by Haley Pierce
“I heard that,” said Geno, walking by on his way to another table. “Hi Abel. Anything you want, on the house.”
Abel’s arms were incredibly strong and he wrapped her up tightly and lifted her off the ground. He seemed genuinely happy to see her. Finally, he set her down. “Wow,” he said. “You look amazing. I can’t say that it’s the most flattering uniform, but you look soooooo good.”
Lacey giggled and hated the sound. She started playing with her hair and had to will herself to stop. He stirred her up like she was a martini. Just keep telling yourself that every girl feels like this around him.
“Thanks, Abel. What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I’m asking the questions here, Lace. That’s all I’ve been doing since I got back. It took some serious detective work to find out where you were. I had to do the whole Magnum PI thing, not to mention a little MacGyver. So what are you doing here? I mean, not in town, but…” He waved his arms at the restaurant. “In here? Is this an experiment for a role or something? I figured that once you got to the conservatory someone would spot you and ask you to start acting. Every time I turn on the radio I expect to hear the latest hit from you. Or the first one.”
“Uh. I wish it was that glamorous. It’s a long story, Abel. You look good too, by the way. And you smell good. Oh brother, I sound smooth, don’t I?”
He threw his chin back and posed as if he were in a magazine shoot. Lacey took an imaginary picture.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve been told that I have ‘chiseled goods looks.’”
“By who?”
“Magazines. TV. Women that aren’t as smart as you. Nobody tells me I smell good though, so you’ve got that going for you.”
“Ah. Still a sweet talker. Abel, it was good to see you, but I’ve got tables. No rest for the wicked and all that.”
He put his hand on her arm, which sent chills radiating out from her wrist to her shoulder. “Just tell me what you’re doing here. What’s been happening?”
She sighed. “Abel, the music thing didn’t work out. Just wasn’t for me, ultimately. I’m not happy about it. It’s not my favorite subject. I just kind of missed my home town, you know?”
“Uh, I guess. But that’s not really your style. You’re still a sassy little vixen and the great city of Palmera basically runs on your magnetism.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Come on, I need to hear you laugh. I’ve got to know you still can.”
“Ha,” she said. “Ha?”
She couldn’t believe Abel was acting interested in her. Cocky or not, he was who he was, and he could not have been less like her. What must she have looked like to him? Amazing, he had said. But beyond her appearance…what could he possibly have seen in her? It had to be a game, or at the very least, a habit he couldn’t break. He was probably charming by default, and it always got him what he wanted. Maybe the whole persona was like a tic at this point, and every time someone approached him it set off a wave of involuntary charm barrages.
Still, this was the person she had fallen so hard for in the month before high school ended. Lacey had never known anyone so sweet. She couldn’t have invented someone as sweet as Abel had been, not even if someone had given her a million bucks to write a hero in a romantic comedy. He had brought flowers to her desk every other day at first period, right in front of everyone. And he hadn’t had any money to buy flowers with, so it meant he had hand picked them. He had held her hand and kissed her before dropping her off at each class. At night he tried (badly) to cook for her. He read the books she recommended and tried to learn more about music when he learned how passionate she was about it.
Abel had been just as gorgeous back then, but she had always heard that fame had a way of changing a person. What did she really know about him? She knew better than most that people only real knew what you decided to show them. But he looked so sincere—and, while she was thinking about it, once again, gorgeous—that she wondered if she was being unfair to him. All she really had to go on was rumors about his reputation. Abel the Playboy, who had scored more touchdowns with women than anyone in the history of the NFL. Still, if everyone believed every rumor they heard, she wouldn’t have come out of it looking great either.
Maybe fame would have changed her as well. Maybe her piano-playing wizardry would have turned her into some horrendous diva who demanded that a bucket of kittens for her to pet be presented at every stop on her tour. Maybe getting stuck Palmera was a blessing in disguise.
I would have liked to have at least had the chance for my personality to change she thought.
“What are you thinking about?” he said. “That is one wistful face. You look like a poster for a movie called Nostalgia Girl.”
Lacey didn’t answer.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You were wondering about how you were going to apologize to me for vanishing from my life and breaking my heart forever.”
“Forever?” she said, looking at the ground. “That’s a long time.”
“It was pretty broken,” he said. “But hey, I don’t want to crowd you.”
“Abel, things aren’t great right now. Guilt is not something I can do more of. I’ve got plenty of it, believe me.”
“I do believe you, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it. You can have all the time you want, but I really, really hope you’ll just tell me what happened while you’re here. I don’t have a plus one for Sasha’s wedding, after all, and as it happens, I have literally no prospects. Not any that interest me,” he added before she could say more.
Before she could move, he bent down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. The men at the tables applauded.
“Give her another one!” someone yelled, taking out a camera, prepared to capture this unforgettable moment for his posterity.
Lacey pointed at him. “Put that away. Point it at something worthwhile. Aren’t you all usually taking pictures of your food?”
