First and Tension

by Tara Sivec

  There’s fire in her glare, but there’s quivering emotion, and hurt in her voice that almost brings me to my goddamn knees, but something finally clicks in my tiny, stupid brain when I figure out what’s happening here.

  She trusts me with her body, but she doesn’t trust me with her heart.

  She doesn’t believe the words I’m saying, and why would she, when she thinks we’ve been playing pretend this entire time? I quickly realize this is going to take more than a few flowery words in the back of a concession stand.

  “I actually did try to find you. For weeks. Not one damn person at that party would return my calls or my texts, because I’m pretty sure they thought it wasn’t really Quinn Bagley leaving a message on their phone,” I inform her.

  She studies my face for a few quiet minutes, and I don’t know if she sees the truth in my words or not, since she doesn’t say anything else to me. With my heart pounding in my chest after laying everything out in the open, I walk back up to her, pressing one hand against the side of her face and leaning down to kiss her cheek, holding my lips there for a few beats before moving them to her ear.

  “When you’re ready to stop with the bullshit and be real with me… all the fucking time… you know where I’m staying.”

  Dropping my hand from her face and pulling back, I give her a wink to soften the blow of everything I just said to her, and maybe to annoy her just a little bit, before turning and walking out the back door of the concession stand, hoping I didn’t just screw everything up with her by taking Bodhi’s advice.

  And hoping Shepherd has that florist on speed dial….

  CHAPTER 20

  Emily

  “Sip and Bitch really does fix everything.”

  “I swear to God, if that doorbell is another delivery, I’m going to start crying again and bring you all down in misery with me!” I shout when the musical notes of Shepherd and Wren’s doorbell can be heard upstairs.

  “Calm down, crazy. It’s seven o’clock, and the exact time a few of Owen’s teammates were stopping by to use the batting cage in the side yard,” Wren reminds me as I glare at the huge bouquet of red roses lying on the couch next to me that was delivered a half hour ago.

  And then give another glare to the bouquet sitting in a vase in the middle of the bar that was delivered a half hour before that.

  “This isn’t pretend for me. Nothing about this has been fake for me since the first day you puked your way into my life.”

  And then I squeeze my eyes closed and try to block out Quinn’s words that have been torturing me for the last two days, but they stay right where they are, permanently etched in my brain and carved into my heart. I knew, right? A part of me had to have known it wasn’t fake for him either, but I ignored it, and I thought it would be easier to play this pretend game with him, when I should have known better. I just stood there with my back to him, letting him pour his heart out to me, because I was afraid.

  I am afraid.

  “I believe that last delivery made it a grand total of 187 red roses, Emily’s favorite color, and the number of days Quinn has known Emily, so that should be the last of them. Sorry about that and what Shepherd may or may not have shared with him.” Wren grimaces, making my shoulders droop and my eyes fill with tears, thinking about all the flowers filling every available surface of my cottage.

  “Can you stop being stingy and tell us what this note says, pretty please?” Birdie asks sweetly, folding her hands under her chin.

  “Not a chance,” I mutter, staring down at the note in my hand that came with the last delivery.

  I lost my virginity to Joana Nunes in the eleventh grade. She was an older, more experienced senior. Her brother, who was home from college, walked in on us in her room, and she flew right off me, taking the blankets with her. Instead of covering myself up, I grabbed my phone and pretended like we had just been lounging around, watching videos. With my dick out.

  -Quinn

  With a quiet laugh, I lean to the side and start to shove the note into my purse. My hand stills and the smile slips from my face when I see the other matching notes shoved inside my bag. With each new flower delivery that showed up at my cottage, at work, at the Dip and Twist while I was helping Wren restock supplies, at Tess and Bodhi’s house last night when I went over for dinner, and twice now since I’ve been at Wren and Shepherd’s house, there’s been a handwritten note accompanying the flowers from Quinn, telling me something new about himself. Pulling the rest of the notes out of my purse, I slowly start flipping through them, the girls all still annoyed with me that I won’t share what they say. Just like the personal stuff he told me the night we met, it doesn’t feel right to share these things with anyone else either.

