laughed and settled back to watch the action on the field, wondering if I was doing the right thing. Everyone else was encouraging me to choose myself for a change, including my mom, if her letter was anything to go by, so why couldn’t I do it?

  24

  Damon

  I climbed out of the rental car and put my hands on my hips, not believing what I was seeing.

  My phone told me I was in the right spot; the GPS coordinates on the map said as much. But clearly something bad had happened. Friction, Ginny’s bar, was in cinders. The place was gone, along with my hopes of a fucking awesome reunion with her. And how I could’ve forgotten a name like Friction was beyond me. It seemed a cruel name now though, as I looked at the wreck.

  “Shit,” I said, kicking at a stone in the gravel parking lot. How was I going to find her now? I would bet my entire fortune that this was the reason why she’d come back in such a hurry, the signs of a massive fire still visible on pieces of charred wood. The private investigator had found the address in a matter of hours, and after catching a flight to Miami, I had driven up, all the words I was going to say to Ginny going through my mind. But that was when I thought I was going to find her. Now I had no idea where to go.

  My phone vibrated and I grabbed it, angrily swiping without looking at the number. “Hello?”

  “Did you find her?”

  “No,” I told Jim, shoving a hand through my hair. “The bar, it’s destroyed. I know why she left now. There was a fire.”

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I echoed, looking back at the building.

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “I don’t know. She’s not here. I don’t know where she is.” I didn’t want to give up, but I was at a dead end. According the investigator, this had also been her place of residence, so there was no telling where she was now. My heart ached for her, remembering how she had talked of the place fondly. She had to be devastated to lose not only her place of business but also her home. “Jim, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Listen, Damon, I feel for you,” Jim began, a heavy sigh on his end, “but it’s time to drop this. You have a match in a few days that you need to prepare for. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to be found.”

  I didn’t want to think of it that way. Every sign and arrow pointed to the fact that Ginny cared for me. After all, she wouldn’t have come all the way to London the second time if she didn’t. But hunting her down, attempting to track her was bullshit. I wanted her in front of me right now, yet fate had dealt me another broken-ass hand, laughing at me from the beyond. It was sheer madness.

  “Think about it, Damon. You can’t afford to miss the US Open. You have to play. And I can’t hold the sponsors off much longer. I’ve already rescheduled twice. If you’re not careful, they’ll drop you and move on to the next tennis player who does give a shit about his career.”

  “Fuck you, Jim. You know I care.”

  “Then prove it.”

  I kicked at another rock, hating the fact that Jim was probably right. I couldn’t keep pinning my hopes on the few days and nights I spent with a woman I barely knew. I was being stupid. My head was in the clouds, and I needed to face the fact that if she’d wanted to find me, she could’ve. There were a billion different ways she could’ve reached out, but she didn’t. Why not?

  “I’m gonna head back. I’ll be on a plane tonight.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jim added, sympathy in his voice. “I know how much this girl means to you, and I wish you could find her, dude. But it’s time to get real. It’s been months.”

  “Speak to you later,” I said abruptly and hung up. I knew he would support me in whatever I wanted to do as a friend, but as my agent, he had to come down hard. Had to be the voice of reason. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but nevertheless it was what I needed to hear. I needed to move on. I had a career waiting for me, but it wouldn’t wait for long.

  My dad had urged me to follow it through until the end, no matter where it took me. “I want to meet this girl,” he said over coffee the morning after the engagement party. I’d gone with him to his doctor’s appointment, where we had gotten good news that his levels were down. The chemo was working. “She’s got you tied up in knots, son. That tells me she’s a keeper.”

  “She is,” I said. Ginny was definitely a keeper, if I could keep my hands on her, that is. Once I found her again, I wasn’t planning on ever letting her go.

  “Then go get her, and bring her to the wedding,” he stated.

  But it was a dead end. I’d struck out royally and would be flying solo for the main event.

  A truck pulled into the parking lot suddenly, and a guy climbed out of the driver’s side, his hands in his pockets as he approached me. “If you are looking for a beer, you’re in the wrong place.”

  “I see that,” I said, rolling my shoulders as I looked up at what was left of the bar. “I was just about to leave.”

  “Hey, I know you,” the man said suddenly and grabbed my shoulder. “Aren’t you Damon Holden?”

  I fought the urge to punch the guy in his face for even touching me, my mood sour. I didn’t have the heart to talk to a fan right now. “I am.”

  “Oh shit,” he said, sticking out his hand. “I’m Luke. Dude, you have no idea how excited I am to see you.”

  “Wait,” I said, looking at him closer. I recognized him as well. “You’re the walk-on, the pitcher from last year’s headlines?” There’d been something doing the rounds, in the newspapers and on the TV, about this guy who’d had a shady past, disappeared off the face of the earth, and then somehow had come back to become a mega major league star. His
story had dwarfed any antics I’d attempted during that time. He was hot shit.

  “Yeah,” he said, releasing my hand with a grin. “That’s me. But, er, can I ask what you are doing here? Last the TV said, you were preparing for the US Open, and this is far from the Big Apple.”

  “Still preparing. Just about to head back,” I said. But then I stopped, wondering if just maybe Luke could help me out with some information. It wouldn’t hurt to try. “Hey do you know what happened to this place?” I asked, trying to be nonchalant about it when inside my stomach was in knots and I was holding my breath.

  Luke’s smile faded, and I felt a jolt of worry immediately. I shouldn’t have asked. What if the fire happened after she got back? What if she had gotten injured in the fire? What if I was looking at a dead end because Ginny was dead?

  “It was bad. I was here, tending to the bar, and the fire, man, it came out of nowhere. We barely got out with our lives. It just happened. Like one of those freak accidents. She lost everything in that fire, and I mean everything. She was devastated.”

  “She?”

  “Ginny, of course.”

  “You know Ginny?”

  He gave me a smile, one that told me he had been just waiting for the question. This wasn’t just some random passerby. He was my best lead in finding Ginny.

  “Yeah, of course I do, you idiot. She’s one of my best friends, and my wife’s. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

  I thought about his question, knowing that he was implying more than the actual words. What was I going to do about it? I’d been on the verge of giving up. Letting her go. But now this. One last chance. I thought about her for a moment, knowing there was only truly one answer to his question. She was a mystery, one that I dearly wanted to uncover, even if it took the rest of my life to do so.

  “I love her, and you’re going to take me to her,” I finally said, the only answer that made any sense.