Abel could have scratched his head with a pencil and they would have cheered him on as if he were fighting an offensive line, not an itch. He waved to them all and went outside.
Lacey breathed a sigh that was a mixture of relief and disappointment. She could still feel his lips on her forehead and his hand on her arm.
Chapter Six
Abel spent the next two hours in the parking lot, waiting for her to finish her shift. He wondered if this bordered on stalker behavior, but he had waited a long time for answers. Despite all of his good fortune, he truly didn’t feel entitled to very many things. But he did feel like she owed him an explanation. Even though he had had a lot of fun with women, he had never been less than clear about his intentions. And he had never, and would never just vanish from someone’s life if there had been mutual, legitimate interest and chemistry.
He didn’t like to admit it, so he had tried to play it off as a joke, but she had broken his heart.
He spent the two hours in the car reading. During the early days of his career, he found himself unbearably anxious before games. It had nothing to do with his talent, or with self-doubt: he just hated waiting. A teammate had given him a book by a French guy named Voltaire. Some philosopher with a powdered wig and a pointy nose, if the illustration on the back of the cover was accurate. Before that book, Abel never would have guessed that an ancient story like Candide could have made him laugh, but it was one of the funniest, most insightful things he had ever read. Better yet, it had calmed him down before games like a Valium would have.
Even while waiting for Lacey to come out, he had gotten so engrossed in another book—The Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard— that when she knocked on his window, he nearly screamed.
“Are you stalking me now?” she said when he rolled the window down.
“Not exactly, but that’s what I was asking myself a few minutes ago. I decided that no, I’m in plain sight, right here in front of everyone. Isn’t stalking kind of stealthy?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a stalker. Wh
at are you reading?”
He put the book under the seat. He would have loved to have talked about the book, but it felt like it would just be a change of subject from the conversation they needed to have…a change of subject that she had chosen deliberately, hoping he might go on and on about his reading. “Doesn’t matter. Hop in for a second?”
Lacey looked back towards the restaurant, then got in the passenger seat. “Just for a few minutes. What do you want?”
“Wow. Right to the point. That’s pretty abrupt. You sound like someone who just answered the phone to hear someone’s ransom demands.”
Lacey nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. That sounded worse than it was. What I meant was, what do you want to talk about?”
“It’s a good question, Lace. Honestly, I’m just sitting her wondering why I’m torturing myself. I’m in the habit of treating myself pretty well, usually. Not this time. Makes a guy think, you know?”
“Torturing yourself? What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re obviously not interested in me. If you ever were. But here I am, sitting in the parking lot waiting like some dunce. Or some pervert, I don’t know. You’re the one who ended it and I’m still the one following you around. It’s really not my style.”
“What’s your style?”
“I think you knew and I think you know. What I don’t get is why I wasn’t your style.”
“Abel, it’s not like that. There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Of course, but I feel like what I don’t know about you could fill all of Palmera. Is it wrong for me to want some answers? Am I asking too much? You know, I could never treat you the way you treated me. I couldn’t do it to anyone. And you’re not a hurtful person, so there’s got to be more to it than you’re saying.”
Lacey blushed, then looked at her watch. “I’ve really got to get going.”
“You said a few minutes. It’s only been a few seconds. Am I really so bad?”
“It’s not you. I don’t expect you to believe me about much, but I hope you believe that. Now I’ve got to go.”
“I can give you a ride.”
“I always take the bus. If you keep insisting then you have officially ventured into stalker territory.” She punched him on the arm.
“Just let me drive you. I’m a really good driver. I keep my hands at ten and two on the wheel and I never speed.”
“My car broke down yesterday and the bus driver will miss me. He’ll think I got kidnapped by some stalker if I’m not there.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No, I guess not. See you around.” She got out of the car and hurried away.
“That is officially the most infuriating person I have ever known,” Abel said to his reflection in the mirror. “This is ridiculous.” He sat for a couple of minutes without a clear destination in mind. Sitting there with nowhere to go made him feel like a huge loser, so he put the car in gear and drove to the closest bus stop, where Lacey was sitting on the bench.
“Lacey, get in!” he said after rolling down the window.
“No!”
“This is so dumb! I’m not going anywhere until you get in. Just let me drive you home. We don’t have to talk about anything if you don’t want to.”
She stood up and brushed off her skirt. “I already said I don’t want to. I implied it, I’m pretty sure. Maybe you should respect my boundaries.”
“Come on. I think respecting your boundaries as much as I have it’s what’s gotten me so tied up in knots. Listen, if I don’t roll the window up soon I’ll get pneumonia and the team will lose. You’ll cost the league billions of dollars. I’m their prize asset.”
“Well,” she said, her breath puffing out in front of her in a cloud, “Far be it from me to kill off the prize asset of professional sports.”
Abel got out and held her door open for her.
“Thanks,” she said. “I can get my own door.”