  The first woman who broke my heart was Cherie Lord, sophomore year of college. She slept with my RA when I was at football camp over the summer. I actually introduced them before I left and told him to keep an eye on her. I probably should have specified he did not need to keep an eye on her vagina as well. They’re happily married now with three kids and living in Denver, so all in all, they owe their immeasurable happiness to me. Those bastards don’t even send me a Christmas card.

  I wet the bed until I was seven. Fine, it was eight! But I swear to God, if you tell anyone I wet the bed until I was nine, I will deny, deny, deny! It was actually ten. Shut up, the hardest part is admitting it.

  My favorite thing about playing football is watching all your hard work pay off. Watching a perfect spiral sail across the field and seeing it land right into your receiver’s hands, right where you were aiming… Jesus Christ, there’s nothing in the world like that high of hearing the crowd roar when you did your job perfectly.

  I’ve never wanted to do anything with my life other than football. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t playing. Probably shrivel up and die LOL! I literally have nothing to fall back on. Man, my college advisor would be so pissed at me right now. I do have a communications degree, so I guess I can just bullshit my way into any job. That’s how that works, right?

  With a sigh, I stop reading the rest of them, since I have them all memorized by now, sliding the notes back into my purse. With each new delivery that arrived, I learned something new about Quinn. He shared everything from the sweetest to the most embarrassing, and I knew exactly what he was doing. He was showing me I could trust him with my heart, because he was trusting me with his, along with all his secrets, hopes, and dreams. He’s making me want to trust him with everything, and he’s making me want to put down my guard and stop being afraid that being with me is going to distract him from his job. Because that’s what it boils down to. It doesn’t matter if he breaks my heart; I’m strong. I’ll survive… maybe. But I wouldn’t be able to survive knowing I did something to mess up any part of his happiness. And football is what makes him happy. Being here in Virginia, playing for a team that respects him instead of envies him, is all he’s ever wanted. I don’t want to get in the way of that.

  Picking up my phone, I start scrolling through the comments again that I was reading online before we were interrupted by the doorbell.

  “Anonymous6783 said, ‘Can’t wait to see Bagley’s career go down the toilet now that he’s got a woman distracting him,’” I read. “And sportstalkinvirginia said, ‘Looks like Bagley cares more about wedding rings than Super Bowl rings. So much for the Sharks finally winning a game.’”

  With a silent scream, I flop back onto the couch, tossing my phone down to the carpet and flinging my arm over my face after making the mistake of checking social media.

  “Why are you letting the opinions of strangers online dictate how you live your life?” Wren asks me for the tenth time since I got to her house.

  “Don’t ask her any hard questions right now; she’s clearly insane. She let Quinn walk away from giving her a perfectly good orgasm two nights ago,” Tess has to remind everyone.

  I lift up the hand that isn’t covering my eyes high above my body and give Tess
the finger, in the corner of the room where she, Birdie, and Wren are sitting on a replica of our purple picnic table.

  When Shepherd surprised Wren by buying her the home of her dreams on Summersweet, a 6,000 square foot, three-story monstrosity that sits right on the water with its own private dock, he also surprised the rest of us by turning half the finished basement into a bar. Because obviously the other half was for his giant craft room, complete with a ladder on wheels to get him around his floor-to-ceiling shelves for all his craft supplies.

  For Christmas this past year, he even got us a purple neon bar sign that says Sip and Bitch to hang on the wall, and he had someone custom make a purple picnic table that, yes, we did indeed carve our names into on Christmas Eve. Shepherd wanted to make sure we had a safe place to hang out during the cold winter months, when the heat lamps Laura puts around the picnic table area of the Dip and Twist just don’t cut it, and when the crowds get to be a bit much and we don’t want to take a perfectly good table away from a paying customer.

  My best friend has the perfect life. Birdie has the perfect life, and Tess has the perfect life. Jealously is an unwelcome feeling I try to push away, but it doesn’t work. Tears pool in my eyes, and I’m thankful for the covering of my arm to hide them.

  “I’m nothing but a distraction, who’s bad for his game and ruining his career,” I speak quietly, hating how weak and pathetic my voice sounds.

  “Don’t you think Wren and I have had those same fears being with professional athletes?” Birdie asks, making me finally fling my arm off my face and sit up on the sectional.

  “How do you get past it?” I ask them. “How do you get past the worry that you’ve already brought enough chaos into a man’s life, and you know how much it means to him to finally be playing for a team that feels like family to him and makes him remember how much he loves the game?”

  “You know you’re fucking worth it,” Wren says sternly, smacking her plastic cup down on the table and narrowing her eyes at me.

  “Exactly.” Birdie nods firmly in agreement, making Tess snort.

  “Some just take a little longer than others to know it.”

  “Oh, shut up; I figured it out soon enough,” Birdie complains to her.

  “He’s been telling you since that lunch just how amazing he knows you are, and he just told you two nights ago none of it was pretend and it was all real for him. How in the hell are you still questioning that you are worth it to him and that you deserve all this hot, sweet goodness he’s brought into your life?” Wren asks with a shake of her head.

  Shepherd comes down the stairs at that moment, saving me from having to answer, lugging a big bag of ice in his arms as he walks through the room.

  “I promise I won’t interrupt your bitching for very long,” he says, pausing by the picnic table to lean down and give Wren a sweet kiss that lingers for a little too long, making all of us groan good-naturedly and Birdie throw a handful of popcorn at their faces.

  With a laugh against each other’s lips, Shepherd finally pulls back, moving over to the counter against the wall behind the bar, where he had a giant slush machine installed, to empty the bag of ice into it.

  “I just ordered a few pizzas that will be here in a couple of minutes, since I know you ladies get hangry when you’re sipping and bitching,” Shepherd says over the loud clinking of the ice being dumped into the machine. “Birdie, I’ve got Palmer finishing up your bridal shower invitations upstairs and stuffing them into envelopes. Honestly, this whole idea to have a Tea Time with a tea party under a tent out on the golf course is just brilliant. The decoration ideas I’ve been mulling over will blow you away. Tess, if you don’t mind, I think I’m gonna let Bodhi go crazy with your baby shower invitations. He’s really taken to calligraphy quite fast.”

  “For fuck’s sake, I said no baby shower!” Tess complains.

  “You’re getting a baby shower!” we all shout back at her in unison, including Shepherd, as he balls the empty ice bag in his hands and tosses it into the trash can under the bar.

  “We already promised it would just be a room full of people bringing you gifts, where you can eat a whole bunch of really good food and then go home and take a nap,” Birdie reminds her.

  “I’m not opening jack shit in front of people staring at me, or playing any of those stupid games where you put baby food in diapers and make people guess what it is,” Tess mutters petulantly, rubbing her hands over her belly.

  “Here. You look like you could use a double.”

  Looking up from the couch, I smile at Shepherd as he holds out a plastic cup to me that he filled with a brand-new boozy slush the machine just spit out. I take it from his hand and thank him, smiling at the purple cup that says Sip and Bitch on it. He made us an entire cupboard of reusable Sip and Bitch cups with his Cricut, also for Christmas.

  Jesus, Wren is a lucky woman. And so is Birdie. And so is Tess. And I could be too if I’d just stop being so afraid that I’m going to mess up Quinn’s life.

  “Did Wren ever feel like a distraction to you?” I ask Shepherd quietly, while Tess continues to argue with the girls about her baby shower. “I mean, I know you were retired when you two got together, but the whole time you were flirting leading up to that. Did it take your focus off your game?”

  Shepherd laughs softly, turning and flopping down on the couch next to me.

  “You need to stay off social media,” he says, making me roll my eyes.