He didn’t move. “No one said you couldn’t. I’m not going to shut it just so you can open it for yourself, now that I’m already out here. It’s just something I like to do and I think you can handle it.”
She got in and he shut the door behind her.
“So where am I headed?” he said after strapping in.
Lacey took a few moments.
“It’s not like I’m going to show up every fifteen minutes just because I’ll know where you live,” he said.
When she finally gave him the address, it was like she was choking on the words.
“That’s not such a bad neighborhood,” he said. “I had friends over there.”
While he drives, he keeps up a stream of small talk. She doesn’t ask him to stop, but she doesn’t contribute either. Sasha had been right. Lacey was a mystery. But like any good detective, he figured that all he had to do was watch for clues. There was a starting point that would reveal her hang-ups.
“Where did you stay when you were out at there in musicland? Did they put you up in some ritzy penthouse?”
“Hardly.” Lacey’s voice was a low monotone, as if she was literally trying not to die of boredom.
The person he remembered had had so much passion in her. Abel had a hard time reconciling the memories of her, especially of the graduation night they had spent together, with the person riding in the passenger seat. “We got a tiny stipend. I had like an eight-hundred-foot studio apartment. It was basically a stove and a bed, and everything was so tiny that I practically had to store the bed in the stove.”
Abel laughed. “Well, you still haven’t laughed for me, but it’s good to know that you can still make me laugh. And that doesn’t all sound so bad. You were a slave to your art. Isn’t that part of the whole romantic tortured creative type thingy?”
“The whole tortured creative type thingy? Is that a category that you put people in?”
“Oh, I assume that’s what everyone is before they prove me wrong.” He whistled. “Listen, it’s hard being so smart like me. I know that it wasn’t as bad as you say. I bet there was something good about it, right? Hold on.” He eased the car through a series of turns, following the commands of the GPS system. “This is you, right?” He double checked the address.
Abel wanted to be kind, but he had to admit that he was surprised. Lacey’s apartment complex was a notch above the U-shaped hotels found on the outskirts of town, the ones that charged by the hour and barely got enough wattage to power a lightbulb. Why was she living her? Why in Palmera. He thought of the whole world out there, waiting to adore her, and yet, they were never even going to hear about her if she spent all over her time waiting tables and crashing in this apartment.
“This is me.” Lacey stared into her lap.
She looked so despondent that Abel reached across and squeezed her shoulder. “Hey. Lace. You can tell me anything, you know? If I could help you with anything, I really, really hope you would ask, whether we ever had the…the talk… you know.”
She nodded, tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. “I know. You were good to me.”
“I can still be good to you. I mean that. And it never has to be anything but talk. Just help me catch up with you.”
She looked at the apartment. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“Oh, I get it. I know this is just temporary. You don’t have to tell me, but I’m sure you’ve got a great reason for staying here. I’ve never known anyone so methodical. I know you don’t do things half-cocked.”
“I do have a good reason. The reason is that I don’t have a damned extra cent and I can barely even afford this place. It’s not temporary, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“Abel, I’ve been living in that little hole right there for over four years. God, that’s over a thousand days.” She clenched her jaw.
Abel frowned. The math didn’t add up at all. “What are you talking about? What about the conservatory?”
“I don’t know how to tell you,” said Lacy. “Oh my god, it’s all so humi
liating.”
“Hey, remember in science class when I got the tip of my nose caught in a mousetrap? Now that was humiliating.”
Lacey laughed and the sound surprised them both.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” said Abel.
“You should never have accepted a dare from Amos Whitlock,” said Lacey. “But I don’t remember you being humiliated. The way I remember it, you were pretty proud of yourself.”
“Shows what you know! Well, maybe you’re right about that, a little. But I’ve learned to live with the embarrassment, trust me. So can you. I’m sure there’s nothing to be humiliated about. This is just a place.”
Lacey ran her hands through her hair. Even through her sorrow and agitation, he was stunned by how sexy she could look. She had no idea that people stopped and stared when she moved, which had always been part of her appeal. Lacey could walk into a room and it was like the atmosphere changed as particles reassembled themselves into configurations that left everyone in the room wondering just who this woman was.
“Okay, look,” she said. “I never went to the school. Not to study, not to move away. I never even left town. I told you that I went and it didn’t work out. That’s a lie. And I didn’t have a little studio apartment. I’ve been here the whole time, working in that shitty coffee shop, while you’ve been off earning zillions of dollars and seeing the world. I’m stuck, Abel, I’m just so stuck.”
“Well, --”
“And I’m not going to able to talk to you about it.”
Abel felt like he’d been whacked with a 2x4. It had to be a joke. There was no way she would have turned down the chance to leave, not with her talent.
“I don’t understand. Lacey, come on.”
“I know you don’t. I’m not sure I can make you understand. I don’t even think there would be any point in trying. You’ve given up enough for me already.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her phone beeped. She looked at a text and said, “I’ve got to go, Abel. Thanks for the ride. I hope you’ll come in again, but I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