  “When you find someone who’s worth it, it’s the best damn distraction in the world.” Shepherd smiles at me, taking a minute to glance over at Wren. “She made me want to do better and make her proud. She still makes me feel like that… every damn day. So, no. She didn’t throw me off my game, then or now. And Palmer will tell you the exact same thing about Birdie. In case you haven’t noticed, Palmer is at the top of his game now with her by his side. Quinn’s been doing this for a long time, sweetheart. He knows how the pressure works, and he knows how his schedule works. He knows what he can handle on his plate, and he knows what he can’t. And it sounds to me like you’re the best damn distraction he can’t wait to handle again.”

  He gives me a wag of his eyebrows that makes me laugh, patting the top of my knee twice before pushing up from the couch to go make Wren and Birdie new slushes.

  Once he delivers the slushes and gives Wren another kiss that makes everyone yell at them, he disappears back upstairs with the rest of the guys.

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about you from the first moment I met you.”

  The words Quinn said to me that were another one of the main causes for all the tossing and turning I did the last couple of nights, and the ones that are still keeping my ass rooted in place in Wren and Shepherd’s basement, instead of getting to him as fast as possible, flash like the neon Sip and Bitch sign in my head. Scooping my phone off the floor, I get up from the couch as I pull up my contacts, putting Carson on speaker as I walk over to the picnic table and straddle the bench next to Wren.

  “Bitch! I was just thinking about you!” Carson answers the call, making me smile. “I was showing that sexy photo of you from the charity event to one of my friends like a proud mama, bragging about your smoky eye!”

  “I’m at Sip and Bitch with the girls. Everyone, say hi.”

  I hold the phone out so Carson can shout at everyone, and everyone can shout at Carson, before pulling the phone back to me.

  “I swear I’ll call you back later so we can talk longer, but I just have a quick question,” I tell him as the girls all lean in closer. “After that party at Quinn’s house, do you remember if you ever got any texts or voicemails from someone saying it was him?”

  Carson’s loud peel of laughter comes out of my speaker, making me miss him, and I make a mental note to beg him to come for a visit as soon as he can when we talk later.

  “Girrrl, I can’t believe I forgot about that until just now!” Carson continues to laugh, making butterflies start to flap around in my stom
ach as Wren quickly reaches across the bench and grabs my hand. “It was the funniest thing! Literally everyone I spoke to who was at the party said they got a message from some loser claiming to be Quinn Bagley. Never went into much detail, just said it was really important someone get back to him, because he was trying to find a woman. So freaking random!”

  My heart drops right into my stomach to frolic around with all the butterflies as Wren squeezes my hand and Birdie and Tess’s mouths drop open in shock.

  He was telling the truth.

  “Why didn’t you call him back? Why didn’t anyone call him back?” Wren asks Carson, while I’m finding it hard to breathe and speak.

  “Uh, because it was obviously a prank caller, duh!” Carson snorts. “Like Quinn Bagley would really contact a bunch of strangers and leave a desperate message like that, looking for a woman. He could snap his fingers and have ten of them in his bed in five minutes. That prank caller sure was persistent too. I think he left me four voicemails and at least five texts. Same with everyone else. Ahhh, we all had a good laugh about it though. I think I replied to one of his texts with a link to an escort service. I can’t believe I forgot about that until just now!”

  Carson’s still chuckling to himself, oblivious to the fact that I’m holding back tears and my hands are shaking so hard that Wren has to take the phone and say goodbye to Carson for me.

  “He really did try to find me,” I whisper after a few quiet minutes where nothing can be heard but the muffled shouting of Palmer to Shepherd upstairs to “put the damn glitter away already, because it’s getting on everything.”

  All of a sudden, the quiet basement is filled with the ear-piercing screams of four grown women completely losing their shit, flapping their hands in the air, and bouncing up and down at the picnic table.

  My crush on Quinn has lasted longer than I care to admit. For all of my adult life, that man has starred in every one of my fantasies. Having him actually be a part of my life after so many years of dreaming, and having the reality of him be so much better than the fantasy, it definitely took me longer than it should have before I let myself believe everything he said to me in that concession stand was true.